I always enjoy game night with my friends. Our ever-expanding selection of board games, card games and party games makes every party special. One night recently, though, I wanted to try using artificial intelligence as a virtual host for a game.
I asked Chat GPT Get some ideas and become someone who actually runs three different types of games. The ensuing chaos tells me that game master is a role that artificial intelligence can play well, although you’ll need to pay close attention first.
Here’s how ChatGPT fares as a game night host.
Artificial Intelligence Questions and Answers
Trivia games are an easy option for incorporating artificial intelligence, and they’re really popular with the masses, especially because having ChatGPT ask questions means we can all play at the same time.
To set it up, I asked ChatGPT to act as my quiz master for game night. I then gave the AI some broad question topics, including space, cooking, and 90s pop culture, and told it to come up with more. I then instructed it to ask ten questions for each question and track the scores we submitted.
I also told the AI to have some fun and show some personality as the quiz master, and it immediately became a game show host with over-the-top compliments and cheesy jokes. That’s fine, but honestly, none of us need referees or prep questions to get into actually playing the game faster. That said, there were some questions that were either too easy or too hard, but that suggests I need to be specific about difficulty levels in the future.
virtual picture book
Pictionary is a classic game night event, but not everyone is the best artist, so I decided to join ChatGPT and their DALL-E image generator. Instead of guessing back and forth, I explained the concept to ChatGPT and had it start drawing the picture with the pen one line at a time, giving the group a chance to guess after each line.
It took me a while to guess “cats on unicycles on Mars” or “dinosaurs baking cakes,” but it was fun to see the weird illustrations at the end. Then we came up with variations of the game. Everyone has to guess what the AI is drawing in some abstract form. If they guess wrong, they must try to draw their interpretation of the image on the whiteboard and see if they have a better result based on the guesses of the rest of the group. No one got a “giraffe with a crown” and the closest we got was a confused llama. The group did draw the “robot doing yoga” that I drew, although I couldn’t figure it out from the AI drawing.
Artificial Intelligence Murder Mystery
We decided to end the night with a more involved party game: a murder mystery. This doesn’t require much guidance from me. I asked ChatGPT to create a custom murder mystery story for the game. I gave the artificial intelligence a basic premise: the master (me) was the victim, and my five friends were all suspects with unique motives.
ChatGPT quickly spun a convoluted story: I was “poisoned” during a celebratory toast, and everyone had reason to want me to quit. For example, a friend loves space and reportedly wants revenge because I canceled her stargazing trip. Another friend, who became a famous foodie, was angry that I laughed at his lasagna because it was a little burnt.
I printed out the profiles and clues generated by ChatGPT and distributed them. The AI suggested props, so I set up a little “evidence table” with a bottle of “poison” aka apple juice, and a crumpled note that says, “It’s your turn.” Everyone gets into character, grilling each other and forming crazy theories. In the end, the killer turned out to be the quietest friend because I forgot her birthday last year.
Everyone loves to play detective, and the twists and turns are truly surprising, but without some editing the backstory could be a bit confusing and contradictory. Out of all the games, this is probably the most popular one and I can’t wait to play it again soon.