ARE you a natural sleuth? An promoting the new movie Sherlock Holmes is offering players a new sort of gaming experience. The aim is to interview suspects 鈥� as Dr Watson or Holmes 鈥� to solve a robbery at the British Museum. Thanks to novel conversational 鈥渃hatbots鈥� embedded in the game, players can use natural language in their typed interrogations.
Other games have used natural language interactions before, says Rollo Carpenter, founder of , the company behind the game, but these only use keywords to try to recognise what players are saying, he claims. 鈥淢y script technology works by making predictions about what people will say,鈥� he says. It then uses statistical analysis and fuzzy logic to try to find the best match for what was said against this vast number of predictions, before supplying the appropriate response.
These predictions are grouped into possible phrases, rather than using stock sentences. This enables the system to deduce if you are referring to someone by name, or as 鈥渉er鈥�, or as someone鈥檚 daughter, says Carpenter. 鈥淚t means you can ask your questions with enormously more variety.鈥�
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鈥淭he system deduces if you are referring to someone by name, or as 鈥榟er鈥�, or as someone鈥檚 daughter鈥�
To solve the mystery, players must collect clues and use them to decide which questions they ask the virtual witnesses and suspects. How they choose to frame those questions affects their results, says Carpenter.
