Sunset Valley: A Case Study in Computational Gossip

Many genres of video games value the fidelity of background non-player characters (NPCs) for they create the illusion of life necessary to support a believable world. However, in some genres of games, there is often a layer of abstraction between player actions and how NPCs process and respond to those actions. In this work, we argue that a system of computational gossip, grounded in sociological and social-psychological theory, can reduce that abstraction and improve believability of NPCs by deepening an NPCs reasoning of player action. In the form of a case study, this work presents the game Sunset Valley: an early step towards a system of computational gossip. Then by inspecting Sunset Valley’s gossip model, we analyze our game by exploring several well-established sociological and social-psychological frameworks, identify which frameworks are well-represented in Sunset Valley, and which frameworks are not. Finally, we conclude to what extant artificial intelligence systems can be used to address the shortcomings of our system.