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New AI Demo Shows Why Games Writing Should Be Left To People [Update] (kotaku.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There is an absolutely ludicrous amount of NPC chatter in many games out there today. And specifically the writing of it is definitely not the problem. Any competent game writer can deploy reams of the stuff at the drop of a hat, way more consistently and effectively than ML generation.

Yet.. they don't? If it's so easy, why do we constantly hear the same chatter in major games like Cyberpunk? I don't think your definition of "ludicrous amount" applies to games people put hundreds of hours into playing.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It absolutely does, although it's fine to have different expectations for what we want, I guess. Cyberpunk's open world design in general has issues that aren't down to modern AAA studios' capabilities to generate assets, so I don't know that it'd be my gold standard, but you're getting 200+ hr games these days where pretty much every NPC is voiced, which is absurd.

Now, in terms of priorities, would I download a 300GB game for the sake of a bunch of AI-generated sound files to ensure every incidental conversation is unique at the additional cost of having the filler chatter sound worse than fully voice acted lines? Eh... probably not. But I'd love it if the devs were able to have more variety without being soul crushed by having to do repetitive work around it. And I'd certainly love to see a higher percentage of the same 100-150GB game brought up to "hero" quality instead. Your mileage may vary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

although it’s fine to have different expectations for what we want, I guess

I don't think having the expectation of "every time I go to a place, the same two NPCs are having the same argument outside" is wildly absurd. Reminds me of Black Desert, one of the major banks had a small child berating a large man non-stop, EVERY DAMN TIME you had to stand at the bank managing your items. It was intolerable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Alright, but you do realize that specific examples of NPC chatter being poorly implemented doesn't immediately lead to "AI writing and performing NPC chatter", right?

Those examples stand out because they're bad. The arrow to the knee was a tuning issue, not a lack of assets. Getting excessively noticeable repeated chatter in a frequent revisit location is a design issue.

The idea that the frankly atrocious example in the video is the solution to that, instead of the tons of examples of actually good NPC chatter that you near all the time and don't notice is a bit of a leap.