There are uses of AI that are proving to be more than black and white. While voice actors, have protested their performances being fed into AI against their will, we are now seeing an example of this being done, with permission, in a very unique case.
I was just thinking earlier today, games could probably use AI to seamlessly work the player’s name into dialog. They would still hire voice actors, but insert whatever name the player chooses into the lines where it is mentioned. I feel like this isn’t too far away.
Star field does this and it caught me complete off guard became I had used my real name.
Fallout 4 did as well, but it worked with a list of names that Codsworth could say. I’m assuming Starfield does something similar? Or is it a ton of NPCs that use the name?
Idk I didn’t pick a name, I just entered my name for my character. Then I was playing and Vasco just said my name. I literally stopped in my tracks and was like “what did you just say?”
I thought they actually just recorded a ton of names for Fallout 4? I seem to recall hearing that they did something like 900+ different name recordings.
I like the idea a lot. I can think of two problems that need to be solved for this:
- How do you pronounce the player’s name correctly?
- How do you prohibit abuse?
- Have them type it a second time phonetically, and let them test it
- If single-player? Don’t. If multiplayer? Yeah… that’d be a nightmare lmao
Multiplayer doesn’t make a difference, at least not noticeably, as all those shenanigans can already be done by text. You’ll get reported and named “player345133” whether you misspell e.g. a forbidden slur or use a misspelling to get the slur’s pronunciation.
I recently had this in a game. Just couldn’t say which one sadly… I was really suprised it said my (character’s) name. Damn…which game was it?
Starfield does this to some degree: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/starfield-names-list
It does it if you have an anglo-sounding name, which is the problem with brute forcing this.
Generative AI would be a fun solution, but it currently seems like it’d trigger a lot of controversy, sadly.
I look forward to the expansion from this, even. Real dialogue between the players and the game. Writers and designers set parameters for each character, backstory, motives, personality, current goals, etc. And then instead of a simple 4-5 choices of pre-canned dialog, with pre-canned responses, the player can type (or even say) whatever they want, and the game can return a customized response appropriate for the character.
