Via IF site Grand Text Auto, there's an excellent report on a 'Drama Princess' symposium on story and games held in Brussels recently, as part of a new project by the folks behind the very odd The Endless Forest screensaver/game environment.

It's explained: "On the first day, guests were invited to play certain commercial videogames. Those games were Ico, Black & White, The Sims 2 and Animal Crossing. Facade, Catz and Soul Calibur II were available as well. And on the second day we discussed the autonomous characters in these games in a round-table format that was open to the public."

Some fascinating stuff came up, including: "During the discussion we came to a perhaps odd consensus that sophistication of “AI” seems to be reversely related to the believability of the characters. The primitive Animal Crossing creatures were far easier to accept than the complex Sims. Some people even had trouble calling The Sims autonomous because they do not seem to try to accomplish their goals but needed the player’s help with that. Also, their personalities were not considered very diverse as they all responded in the same way to the same stimuli." There's much, much more if you click through.