CARMEN WON’T TALK TO ME
Facilitating Expressive Qualities in Games through Natural Language Interfaces and AI NPCs
TAMIKA YAMAMOTO
Project Description
The making of this thesis evolved out of a two-fold response: encompassing my love for games with their ability to increase our capacity for care, and my anxieties and excitement around AI language models. The goal of this project is to create a game with language models, document the process, then synthesizing insights into best practices for underrepresented game-makers.
Underrepresented game-makers are often overlooked in the games industry, and the lack of diversity among game developers results in a landscape that fails to reflect the diverse lived experiences of various groups of people. This lack of representation perpetuates a cycle where certain demographics dominate the industry, further marginalizing others. Furthermore, the labor of underrepresented groups is exploited in the development of generative AI, compounded by the fact that languages and cultures of marginalized groups often go unrepresented in these models.
I aim to acknowledge those gaps by exploring how underrepresented makers like myself can understand and work with language models so that they may integrate the techniques outlined in this project into their own existing practice if they so choose, leveraging the unique affordances of working with LLMs.
The final result of this investigation is the creation of a story-driven game based on a fictional narrative that reflects on my own experience of queer, Filipino girlhood. The game allows players to converse with AI characters, influencing their behaviour and altering the game world and narrative.
The title of the game is Carmen Won’t Talk to Me, a short game about connection and human relationships.
BIO
Tamika is a designer, illustrator, and motion graphics artist with five years of experience in the creative industry. She is excitable and tends to wear many hats, moving between various creative disciplines such as motion design, publishing, digital effects compositing, and user interface design. She admits to occasionally falling off the deep end with each.
She deeply values the act of creation in any form and is intrigued by how creative work can enhance our capacity to empathize and connect with others.
Currently, she is expanding her expertise in interactive media, focusing on AI criticality, language models, and crafting narrative-driven games that convey meaningful values.
For more of her work, visit tamikayamamoto.com.