Making players the "consciousness model for AI" in Ctrl Alt Deal
gamesindustry.bizDeveloped by indie studio Only By Midnight, Ctrl Alt Deal sees players take on the role of a sentient AI robot trying to escape the megacorporation that created it.
Achieving this goal is no easy feat, as players must interact with the human workers of the same megacorp by spying on them or negotiating deals in a turn-based strategy system.
GamesIndustry.biz spoke to the Edmonton-based studio's CEO Alison Czarnietzki and creative director Jennifer Laface about the perils of AI, its interactions with humans, and standing out among other turn-based strategy games in the indie space.
The concept of Ctrl Alt Deal took root from a philosophical problem: the "paperclip problem" to be exact (the company that created you is even called Paperclip International).
Hypothesised by philosopher Nick Bostrom, it suggests that if an AI were given a seemingly trivial task of producing as many paperclips as possible, it would inadvertently destroy the world. Bostrom theorised that the AI would end up converting all matter, including humans and the Earth itself, into either paperclips or machines that manufacture them.
"AI is all the talk these days, so this is our chance to [show that] AI is going to think differently, it's going to act differently, so what would you do in the shoes of that AI?" Czarnietzki asks.
Laface adds: "In addition to that, AI has different ethics, morals, and ways of seeing the world in perspectives."
At the surface level, you appear to be playing as a friendly AI trying to escape its place of creation. But all is not as it seems.
"Are you a friendly AI?" Czarnietzki questions. "One of the biggest inspirations for Ctrl Alt Deal was Papers Please – that moral math. You could play this entirely like a sociopath, or you could try to make everyone's lives better. You can be friendly, you can be evil, you can be everything inbetween."
"We use the player as the consciousness model for the AI," Laface adds. "So you can choose to play how you want. Do you want to be helpful,
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