I've been working in games for a little more than 15 years, and the main thing I'd say about it at this point is that it's a pretty annoying job to explain at parties. People often say something like, "Oh, I don't really play games," which is surely an odd thing to tell a game designer moments after you've been introduced; I don't really eat croissants, but that's not the first thing I bring up if I meet a patissier. So one of the joys of publishing my first novel last year was the option to sidestep all of that, and say: "Oh, I'm a writer." I wrote a novel; I'm working on another one; job done, the conversation can move on. Nobody says, "Oh, I don't really read books," even though that's at least as likely to be true.

Corny dialogue has been part of video games almost since they have existed. From 1989's Zero Wing spawning the decades old "All your base are belong to us" internet meme, to the clunky translations of the pre-remake Resident Evil games ("the master of unlocking"), to Skyrim's infamous adventurer who once took an arrow to the knee and never shuts up about it, non-playable character (NPC) dialogue has rarely been exactly Shakespearean, and the frequent repetition doesn't help. But could AI tools change that, enabling a world full of characters that respond believably when you talk to them? In collaboration with Google, a team of researchers from Stanford have built a game demo called Smallville that integrates the AI writing tool ChatGPT. Instead of just walking into walls and setting themselves on fire like the classic Sims characters we all knew and loved, the game's 25 characters can instead comfortably discuss topics such as local politics and composing music, pulling from ChatGPT's enormous database.