Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Future: Audio Games with Amazon Alexa (or Siri)

The other day I attended an AWS user group where a Solutions Architect for Alexa Voice Service spoke about developing for Alexa. She showed off her Amazon Echo and a couple of skills that she had written for Alexa and urged us all to write our own skills with various AWS services.

I’m not a cloud expert, so much of the details went straight over my head.

She also talked about how voice UI and Alexa are new and will end up everywhere, even cars. We could build an Alexa client on a Raspberry Pi today!


Could Alexa run Eliza? When I was in college I learned about Eliza, a program that can respond as a Rogerian psychotherapist (that target was chosen because the natural language processing could be really lame and it would still seam real). After college I bought a 286 computer and found a GWBasic version of Eliza. I played Eliza more like a game, sometimes her responses would make me laugh until it hurts!

The thing that made Eliza so much fun wasn’t the quality of the Natural Language Processing. She could change me to you and you to me and spit the sentence right back to you, track if she had “heard” certain references to your parents and “say” profound things like “I understand”.

I image that the text processing to be wired up as “YOU” and speech synthesis wired to “ELIZA”. I used an online version of Eliza.

Interactive Fiction

Back in the ancient times, in some computer games, you would type commands and the computer would present you with paragraphs of text describing where you are. Why can’t Alexa read the paragraphs to me? I looked around the internet and found a place where I can play Zork online.

Wow! How exciting. Unlike Eliza, Zork has a very limited vocabulary. Looking at the command list I thought I found a way out:

Anyway I was able to wonder around as a ghost. These games where great for the time, a time when 64KB was a huge machine.

Dungeons & Dragons’ Dungeon Master

Eliza is too stupid and classic interactive fiction commands are too primitive. I think the D&D Dungeon Master is a good character for Alixa (or Siri, or Cortana) to play. I’ve listened to Nerd Poker, it is one of many podcasts where people play D&D, they are audio only, so we, as the audience, experience the game without maps.

YOU: Alexa, Dungeon Master
COMPUTER: Welcome to Dungeon Master
YOU: Resume Goldmine
COMPUTER: You are in a timber braced earthen tunnel lit only by the torch you are holding. Up ahead you see a heavy wood door guarded by an orc.
YOU: I take out my sword and approach the door.
COMPUTER: The orc comes toward you displaying his battle axe.
YOU: I attack the orc with my sword

The DM could support higher level commands, In Zork, if I wanted to return to the white house, I would have to the tell the game how to get there (if I can remember). In D&D, I can tell the DM where I want to return to and she would role some dice and tell me if I get back there without any excitement (if she isn’t too uptight); if there is any, she would guide me through any necessary exciting events.

YOU: I would like to return to the Armory
COMPUTER: On the way you meet an orc in the Great Hall.
YOU: I take out my sword.

Future Improvements

Having Alexa’s native voice lead you through a Dungeon would be exciting in the beginning, playing with your ears and all, but after a while, it would get old. What does a future audio games should like? I don’t know, but I would look at other things audio. There is old radio and podcasts, I like the sound of the Black List Table Reads and its Ear Movies could serve a template for the sound design of future audio games.


With audio games it will be possible to play an audio game while you run down bicycles and mow down pedestrians on your way into the ditch as you conquer dragons and orcs! There is a dark side to new technology!

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