In 2025, the Games Research Lab at Flinders University presented a unique research project: a hybrid physical-digital improv performance / escape room game called ‘Welcome to the Cave’, a play on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In-person players were tasked to not only work together, but to collaborate with AI-powered NPCs in order to solve puzzles and escape the Cave.
While the team has found it untenable to use generative AI tools in any part of our game development process, we have used it to facilitate user experience in the gamespace, as generations of game developers have done before us. Our team is at odds with the idea of connecting a game to a generative AI tool, and this option does have drawbacks. We are posed with the challenge: how can we create emergent narrative and player freedom of interaction with non-player characters in a gamespace—without using generative AI?
Our solution has been to create an original plugin for Unreal Engine that behaves similarly to an AI chatbot, but rather than drawing on copyrighted work or searching the internet for its answers, its knowledge is constrained to a database of sources approved and curated by the research team and our collaborators. 
This presentation will discuss the presenter’s experiences as a game narrative designer squaring with the implications of AI while hoping to achieve AI-like results for in-game interactions with NPCs. Rather than scripting a dialogue tree, as most narrative-heavy games do, the presenter discusses the impact of governing character interactions by crafting detailed character sheets with backstories, motivations and goals. Additionally, the next iteration of the project involves development of a classroom-ready educational program presenting an AI ‘specialist’ as a supplement to classroom activities facilitated by teachers, covering the benefits and limitations of this approach to learning.

Lauren Woolbright received her MA in English and PhD in Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design from Clemson University, USA. She is a Senior Lecturer of Game Design and Visual Effects & Entertainment Design at Flinders University in South Australia where she also serves as director of the Games Research Lab.
She teaches and researches game design, immersive technologies, environmental humanities and inclusive practices of media production and representation. She is interested in how game environments tell stories and evoke emotions without relying on language and how games and other media represent gender diversity, particularly through female monsters. 
Her recent research explores how generative AI functionality could be incorporated into gamespaces to create more authentic interactions with non-player characters and for engaging audiences in educational spaces such as galleries and museums.