“Eliza is a visual novel about an AI counseling program, the people who develop it, and the people who use it. Follow Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey as she reconnects with people from her past, gets to know the people of Seattle who use Eliza for counseling, and decides the course of her future.” - Steam Summary
An epidemic of loneliness, the eternal struggle to find purpose and peace, and the impossibility to find real companionship. Broken humans are everywhere around us: “Everyone has an agenda” “No one will understand the pain that I have gone through”... Then, when the broken is able to find peers about their problems, some listeners use it as a way to facilitate abuse or give “unwanted” advice. Sometimes, therapy can be inaccessible, expensive, and “can’t find the right one yet.”
Our technology is advancing, but are we living happier lives as a result of it? Somewhere between these two areas, there is Eliza, a new alternative to therapy: AI counseling to help the client. In comparison to a typical therapy session, It is less expensive and it is less judgmental. But is that a real viable alternative? Eliza did an impressive job of exploring this issue from various perspectives: How effective it is at helping its people? Who benefits from the creation of this counseling program? What is the fundamental philosophy behind the design?
Spoiler-free review: Good Game. It is a relatively short game of ~6 hours. The game did a very good job of keeping things interesting in every part of the novel. It has done a fair job of talking about this issue but personally, it didn’t challenge the views I already had coming into the game and I wish it did.
It is hard for me to analyze narrative games since I am less familiar with its tropes. So I will use some bullet points of thoughts to express my views of this game. Major spoilers ahead warning:
(1) The game revolves around 1 main character named Evelyn, 4 main-side characters that have diverse views, and ~6 patients. The four side characters have various stances towards the subject of AI counseling, and it is up to the player to acknowledge these perspectives and ultimately, pursue the career path led by one of them.
(2) Oftentimes, the role of a game is to be “neutral” and let the player decide for themselves. I feel that in Eliza, despite creating narratives both for and against AI counseling, I find that the narrative is mostly against the AI counseling program. Evelyn is often doubting the effectiveness of the program in her monolog, Rainer is an egotistical and delusional asshole who just cares about results, Evelyn is suffering from trauma at her former workplace in the same company, then there is the insane first-hand privacy breach…
(3) Looking at things from every perspective, it is hard to want to choose an option in the end aside from None or Nora End. It is pretty much impossible to work with the CEOs and the work itself is purposeless for Rae's route, it is cool that they are at least choosable options.
(4) I should have mentioned that this novel is mostly a Kinetic novel but with choices that change the tones of a conversation. Such as that the player can either express excitement or be bland in a response to a question, although the characters in-game will ultimately nudge the player to the same “direction” the game wants the player to go. However, it is not a pure kinetic novel since in the end, the player can choose 1 out of 5 endings.
(5) The approach of how counseling works in Eliza is quite interesting: The patient talks to a human counselor who speaks whenever the AI does. This approach can give people the humane touch to therapy while having the “intelligence” of AI. In a sense, it highly resembles the service industry “scripts”, automation of what was once considered a “brainful” work. It makes me feel: Are we humans really this pathetic?
(6) In every session, there is an analysis of Keywords + Data on the right. As a player, I typically ignore them, but I have to agree with Evelyn that this data seems quite “unnecessary” and weird. In every session, the questions asked to the patients are all very simple ones that simply reflect the patients themselves. The data it collects has very little impact on the session itself.
(7) I don’t think Eliza challenged my ways of thinking as much as it reinforced it. While Eliza does a good job of gradually revealing new information and developments to keep the story interesting, it never really completely surprised me with anything that changed my view.
(8) The therapy sessions really remind me of AI dungeon and Pacific Ririmu. AI dungeon and other chatbots are known for their outrageous and inflexible responses, which Eliza can sometimes be completely thrown off by people with alternative motives of counseling such as Miss Holiday or simply fail to understand the question/situation at hand.
(9) The Eliza counseling session has a simple four-step structure of Introduction, Challenge, Discovery, and Recommendation. This structure is designed to be easy to evaluate and cost-effective. What I am curious about now is how this structure compares to real-life therapy sessions. To me, this is as funny as Pacific Ririmu where amidst the wackiness of the conversation, the host has to say “goodbye” once the 5-minute mark hits. It is as unnatural as the “recommendation” phase in the end. The conversation between the client and “Eliza” is often cut short, leaving me to burst into laughter. I wonder if this sense of “incompleteness” is a simple narrative choice/restriction where the game doesn’t want to bore the player with too many details or is it an actual representation of what our real-world future of AI-based counseling sessions looks like.
(10) One of the problems that are present in this AI-based counseling program is that it is designed to keep the patients coming back for more, instead of actually solving their problems. The developers themselves like Eldren are full of heart and curiosity, but this “humane altruism” is left to dust as cutthroat work conditions and the desire to fight for a better livelihood keeps the system continues. “What can we do?” Nothing, but watch. This sad truth is illustrated well in Eliza as well, as the AI suggestions are shown to fall short and the clients keep on coming back where the root of their problems are not solved.
(11) “Environmental narrative” After every long talk, the player is free to click on a few objects or look at their phone for updates of news/mail before moving on to the next part of the story. I think this design does a good job of “relaxing” the player’s brain. It is like writing a mini-reflection after a long day of work. The article does a fine job of portraying the livelihood of how Eliza is affecting the livelihood of everyone.
(12) Player immersion. A trick that games often use is “the main character suffered from amnesia and they are now looking for what happened in the past.” This trick allows players to easily fill the role of the main character since they also come into the with a blank state. While Evelyn has not necessarily forgotten all her memories, she is pretty much-starting everything anew as if her past didn’t exist. Nevertheless, it did feel weird when it was later revealed that she turned out to be the lead engineer/designer of “Eliza” because Evelyn just seemed like an ordinary woman until then, which is cool I suppose since Raes talked to Evelyn the same way I thought about Evelyn.
(13) Gamification at work. Not something that is deeply talked about in the game, but an aspect that Evelyn directly interacted with as she gained experience points and leveled up after every successful session. Holiday still cannot make debt, Lee continues her cycle of failing art, but hey, you are now level 6! Congratulations!?
(14) Re: The incompleteness of Eliza sessions. The transparency mode + new information from re-visiting clients all do a fine job of illustrating the limitation of this program. It is designed to be short, designed to make people habitually come back for more, it is designed to serve some people at the top instead of purely with the intention to help people live better lives. Result? Often Evelyn fails to understand the real problems or circumstances of the client, yet somehow AI decided that they know enough to make a rational recommendation of drugs/relaxation techniques.
(15) The CEOs in this game almost feel like comic book villains. Well, they are very complex characters with their unique motives and challenges. But they are also very “stereotypical”, it matches my perception of them: Incredible ambitions, somewhat crazy, egoistical and are very good at creating problematic scenarios for their employees with crunch and harassment. They make it very hard for players to want to “support” at the end of the game.
(16) At the beginning of the sessions. The player only ever had one choice: Follow the prompts from Eliza. At the very end, the player has to choose between two: Either speak whatever is in the script or go against it. A very exciting choice. I choose to go against it since I am sick of Eliza by the end of the game, but it does feel that my own everyday conversation style resembles Eliza’s approach more than Evelyn’s approach. I somewhat enjoy talking like a mirror that allows me to unveil more parts of people I talk to, although I try to add some weird stuff in it just so that I don’t feel I am too boring.