In a VR-MMORPG, how might the game's publishers be able to maintain life-like NPCs?

Taking something like the anime Log Horizon as an example, where NPCs (non-player characters) are essentially humans, but in a game (let's wave our hands and say that the tech is available for making NPCs act and react like real humans do).

Presumably, this would not be cheap; each and every NPC would require its own supercomputer, and populating just a small farming village could present quite a struggle. Unless an incredibly large number of people are playing the game, or if the subscription is very, very expensive, such a game would likely lose its publisher a lot of money.

Is there some way I can justify this in my world? The game is actually run by the government? There's cheap life-like AI that somehow doesn't risk the Singularity? The NPCs are all actual people? <-- now that would be quite the twist xD xD

Or... is there some other option?

posted about 7 years ago

koorudokoohii‭

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