[HN Gopher] Show HN: Talk to Me Human - my game about social per...
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Show HN: Talk to Me Human - my game about social persuasion
Hey all, I recently graduated from a good PhD program studying
NLP. Unlike any sane person who would go become a professor or make
a gazillion dollars in industry, I decided to try bootstrapping my
own software business. This is my first product. The inspiration
was from my research on computers understanding social norms. When
ChatGPT came out, I was amazed how well it could understand social
etiquette. I thought it'd be fun to make a game where you have to
talk your way out of sticky situations - like you miss your
friend's birthday party, or your boss catches you trying to leave
work at 2pm. I made a prototype in a couple days, and it was super
fun to play with. I thought I'd spend a "couple months" making a
game for others to play online. Now, only 10 months and 923.3 hours
of work later, it's playable in early access. In the game, you
talk out loud (ASR), and the NPCs (LLM + TTS) talk back at you. It
is fun to play with a friend! And because it's just talking, non-
gamers do great, often better than gamers. I really want to have a
free demo, but no time yet to implement. For now, it's purchase
only ($4.99). If anyone decides to try it, I'd really love to get
more feedback. It was an enormous learning experience, especially
targeting the web - so many partially supported web APIs and
browser inconsistencies! Still feels like 2008 in some ways. Also
happy to answer questions of course. Thanks, and enjoy the weekend!
Author : mbforbes
Score : 41 points
Date : 2024-04-19 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (talktomehuman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (talktomehuman.com)
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| I early tested this and it's quite original and great! The
| technical aspects (how smooth the experience is) are fantastic,
| but it's really the bit bonkers interactions and funny ways of
| "winning" that stand out.
|
| Recommended for the novelty and very well produced content
| mbforbes wrote:
| Thank you Greg, your feedback has been immensely helpful!
| duck wrote:
| Looks interesting, but I would say a limited free demo is going
| to be key for any chance of adoption here.
| mysteria wrote:
| Or at the very least release a short gameplay video so people
| know what they're getting into before paying.
| mbforbes wrote:
| Thank you, great feedback. I need to do this soon!
| omoikane wrote:
| > talk your way out of sticky situations
|
| This reminds me of "Death by AI"[1], although that one uses text-
| based input instead of speech.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38318889
| mbforbes wrote:
| I love that this and AI Dungeon (perhaps the OG) exist. I think
| my key insight in the formula for this game is that the
| gameplay really sings when you introduce more constraints - it
| feels more challenging and less cheeseable, which makes it more
| rewarding.
| ryebread777 wrote:
| This is brilliant! I think a game with LLM NPCs would be crazy
| cool. Agree with the other commenter I would probably need a
| playable demo to pull the trigger though.
|
| Also, I didn't realize from the website that it actually uses
| voice? That should probably be highlighted, unless I just missed
| it.
|
| One other thought, your title says it's a game about social
| persuasion. In the examples on the site it seemed like many of
| the challenges just involved coming up with lies. If there are no
| consequences to just making up lies it seems to kind of flatten
| the strategy. Though I'm just speculating. Thanks for sharing!
| mbforbes wrote:
| Super great observation about the objectives! It started out
| with lies (er, let's say "excuses") but it's broadened into
| more conversational goals. I need to highlight this more.
|
| Specifically, re: flattening the strategy, spot on and I'm
| excited to introduce more long term repercussions for lying.
| There are some long-range dialog repercussions now, but not
| many. Having to craft a consistent narrative across the whole
| game ("Overboard" comes to mind if you've played that) would be
| wildly interesting.
|
| Loud and clear re: demo and highlighting voice!
| robocat wrote:
| @mbforbes: perhaps be more careful with your acronyms. NLP to me
| could be Non-Linear-Programming (operations research) or Neuro-
| linguistic Programming (psychology) instead of Natural Language
| Processing (from later context).
|
| Writing speech recognition instead of ASR would be clearer to
| anyone without a similar background.
|
| Your audience is HN so my guess is that you assume we all know
| the industry/academic terms here. I'm unsure how correct that
| assumption is - I'm just suggesting take care when using your
| acronyms in other places.
| mbforbes wrote:
| Hey I appreciate you pointing this out, thanks for taking the
| time and writing this feedback!
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