In Homer’s Iliad there are two groups of characters – Gods and Humans. Each of these groups is sub-divided into competing factions. The Gods observe, manipulate and sometimes respond to Humans, and the Humans often appeal to the Gods and may revere, obey or defy them. And there are families that extend across both Gods and Humans (e.g. the hero Achilles’ mother is the Goddess Thetis).
In a computer game it might seem appropriate for the Gods to be AI based agents and the Humans to be human players.
I suspect that there are already many online computer games involving two groups eg Gods & Humans, but rather few using AI agent architectures and maybe none explicitly based on the Iliad. But the Iliad is surely a particularly interesting and challenging target.
NOTE the relevance to Gillian’s Hoop…
Hi!
(I suggest reading Julian Jaynes first).
In the Illiad every human character is a puppet in the hand of Gods, so it makes sense to have Gods as AI characters - Anyway their ways of thinking and behaving is quite simplistic: jealousy, seeking winning, higher god-status, killing or disabling enemies,..
And the humans do what they think are god's commands (They hear voices).
On the contrary in the Odyssey we have ONE true thinking hero: Ulysses - the "smart one", who thinks by himself, and manages to defeat even god-like creatures (e.g. the Gorgon). In this story men are also pretty stupid - cf their transformation as pigs in the Lotophages island.
Hence in a game who should be the first-person player(s)?
I leave this answer to you as a function of the market intended.
Salutations, Jean-Paul V. Jéral
There was a really good game called Pharaoh which has a very interesting gods system where you need to build in festivals (expend coin and food resources and sometimes other gifts to the gods) and have preasts for a set of God's. If enough worship was made in the past season, then a bonus in the role of the god would apply (e.g. Osiris is pleased, farms produce double food), conversely, if you don't meet with a minimal score in worshipping a God then a penalty could apply (I.e. Osiris is unhappy and the flood will not come this season and the farms run barren).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh_(video_game)
Many thanks for three very interesting answers so far, though none of them a direct answer to my question!
I shall respond shortly.
By way of further explanation for my question, I'm interested in the relationships between reality (wassat?), belief and imaginative story telling (which we humans seem to do obsessively). When Homer created The Iliad (or patched it together, or.whatever...) did his hearers fully believe in the existence of Zeus, Ares, Athene and the rest? They certainly went to a lot of effort to build temples to them. Or was it more a social requirement that it was unwise to ignore. (Alas, poor Socrates.).
NB I approach these issues from a technical software engineering AI perspective.
Jim D
>> Jean-Paul Jéral
Hi Jean Paul!
I am not much persuaded by Julian Jaynes – I tend to agree with ?Block that JJ’s definition of consciousness is deficient. However his ideas are undeniably wide ranging, ambitious and thought provoking.
Surely the text of the Iliad does not really support the idea that Homer portrayed the humans as mere “puppets” of the gods, nor that the humans merely knew the Gods as “voices”, nor that the Gods were dumb? Plenty of evidence in the text to the contrary for all three of these propositions, I suggest.
NB Odysseus is prominent in Iliad as well as in the Odyssey. I find Agamemnon pretty smart too but he gets badly misled by the tricky dream send to him by Zeus.
By the way - no "market intended" -- see my previous answer for my interest in this nexus
>> S. 澍苍 Ye Laird
My information is that the movie "O Brother where are thou' is loosely based on the Odyssey (not the Iliad) as quite a few movies are - just needs a guy wandering around having a variety of little adventures and losing all his mates!
Your reaction to the Hoop?
Your second sentence is thought provoking…
>> Joseph Alexander Brown
Pharaoh is certainly an interesting game and indeed sacrifice to the Gods is prominent in Iliad. Does Pharaoh have AI content? Guess that depends to an extent on what one means (IE I meant) by an “AI Agent Architecture”. Just a bunch of situation- action rules? Too simple? Planning? Abstraction?
Best
JIm D
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