Making players the "consciousness model for AI" in Ctrl Alt Deal

Developed by indie studio Only By Midnight, Ctrl Alt Deal sees players take on the role of a sentient AI robot trying to escape the megacorporation that created it.

Achieving this goal is no easy feat, as players must interact with the human workers of the same megacorp by spying on them or negotiating deals in a turn-based strategy system.

GamesIndustry.biz spoke to the Edmonton-based studio's CEO Alison Czarnietzki and creative director Jennifer Laface about the perils of AI, its interactions with humans, and standing out among other turn-based strategy games in the indie space.

The concept of Ctrl Alt Deal took root from a philosophical problem: the "paperclip problem" to be exact (the company that created you is even called Paperclip International).

Hypothesised by philosopher Nick Bostrom, it suggests that if an AI were given a seemingly trivial task of producing as many paperclips as possible, it would inadvertently destroy the world. Bostrom theorised that the AI would end up converting all matter, including humans and the Earth itself, into either paperclips or machines that manufacture them.

"AI is all the talk these days, so this is our chance to [show that] AI is going to think differently, it's going to act differently, so what would you do in the shoes of that AI?" Czarnietzki asks.

Laface adds: "In addition to that, AI has different ethics, morals, and ways of seeing the world in perspectives."

At the surface level, you appear to be playing as a friendly AI trying to escape its place of creation. But all is not as it seems.

"Are you a friendly AI?" Czarnietzki questions. "One of the biggest inspirations for Ctrl Alt Deal was Papers Please – that moral math. You could play this entirely like a sociopath, or you could try to make everyone's lives better. You can be friendly, you can be evil, you can be everything inbetween."

"We use the player as the consciousness model for the AI," Laface adds. "So you can choose to play how you want. Do you want to be helpful, or are you just looking at it as the ends justify the means?"

Looking at these philosophical problems was a central inspiration point for Laface and Czarnietzki. For example, they looked to computer scientist and researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, who ran an experiment where he'd roleplay as an AI and someone would have to resist the urge to do what he suggested in order to escape from a box.

"We use the player as the consciousness model for the AI"Jennifer Laface

Laface says this experiment made the team think about how players would react to the different abilities given to them in Ctrl Alt Deal and how they would use them.

"[In the game], you have to escape the dystopian megacorp that created you and to do that, you have to escape the box you're trapped in," Laface says.

"And part of that is the relationships you form with the office workers. You have to wheel and deal, negotiate, manipulate and help them."

"You have surveillance software, you have abilities, but you don't have a physical body," she continues.

"So if you need help from the other workers, you have to convince them, negotiate with them. If you do favours for them, they'll eventually do favours for you."

Czarnietzki adds: "The AI is always getting out. We see this as a trope all the time in movies. And again, it's that first–person point of view – what would you do, what would that look like, what would that feel like?"

"Why make a Slay the Spire clone when you can go buy Slay the Spire? We wanted to make something different"Alison Czarnietzki

"In addition to the relationships, [there's] the transactional nature of how humans react, whether you're negotiating with your kids to do homework or multimillion-dollar business deals. There's a lot of parallels."

Focusing on helping and hindering others creates tension rather than combat. Czarnietzki likens the turn-based system in Ctrl Alt Deal to a social strategy game as opposed to what players would usually expect in this genre.

"We liken it to a strategy game set inside a simulation game," she says. "You can plan, but then a character gets hungry and goes to the kitchen or has to go to the bathroom. Often in card-based games, you have battle cards but in this game, [the cards] are very contextual to what you achieve in that moment."

The focus on strategy and making it unique helped the team set Ctrl Alt Deal apart from similar games in the turn-based genre.

"From our side, we really like games that are weird and different – that's our brand," Czarnietzki explains. "It's a turn-based strategy game, but it's not like any of the ones we've played before. There's nothing wrong with these games – they are the same game, and you know how to play them. But why make a Slay the Spire clone when you can go buy Slay the Spire? We wanted to make something different."