Recently, the life simulation game "inZOI" developed by Krafton launched its first DLC "Island Holiday". The DLC will give away free of charge to all players who purchase the game during the "Early Experience" period, and the game is now available for 20% off on Steam.Kim Hyung-jun, the producer, director and CEO of inZOI Studio, was interviewed and introduced the game's unique design and AI system in virtual life simulation. Let's take a look!
What's most striking about inZOI is its advanced AI system used to control NPCs called "Zoi" in the game.Kim Hyung-joon said that these AI characters often behave beyond expectations, not only more independent, but even "almost like real life."During the test, the development team found that Zoi can independently generate many story content that developers have not preset.For example, in romantic interactions, AI shows highly anthropomorphic behavior; Kim Hyung-joon specifically mentioned an example: In one Zoi's funeral scene, another Zoi spontaneously came forward to preach about death, saying the line "Death is part of life, you should accept it", which surprised the team.
In the test of interpersonal relationships and money interactions, AI also shows rich social logic.Kim Hyung-joon tries to borrow 1 euro from Zoi in a different relationship: Zoi, who is close, will talk to him but does not borrow money, and the stranger refuses directly. The only successful one is to borrow money from her Zoi daughter, but she asks to repay 10 times the amount the next day.Zoi also showed spontaneous curiosity, such as proactively asking “Who is the person in your wallet photo?”
Zoi characters have more than 600 psychological states, and their behaviors change dynamically with the external environment, but such complex systems also bring control challenges.Kim Hyung-joon admitted that "they are hard to control at the moment" and the team is actively dealing with the complexity caused by Zoi type traits and their combinations.They use AI technology to assist in the management of initial state recognition, control strategy formulation and other work.
The emotional system is designed based on psychological concepts and has received assistance from professional psychologists.Kim Hyung-joon explains that each Zoi has a "main emotion" determined by the emotional rating triggered by the event: the highest rating emotions will become the dominant.All interactions come with numbers and emotional scores, such as serious accidents that increase the “unhappy” score by 50 points.There are about 15,000 emotional instances running simultaneously in the game.
Due to the huge number of emotions and interactions, the system occasionally produces unexpected results and even errors.For example, when a Zoi drinks water, the reactions expected by developers and players may be completely different from the actual emotions, resulting in the so-called "crazy Zoi".The development team manages it through careful numerical balance. Each emotion is set with specific values. Major events (such as winning the jackpot) will cover the low-level emotions that occur simultaneously.Psychologists believe this mechanism is close to reality: there are multiple emotions in the human subconscious, but a dominant emotion coordinates consciousness.
Emotions will also affect and offset each other.If a Zoi wins the jackpot but then encounters a serious car accident, the negative emotions brought by the car accident will cover the joy of winning and become the main emotions.The system also deals with the confrontation and enhancement mechanisms of positive and negative emotions.
InZOI also implements a highly interconnected world simulation: all Zoi on the map are connected to each other, knowing the history of other people's interactions, and almost all behaviors are simulated and recorded in real time.The new Zoi is determined when it is born. Such a design has a heavy load on the CPU, so the game has high hardware requirements.The financial system currently operates on a family basis. This update introduces accounting functions, but has not yet been refined to the personal consumption level.Future development teams plan to expand this system to influence Zoi's consumption behavior by its traits - for example, some Zoi prefer food consumption, others pay more attention to vanity spending.
At present, "inZOI" is still in the early experience stage. The team will continue to optimize the AI behavior control and emotional balance system, and strive to build a richer and credible virtual life experience.
