Kid Warning: The little web-game I threw together below contains “user-generated content”.  Just like with any forum on the internet, it is possible that there could be a few bad words in there.  It’s mostly clean, but I still need to advise you to proceed at your own risk.  That said…

I’m been doing some thought experiments lately on user-generated content.  Here’s a quick little game I threw together while thinking about conversation trees.

Play The Abrupt Goodbye

You play a character in a conversation.  You are given choices of what to say, which are conversational responses written by previous players of the game.  You can at any point type in your own response.

Responses are sorted and removed from the database based on their popularity.  If certain responses don’t get clicked, they move down the list and eventually get removed.

A conversation might go something like this:

You are a blind man. You are sitting on a bench in the subway. Someone sits next to you.

Say one of the following:

• Where you goin? 
• The train is on FIIIRRRREEEE!
• Mornin.
• Get yer own bench.
• [Type your own response]

You choose “Where you goin?”

The young woman says, “Uptown, and you?”

Choose:

• Oh, I got no place to go.
• [Type your own response]

You choose “Oh, I got no place to go.”

The young woman says, “Would you like my sandwich?”

Choose:

• [Type your own response]

 You type: “Lady, I don’t eat ham.”

The woman gets up and walks away. She is gone.

The End

Granted, this is a fairly mundane conversation.  Eventually, however, you could probably get some pretty interesting (and long) conversation chains, depending on the creativity of the player base.

A system like this could be an interesting way to build complex NPCs in an MMO.

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