Photo Courtesy of Analogicus on Pixabay
You’re walking through a dark forest with a torch and a sword. You’ve heard a rumor of an inn ‘The Lamplight’ somewhere nearby that can provide sanctuary for the night but have no way to find it. Eventually you stumble upon another traveller and begin to talk. Your options are:
Who are you?
What are you doing?
Do you know where the Lamplight Inn is?
Stop right there!
He responds “Is that how you typically introduce yourself? I’m a courier for a group of traders and would prefer it if you stepped aside. I can’t be wasting time at this hour.”
Is that a threat?
You must be carrying something valuable then. Hand it over.
Do you know where the Lamplight Inn is?
I could accompany you if you desire some extra security.
Even though you see yourself as a hero, you can’t resist seeing what the repercussions are. The trader draws his own sword. You fight. You win. And the 400 gold he’s carrying really wasn’t worth the effort so you reloaded the game and try the conversation again.
Is that a threat?
You must be carrying something valuable then. Hand it over.
Do you know where the Lamplight Inn is?
I could accompany you if you desire some extra security.
“Never heard of it.” He scoffs back at you “But there is a tavern of some sort on this trail, I passed it an hour ago.” And he walks off into the dark.
—
This style of interaction common throughout most narrative videogames is a call and response between the player (you) and the NPCs (non-player characters) that populate the world. The past decade of playing games has shown me that a premium is being placed on creating quality interactions, writing, and voice acting in games, anything that can be done to make these conversations sound and feel more ‘human’ and less robotically scripted.
If you could ask anything to any person in a game, the developers would have to write, record, and implement millions of possible lines. The Gold Standard for this and ‘Game of the Year 2023’ is Baulder’s Gate 3. It took nearly seven years to finish the whopping 174 hours of voice-acted dialogue possible to discover in the game. This is an immense amount of effort and time needed to even approach the naturally playful feeling of a real-world conversation. Yet it would be inaccurate to say that you can have a real ‘conversation’ with any of its characters.
As the conversational realism of games has increased I’ve developed a growing concern about our own real-world conversational abilities. Have you noticed yourself having the same conversation a dozen times at a social event? “Hey good to see you, yes I’ve been good, work is good, my next project is X.” The point of this article is not to imply that people are literally ‘pre-programmed’ like an NPC to engage in conversation in a rigid structured way. Rather it’s to highlight the undeniable convenience of picking an opinion you like and echoing it to those you talk with again and again.
Forming our own opinions is mentally taxing, so be it from more traditional news channels, influencers, or podcasters, our opinions are shaped by the analysis we consume. This is the reason ‘NPC dialogue’ has been growing in popularity as an online insult. Users are attempting to describe this feeling that no matter who they talk to, or about what topic, everyone’s arguments and opinions are becoming perceived as more homogenous. I’ve found myself having discussions with friends that contain waves of deja-vu as I remember discussing the same topic with someone else while using not just the same line, but the same phrasing to make a point.
When we start to treat our real communications like we’re playing a game with one optimized ‘route’ to get us through every conversation, we chip away at what makes conversation interesting. In a game ‘winning’ is getting to the end of the interaction and claiming whatever the reward is. In the real world, conversation is the reward. The point of human conversation isn’t to just reach the end but to enjoy the dance of ideas, perspectives, tangents, and insights that bubble up along the way.
Quality conversations get their magic from the nervous energy of not precisely knowing the direction they’re heading in. There is no ‘re-loading’ real-world interactions. The volume of conversations we engage in has increased dramatically in the digital age, from group chats and social media pages, to email chains covering everything from summer plans to political debates. We need to pick our battles when dedicating our mental effort to conversation. Digital conversation is inherently ‘structured’ differently than face-to-face conversation, like a videogame there’s more of a call-and-response than a cooperative chatter. We are all becoming more robotic and ‘NPC-like’ in our communications. It's not only that the NPC is scripted and has limited responses, but in order to interact on their level, you too have limited questions and prompts you can ask.
Perhaps we have begun skipping a step in our information processing pipeline, jumping directly from event to opinion while side-stepping the mental load of doing any analysis ourselves. We hear a good argument or perspective from a trusted source, and because we like the reasoning, we adopt it as our own opinion on the matter.
While it’s almost impossible for everyone to hold a purely unique opinion on any topic, I'd like to suggest some strategies to help you break out of this ‘NPC dialogue’ and begin forming new and unique ideas.
“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
Approach conversations you disagree with more like an interview. Spend the time diving into why someone believes what they believe. Figure out what their sources are, what they may have misremembered, what their values and biases may be. In other words, you are digging for the context. You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying but you can at least get more to the core of WHY they’re saying it.
Don’t treat conversations like a debate. I find myself often falling into the dialogue tree when I assume I know what direction the conversation is heading. A good way to tell if you’ve entered ‘debate mode’ is to spot when you’re repeating yourself, or are readying yourself to respond to a point that the other person hasn't even made yet. One conversation won’t change someone’s mind, nor should that be your goal to ‘win’ them over.
Have the confidence to defend what you believe by backing it up with compelling arguments. Opinions are iterative, so take the time to interrogate and refine your own beliefs. Understanding why you were compelled to believe something will keep your ideas fresh and adaptive. I think the only reason a person should ever need to support universal healthcare is “it’s good when the parents of sick children don’t go into debt helping their child.” Other people will have different rationals. C’est la vie.
Think of how your perspective is valuable to THEM. Forget about yourself for a moment and be willing to go down a conversational path to find common ground and highlight mutual interests. Learn where their mind is at and what things they aren’t willing to compromise on. If you obsessively try to ‘sell’ your idea at every opportunity you’ll scare away a potential customer. If someone gets uncomfortable while exploring their reasonings, understand that the discomfort is crucial. Discomfort causes a moment of reflection, reorientation, and a reevaluation of one's beliefs.
Lastly, talk about something else, anything else. Give your brain the chance to reapproach a discussion from a new angle. When you feel a conversation has hit a dead end and is spinning its wheels it’s a good time to switch to something new or low-stakes. Switching up the topic can refresh conversations because we begin to in real time analyze what we know, make new arguments, and consider alternative perspectives before our opinion has solidified. These tangential discussions let you feel out which elements of a topic a person puts value in, or even where you might share common ground.
Humans are highly social creatures and we crave real human connection even if it can sometimes feel easier to talk like a Non-player Character with a shortlist of dialogue options. Communication is an imperfect art that can’t be simplified down to a flow-chart no matter how complex. The reason this increasingly structured conversational format feels strange to us is because we’re not NPC’s. We’re all players who have the agency to think complex thoughts, to communicate our opinions, and to hold a conversation without a predetermined dialogue tree. Communication should not be treated as a game, it’s a dance we practice with each and every conversation.
