Megan Farokhmanesh
Bloom, a virtual character with a face akin to a potato and a dark beanie snug around his ears, is keen to know my game plan and performance in battles. “I depend on a map and use heavy attacks,” is my response through the mic. The text version of our verbal exchange surfaces on the lower part of my display. The NPC perceives it as boasting. He carries on lecturing about our role in the rebellion and the necessity to revolt, his AI-fueled voice sounding robotic, just shy of being annoying.
Bloom doesn’t divulge to me, at least not explicitly, that he is a “Neo NPC”— an AI entity from the French video game producer Ubisoft, developed to let gamers communicate with characters. Bloom is very much in his research and development phase, but his existence symbolizes one of the numerous approaches gaming companies are exploring to incorporate machine learning into their products.
At the recent Game Developers Conference, where I got the opportunity to interact with Bloom, the influence of AI in the industry was everywhere. Alongside Ubisoft’s demo, there were discussions on diverse topics, from AI basketball players to the “revolutionary applications” of general AI. There were also presentations by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) about deepfakes and the potential effect of AI on game developers’ careers. A survey done by the GDC before the convention found that nearly half of the developers polled are employing generative AI at their firms; four in five expressed concern about the ethical implications.
Amidst this, the notion of using AI for NPCs came to the fore. In addition to Ubisoft’s demo, Nvidia—the company behind many of the GPUs powering much of the AI revolution—brandished a suite of tools that enable “developers to build digital humans capable of AI-powered natural language interactions.” The company showed off those tools by releasing a clip of Covert Protocol, a tech demo it made with AI character company Inworld.
Ubisoft demonstrated its Neo NPCs, which also use Nvidia tech, in three ways. First, I talked to Bloom to achieve a few game-given goals: get closer to Bloom, find out about the megacorps ruling the world, learn about the resistance, and so on. Bloom is effortless to fire questions off to, and he’s generally good natured. He’s been designed to be easy to handle, Ubisoft senior data scientist Mélanie Lopez Malet tells me, though there are other NPCs they’ve created that are more standoffish, if not downright aggressive. The team decided to add goals to his interactions, she explains, because in the company’s early testing they found players can get a little … shy.
“There are people that have a bit of social anxiety,” Malet says. They don’t want to bother NPCs who seem busy, or they’re taken aback by characters that appear angry. They don’t always know what to say. “[Players] were like, ‘It’s like I’m at party where I know nobody, oh my God,’” Malet says. But she sees this as a good thing: It means the NPCs are inspiring people to use their social instincts. Players are also far more likely to open up and get personal when it’s a text conversation. “There are some things you don’t say out loud, you know?” Malet says.
Stephen Ornes
Caroline Haskins
Andy Greenberg
Aarian Marshall
Ubisoft’s Neo NPCs interact with players in real time.
In the succeeding portions of the demo, my interaction with a NPC over a drone feed takes precedence over the actual mission. My curiosity leads me to probe the NPC’s boundaries by exhibiting various behaviors ranging from rudeness to asking intimate questions and even feigning sleepiness. Interestingly, this propensity to experiment and push the limits is commonplace amongst players.
Malet acknowledges this tendency as an inherent part of gameplay and is prepared for players who might be excessively abrasive with their characters. The vision is to create an engaging interaction. It’s akin to playing with a toy.
However, there is a two-way interaction at play here. The characters reside within a predefined schema, characterised by narratives and personas designed by the developers. As AI characters inch closer to becoming mainstream in games, the developers would need to ensure they don’t go haywire, and learn from examples of AI bots that mislead their interlocutors or get duped into inappropriate discussions. As of now, Ubisoft is not prepared to deploy its AI into a video game, nor are the demos displayed to the public where real stress testing could be done.
As it stands, the work is still intriguing. The concluding part of the demo is geared more towards strategy, where I find myself pondering over a hypothetical plan from escape routes to distracting guards. The current NPC seems to know me all too well. A note near me labels me as “enthusiastic but naive,” and that I am prone to asking too many questions. A remark about my propensity to fall asleep amuses me. Malet admits that the team has merely touched the tip of the potential of their project.
Playing along, it was easy to see the promise of AI. My first thought was how well it could work for dating sims, or in a series like Mass Effect where so much of the game’s allure is bonding with teammates. The novelty of it all and the potential for role-play is enticing, but there’s still something uncanny and wooden about the experience. Bloom still has some growing to do.
