Interview

PocketGamer.biz Podcast – unleashing the worlds within worlds

Charisma’s Guy Gadney on pioneering new forms of games entertainment by casting audiences inside the stories

PocketGamer.biz Podcast – unleashing the worlds within worlds

Each video game has a remarkable, reeling, wild world ready for exploration. One filled with vivid personalities urging to be introduced to players. But developers can only reveal so much of this world. Bound by the constraints of time, resources, and simply being human, developers craft a narrative that exposes a fraction of the game’s universe and allows players to interact with only a handful of characters.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) allows game makers to crack Pandora’s box and release an entirely new and immersive experience to players. This week’s podcast dives into the details of games augmented by AI and asks developers: What would your game’s world look like if players could be a part of it?

You can talk to the characters and NPCs. That then changes the relationship that you have with the players. That then changes the game. That changes the story.
Guy Gadney

On this week’s podcast

This week, our hosts, Brian Baglow and Peggy Anne Salz, sit down with Guy Gadney to learn how Charisma AI helps unlock the rich world inside every game. Easily connected to Unreal, Unity, mobile, and metaverses, Charisma’s AI-powered conversation engine “uses the language of storytelling, with built-in features like emotion, memory, scenes and subplots to bring your projects to life.”

With Charisma, NPC interactions aren’t limited by dialogue trees. Players can converse with every character in any manner. “If you say something rude to them, they're gonna get angry,” says Guy. “If you say something nice to them, they're gonna like you.” What’s more, backed by the power of machine learning, characters can go so far as to remember a player’s name and their responses to questions which characters can reference further along in gameplay.

This episode will get your gears spinning as Peggy, Brian, and Guy reflect on the ethics of AI, the industry shift toward digital humans, and making your dreams come to life… literally.

About our guest

A long-time R-Type lover and Words With Friends enthusiast, Guy Gadney is a gamer at heart. He has pioneered growth and innovation in the digital media industry for thirty years, working with global organisations like Penguin Books, BBC, and FOX. Over the past three decades, Guy has founded four digital media companies and acted on Australia's Digital + Ad Collective Board of Directors. Guy is trilingual, speaking English, Spanish, and un petit peu of French. Most excitingly, though, he and his team at Charisma launched their AI-powered adaptation of John Wyndham's 1952 classic film, The Kraken Wakes, at this year’s London Games Festival. The game is now available for PC on Steam.

Listen. Learn. Love

Join Brian and Peggy as they find out how every developer can innovate ad creatives and the metrics to measure success.

Listen now. You can listen to all of the episodes of the PocketGamer.biz Podcast here, or find us and subscribe via the world's favourite podcast apps:

Enjoy!


Managing Editor

Brian has been working in the games industry since the mid-1990s, when he joined the legendary studio DMA Design, as a writer on the original Grand Theft Auto. Since then he's worked with major publishers, founded his own digital agency, helped numerous startups with PR, marketing, communications, narrative design, branding and making money.

Back in 2004 Brian created the Scottish Games Network, the industry body for the country's videogames sector. He also lectures at Napier University on the transformative power of interactive media on the creative industries, is a board member of Creative Edinburgh, and helps to organise games, tech and creative industries events.

In his spare time he plays videogames and is usually, proudly, at least one generation behind the cutting edge consoles.