Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “AI Will Make Games Worse… At First”.
Seg aftera the US actors Union has announced what they called a groundbreaking agreement with AI voiceover company replica Studios for actors to license digital versions of their voices for interactive media projects for at least the next year. According to the union, the agreement will ensure Fair negotiation and the ability for performers to retain control over what additional Works. Their voices are used in several prominent video game voice actors expressed dis, disapproval and questioned why they hadn’t been consulted in an FAQ sag after claimed that the deal was approved by a union Committee of actors who frequently work in the gaming industry and because the deal Was with a single company, it didn’t require a full member vote, so the union says that it’s important to be involved in the early stages of the technology development, as this will allow them to push for fair compensation. So, in a nutshell, voice actors are upset with this deal because they wanted more. They didn’t want, you know, Fair compensation for their voice, likeness to just be aied.
They wanted to do their jobs, they wanted to voice act um because their previous body of work is not necessarily enough to just extrapolate what their future you know, um characterization of or what their future performance could be, and that’s fair enough yeah. As for the position of the Union, they’re basically like this is coming deal with, it essentially is, is how I read this, and I I got I got to tell you. I um one of the things that Nvidia wanted us to include in our booth coverage. For them, um that I basically was like no uh was a demo that you’ve probably read about or or or even seen, um that that other places have covered um, where you would, you walked into a virtual bar.
This was the the chick at the bar demo. I think I saw some of this so there’s two NPCs having a conversation Over the Bar as you walk in I’m not sure if that is, is large language, modeled and and with AI generated voices or not. But if you walk up, you can interact with the barkeep in any way you want essentially using um. I forget if it was chat, GPT based, but it was some kind of large language model and have natural.
I use this in extreme. Finger quotes uh natural conversations. Um, there’s there’s a lot of issues I have with this.
So first of all I told in video like look. I’Ve had enough controversy last year. I don’t need 2024 to be the year of lonus, promoting voice actors losing their jobs. I just am not going to talk about this for that alone, but also here are my concerns: um a it’s not nearly as good as other Media made it out to be, like you know the AI voices in the finals yeah, I wouldn’t even say they were – That good, because in the finals, you’re not expecting it to be natural right, it’s an announcer, it’s an announcer which is kind of a style, pres yeah, whereas you know, if you were to talk to this bartender about uh and and they’re, expressing concern over your over Your dead dog and you’re on your way to, like you, know John Wick, someone or something right like there’s, there could be the video game. Yeah sounds very plausible. Who knows there? There could be any tone to this conversation and it was. It was not that good um, so that’s that’s a concern because I get it like. I can see where we’re going with this, and I do think that we’ll probably get there at some point where the idea is that you know all the all all the you know: people who are getting laid off in the games industry right now can start Indie Studios and create gigantic worlds, populated with vibrant characters using AI. You know like I, I I I get the kind of the pot of gold that’s supposed to be at the end of this rain blow right um, where the games industry is, is struggling so hard right.
Now, but it’s not even like it’s not that and I I I do feel that other coverage either. You know they kind of got lucky on the prompts or they just I don’t like they don’t talk to people, something I don’t know. I felt like some of the coverage of it.
Just was not representative of the state of the tech right now and then the other thing for for me is that I just um I felt like it was a little I felt like it was kind of toned. Deaf coming back to the state of the games industry right now like as I was sitting here next to Luke, I I was I I found another uh round of layoffs in the tech industry. It wasn’t game specific, but there’s been at least a couple rounds of games. Industry layoffs this year or or this week, uh Unity was that this week or last week, uh CRA, I’m not sure I know like. Basically all of this has been 2024.
I think I think Unity might have been last week. Ac3 production says it was this week: uh yeah Unity did 25 % this week, uh there was at least one other one. I think that was also games industry this week, and you know, for my part, I’m just sitting here going. It would feel kind of toned deaf to do show coverage right, which is generally more positive in tone for us like we’re we’re not evaluating it.
I don’t think there’s any reasonable expectation of like a like an objective, rigorous evaluation, we’re showing forward-looking technology. Demos – and you know it’s supposed to be exciting – I’m not excited right now. Oh twitch twitch was another big one which isn’t oh Discord right.
Discord Discord was the one I saw while I was sitting here, there’s been so many um, and so it just felt icky um to be to be, like you know, hyp Manning uh, hey, look how no one’s going to need. Oh and it also had uh like real-time synchronization of the animations, so you know hey who’s, going to need. You know animate, animators or yeah, uh or voice.
Let’S go and you know what on paper it sounds good, like any small team of four people could build a giant open world game or whatever, but I actually have what might be a controversial take. Oh boy, I don’t think we need more games right now. Oh yeah, I actually do agree with that um and, if anything, I think the the just astronomical volume of games and and The Limited attention that people can possibly have for them and and the potential for these kinds of tools to make them saier yeah than they Already are, oh, yeah could be a bad thing for gamers. Do you want to talk to average white dude with beard AI model in this game, or do you want to talk to average white dude with beard AI model in this other game? It’S like. I think it’s going to be fatiguing, yeah yeah and like, if you’re going to spend the time to really tune. One of these models, like Lucian lechance, uh an incredibly well-written character from Oblivion, um trying to get chat GPT to act like him perfectly when you can’t just tell it to act like him, because he doesn’t exist yet you’re trying to craft this character.
Um, I think, is going to take so long that you might as well just have a good writer um and a good voice actor and just get it taken care of that way. Avon fox says: lonus hates games, something something: hot dogs, hot dogs. I was like.
Oh where’s, this going that’s funny, yeah pretty much um. I don’t know man like there’s, but then, on the other hand, okay, look, there’s, okay, one of one of the games that I love. Um is called freelancer and that’s a game that toward the end just runs out of money.
Obviously they run out of the ability to to continue to kind of expand this world and and and create more missions and contact and content, and I um, and so you know I look at tools like this and I go oh man that that would be they Would have been able to do it, you know I so freaking I don’t know, I don’t know yeah. I think it’s good for some things and it’s bad for others. It’S very divisive um, just like this divisive segue to our sponsor for the show hey the show is brought you to .