Talking to NPCs
My brother does not have an internal monologue. I can’t imagine what the echoing silence in my head would be like without mine. Sometimes she hypes me up, making me brave. Others, she’s a pot-stirrer, sitting in the back row of her private theatre, jeering and throwing popcorn at my mishaps. When I talk with people I don’t know, she does something curious. She turns into a role-player videogame.
I explained to my brother how my brain spoke to me during a recent conversation with a couple.
I started with a joke. The pair laughed. From their expressions, she thought it landed well, not a fake laugh. Sometimes it is hard to tell. Before I could think of a new question, they asked me about my knee injury. I explained how my bone is bleeding. She told me to be careful. There were two doctors next to me. They knew more. I looked to them. They did not correct me.
They asked me a couple of questions about myself, mainly about my year off work. She paused, not knowing where to begin. “Don’t dominate the conversation, Lucy. People like talking about themselves. Bring the conversation back to them as quickly as possible. Mention two highlights, max.” But which highlights?, I asked her. Before she had time to tell me I’d blurted out five. We talked about me for a while. She was not impressed.
Finally there was a pause. She seized her chance. “Ask them a question, Lucy.” She presented the standard British list: “What do you do? Where do you live? Where are you from?” Since work can risk being dull, I asked where they live. It is not in London. “Booo, useless question,” she says. “Your UK geography is appalling. Ask a better one next time.” They told me a few very random landmarks, none of which I knew, before finally confessing that they live in the Cotswolds. “Aha!” she shouts. “Now you can talk about being bougey. You love bougey. Ask them about their bougeyness.”
Although I enjoyed the conversation, she kept on at me in my head like this, painfully, for twenty minutes. After telling my brother more than he ever wished to know about my lack of conversational prowess, he grinned, knowingly. He said, “Huh, so you’re the videogame hero, talking to all the NPCs. What you’re describing is a conversation tree. It’s a very well-known format in gaming.”
___
My life has always been gamer adjacent. I started playing computer games on our Windows ‘98, mainly themed around Barbie and math quizzes before graduating to my all-time favourite, The Sims. I studied engineering, I used to live with a gamer, and my brother and I can pass eight hours side by side, saying nothing, just playing computer games, silently bonding. But until talking with him about the links between the mind’s social workings, and the controlled social environment of games, I had never put two and two together about why videogames might be a haven for those who aren’t neurotypical.
When the game protagonist talks to the other non-playable characters (NPCs), a few things happen. They are presented with options for how to approach that character. Sometimes, these options are helpfully labelled as “friendly”, “provocative” or, “cut your head off”, to make sure you understand what that action means.
The character then responds. The reaction is often exaggerated, to make sure you understand the consequence. You know the lizard lady is angry because her tail catches on fire and she frowns aggressively.
Your interactions also follow you around. Repeated interactions with the same character build a relationship. It can also affect how you relate to other characters. If you’ve denounced their brother’s lover’s cousin a few rounds back, it might make it harder to trade with them this time around. Consequently, you need to decide how you want to play the game in advance, to make sure you don’t ruin your chances of success later.
There’s also not usually a time limit, and you only ever talk to one being at once. There’s nobody to cut you off in a conversation, you can think through your approach at your leisure, and you only need to pay attention to one set of facial expressions and react accordingly.
___
I recently read Neurotribes, a book about the history of autism. Autistic people, more than average in the population, can struggle to interpret and react to emotions (alexithymia). Facial expression flashcards are a popular aid to support autistic children, to teach them to identify expressions and how to react to be better understood. It struck me that videogames like this created a safer, predictable environment to test out social interactions, and get feedback without the risk.
I asked an autistic gamer friend of mine if this had been his experience, if these types of games had helped him recognise human emotions better and understand how to react. He laughed, saying “games don’t make the real world any easier,” but they are incredibly appealing to people with autism. “The games are more of a ‘thing’ than people. They heavily restrict the possible outcomes,” and those outcomes are very clear. The ways a person can react are endless, unpredictable, and potentially incomprehensible. The games also give you more time to think about how you respond, to interpret a reaction. This is much harder in the real world, where conversations can be overwhelming in their pace, and someone cuts in before you have time to process what is happening.
Society can sometimes criticise gaming as a mindless and useless activity, or as promoting and desensitizing kids to violence. The World Health Organisation has even identified “gaming disorder” as an illness. But the benefits from gaming go beyond the far-less-fun educational games that teach kids maths and vocabulary. For me, it is calming, allowing me to clear my mind and focus entirely on controlling the lives of Sims or Civ VI empires. For others who might struggle with more conventional communication, it is an escape. It can be a joy, and a way to understand and connect with people that might otherwise never occur. That doesn’t sound like a waste of time to me.