Hello!
Hi, I am NPCDev. I think of myself as an NPC who helps people make games! Mostly, I work on game AI and procedural content generation.
(Yes, I am an actual person, not a computer program, and no, I do not support the use of exploitative "AI" technologies that use data without consent. I work with controllable algorithms that are very different from what people are currently calling "generative AI.")
Any news or rumors to share?
February 5th, 2026
My dissertation is now fully published, including an open-access archive in the Northeastern library! Inside, you'll find the most comprehensive details of my years of participatory and co-design research on creativity support tools for game designers, through the case study of EvolvingBehavior, an NPC behavior design tool. I lay out 13 categories of requirements for these tools, which I then further develop through collaborative research into 6 major themes that explore how designers interact with creativity support tools, what they need from them, and more - including why "Large Language Models" and other big-data ML tools are not appropriate for game design, and what we can collectively create for a better future for game design tools instead. Feel free to read the pieces of the work that you find interesting, and to contact me with any thoughts or questions!
November 3rd, 2025
Apologies for the long silence while I ran participatory studies and wrote my dissertation, but I have finally finished a draft and scheduled my defense: November 12th at 11am Eastern! Want to know what I've learned from years of collaboration with independent game designers on a tool for implementing NPC behavior? E-mail me (see the Contact page) for a virtual link to watch my presentation!
August 10th, 2022
Announcing a major new update to EvolvingBehavior, v0.2.0! Evolve multiple populations of game NPCs at once, faster, with both pre-made and generated behavior nodes! Download the new EvolvingBehavior v.0.2.0 from Itch. Code, manual, and more info at the EvolvingBehavior site.
February 11th, 2022
My colleagues and I are seeking a game designer for a 6-month, ~5 hr./week contract, to participate in co-design of an experimental tool for creating game AI, while using it to create NPCs for their own game. Learn more and apply here. UPDATE 8/10/22: Applications are now closed, but please do get in touch if you are interested in using the tool in other contexts!
August 2nd, 2021
I am presenting a new paper at FDG 2021 this Wednesday, Aug. 4th! My co-authors and I talked with game designers to find out their needs and imaginings for co-creative, AI-enabled tools to make NPCs for their games.
December 3rd, 2020
Today is the EvolvingBehavior plugin's first public beta release! Check out the new plugin, website, manual, trailer, public code repo, and example project. This release represents years of on-and-off development, with a lot of work from excellent collaborators. Let me know if you try using the plugin in a project!
April 27th, 2020
We just published a paper in CHI 2020! It presents Progression Maps, a formal model for analyzing Interactive Narrative, as a follow-up to our previous work. You can read it here (free access for a year).
March 16th, 2020
I released Dreams of Collapse, a small, experimental roguelike! It uses my GroundCollapse constraint-based PCG tool to generate an ever-changing world that you can use powers to re-shape during gameplay. Read more here.
November 10th, 2019
For Procjam, I made a level generation tool and demo that uses constraint solving (Answer Set Programming), inspired by Wave Function Collapse. Learn more here. It's open-source, so grab the code on GitLab!
October 7th, 2019
At AIIDE 2019, there will be presentations for two workshop papers that I'm involved with! Shruti Mahajan will present a follow-up project to my work on creativity support tools for Interactive Narrative at EXAG 2019 - read it here. And I will be presenting a paper at the AI for Strategy Games Workshop, about the Player Strategy Imitation project. You can read that one here!
July 27th, 2019
I will be presenting a paper that evaluates and expands on our work on automated representations of Interactive Narrative at the Workshop on User Experience of AI in Games at FDG 2019! You can get the paper here.
January 23rd, 2019
I will be speaking at the first FIG Learns about Evolving Behavior Trees!
December 19th, 2018
In issue #3 of SEEDS, the Procjam zine about generativity, I wrote an article about our work on Evolving Behavior Trees. Check it out!
November 21st, 2018
I presented my work on Automated Analysis of Interactive Narrative at AIIDE 2018! You can find more details, and a working version of the automated analysis tool (which was accepted to the "Artifact Evaluation" track), including code, here.
September 2nd, 2018
"Exploratory Automated Analysis of Structural Features of Interactive Narrative," a paper I wrote in collaboration with several excellent co-authors about our Narrative Creativity project, was accepted to AIIDE 2018!
August 10th, 2018
Currently, I am involved in some research projects; you can find some basic details about them in the projects section. I am excited to share more as they progress!
What is an NPC, and why "NPCDev?"
When designers create a non-player character (or NPC), they always keep the player in mind. The NPC is there to enrich the player's experience.
An NPC may challenge the player, it may amuse the player, it may reveal information to them, it may depress them, it may ask them to question their beliefs, or it may add to their experience in any number of other ways. What it must not do is disrespect their humanity or arbitrarily undermine their agency. (Actually, sometimes limiting player agency may be OK, with good reason. Every rule has exceptions...)
A good NPC meets the player where they are and guides them to a new experience. A good NPC has a strong character, an ethical framework, and goals, but recognizes when it's time to give others the spotlight. As an NPC, my goal is to build games that value their players, to build tools that empower their designers. To put people first, not technology. To especially put people of historically oppressed identities first, because the marginalized should get to see themselves, and people like them, as protagonists most of all.
What is this place?
I am an NPC, and this is my domain. Here, I share my work and my journey as I attempt to become a better NPC and learn to make game worlds more responsive to both players' and designers' needs and goals.
In the Projects section, you will find information about my past and current work, mostly on games and tools for building games.
In the Blog section, you will find informal writing. My blog may contain mistakes, ill-considered thoughts, and the like. I hope you will point this out and help me to learn and improve.
If you want, you can read my detailed CV.
Finally, if you want to talk to me, you can head to the Contact page, or find me at @npcdev@mastodon.gamedev.place or @npcdev@peoplemaking.games.
Tell me more about yourself.
I guess I could, if you insist.