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Square Enix’s president says it will be ‘aggressive in applying’ AI (www.videogameschronicle.com)

submitted 6 months ago by helloharu@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] echo64@lemmy.world 129 points 6 months ago

It's worth remembering that this guy says anything that's in the current trend because just saying those things helps share prices. Then nothing comes of it.

FF16 wasn't stuffed full of nfts or crypto or even microtransactions even though the president makes comments about this stuff.

These words aren't for you, it's for the market.

[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 36 points 6 months ago

So will every single tech Director-VP-CxO; then in 5 years everyone will say "AI" in the same tone of voice they say "Blockchain"

[-] echo64@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago

If AI can't find its market (which for all the hype it hasn't thus far), then yes. Alternatively AI finds its market and it just becomes a norm that's expected so no one will mention it at all

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[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

I doubt it. AI is actually useful for games. I’d love a Skyrim where there were infinite unique npcs who don’t repeat dialog on a loop.

[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 11 points 6 months ago

In that specific context - of generating idle chit chat, sure. But is it ever going to be capable of generating the crucifixion quest from CP77, or Guild quests from Skyrim or the Festers Blue Star Bottlecaps from FONV?

or is it going to be more A New Settlement Needs Your Help from FO4, or Dunk the Shape / Kill X Enemy Ys from Destiny 2? which, yknow, we already have.

Generating idle text does not a great game make. Especially when you could just write it better.

And that's not to mention the impact on the VO actor - who is unlikely to want to sell the IP to their voice

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[-] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

I'm actually in the process of trying to get this setup to try myself. Wish me luck!

[-] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 2 points 6 months ago

There are already mods that add voices to mod-scripted lines for Skyrim and Fallout 4. As well as a joke mod where the author took all of the recorded voice lines for Deep Rock Galactic(DRG), ran them through AI translators 40 times, then had an AI record the end result using the intonation and inflection of the characters in DRG.

However, the quotes from MS in the article provide an insight into their plans.

Replace all localization teams.
Replace all QA teams with AI that just run the level infinitely.

Interestingly, both of those show a fundamental lack of understanding of what a LLM can do. Yes it can do basic translation, but it fails on context in translations. E.g:
The French translation "you are a fool" can be "tu es un imbecile" but can also be "vous etes un imbecile" depending on the relationship context of the people talking.

And asking AI to replace QA entirely.. oof, I guess I know to avoid MS games at launch from now on. Will be a lot of bugs.

[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

Guy's gotta stay in $2000 dress shirts somehow.

[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

They did try that Symbiogenesis NFT bulshit. Now I'm not even sure if anything came out of it. Apparently it was supposed to be released this December but I didn't hear a single thing about it.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 months ago

Did they try it? There was 1 trailer and the backlash from the internet was so severe the project got completely buried.

[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Apparently it was released December 21th, but I cannot find a single thing whatsoever about how it played out. Which by itself doesn't make it seem very successful.

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[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 55 points 6 months ago

Welp, it's officially a hype bubble like cryptocurrency/NFTs.

[-] Aurix@lemmy.world 31 points 6 months ago

Which is also what the last CEO of Square Enix rode on. This is either investor appeasement or indeed improvement of quality with these tools or, and far more likely both buzzwords and producing crap to cut costs.

[-] the_q@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago

Unfortunately AI's impact is real. This isn't a hype thing; this is a people losing their jobs thing

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I mean, it is and it isn't. On one hand, yes people will probably lose their jobs with these tools supposed to filled the gaps.

But that doesn't mean the AI tools are actually anywhere near as competent as a human, and it will result in watered-down, anodyne, and to be more blunt, just boring art and writing.

Corporate will use the tools because they're "good enough," but we all know they're really not good enough. They're just one more way to cut costs at the expense of user experience and employee workload (the employees that are left being expected to do more work).

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 12 points 6 months ago

Bingo. AI is shockingly good at building simple things, helping with direct questions about items. It cannot replace humans in its current state.

At this point it's CEO bluster just like the blockchain, where the suits are talking about technology like they personally handcrafted it while the actual engineers are sitting in the back of the room thinking "uh, there's no way it can do that".

I think we're going to see a couple hilarious cycles of some shit thinks they can replace humans with AI, fail spectacularly, and then quietly go back.

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I honestly don't think they'll even quietly go back. It's clear "customer service" is becoming something that isn't considered a return on value, so they're shutting them down all over. Customer service will be the number one thing replaced with AI and they won't go back on that.

Customer service for the last 20-30 years has absolutely been nothing but a shield for corporations to hide behind while screwing their customers. Low paid phone jockeys have to deal with people furious at being fucked over by conglomerates like Comcast. There is no way to contact anyone further up the chain, and that is deeply purposeful.

They record all the phone calls, but they refuse to learn anything that benefits the customer from them. All they do is deploy psychological tricks to try to get the customer to be happy while not actually rectifying the problem. It's always a purposeful half-measure that has been deeply researched to calm people down and accept the big unlubed dildo in their ass like they should.

So yeah, the "customer service voice" will be long gone to be replaced with increasing shitty "customer service AI" with no human to talk to, and if you get lost in the shuffle and put in a digital black hole, well, "go fuck yourself" is clearly what they'll be telling you. They already pretty much do this (especially Google) but it will become increasingly pronounced and difficult.

Clawing back anything that corporations have stolen from you will increasingly become an exercise in total futility as you're stuck in an endless AI loop that refuses to give you options that actually address your issue.

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[-] loobkoob@kbin.social 6 points 6 months ago

It absolutely is. Although, putting aside the obvious ethical debates, I will say that least AI has some practical uses. Crypto-currency and NFTs felt a lot like a solution looking for a problem, and while that can be true of some implementations of AI, there are a lot of valid uses for it.

But yeah, companies rushing to use AI like this, and making statements like this, just screams that they're trying to persuade investors they're "ahead of the curve", and is absolutely indicative of a hype bubble. If it wasn't a hype bubble, they'd either be quietly exploring it externally and not putting out statements like this, or they're be putting out statements excitedly talking specifics about their novel and clever implementations of AI.

[-] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 38 points 6 months ago

I know the Square from my childhood is long dead, but it would be nice if they could stop desecrating it's corpse.

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[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago

I wish they'd aggressively apply it to replacing middle-top management. The jobs that don't add anything except a lot of money being siphoned off, anyways.

[-] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

I welcome our robot middle-lords.

[-] cyberpunk007@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago

AI is such an annoying buzzword at this point. "oh have you heard of AI? We need AI!" Say every industry, and probably even the dairy industry.

[-] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 8 points 6 months ago

We have had costumers REQUIRING that we have AI in our projects in order to sign... With no additional explanation. Sure, here you have a irrelevant kmeans clustering of your SKUs, 100K please.

In all fairness, those customers that knew what they were taking about were great. We did really cool stuff, they just need to understand what they want to answer and be able to provide the data.

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[-] Phegan@lemmy.world 21 points 6 months ago

Just like companies aggressively used NFTs and we know how well that worked out.

[-] regbin_@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago

This smells like investor-baiting. Studios don't really need to announce that they're going "aggressive" in using a certain tool.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 6 months ago

Cool. I'll continue to aggressively avoid Square Enix games like I have since 2017.

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[-] Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works 14 points 6 months ago

This is actually what I look forward to most in gaming in the next decade or two. The implementation of AI that can be assigned goals and motivations instead of scripted to every detail. Characters in games with whom we as players can have believable conversations that the devs didn't have to think of beforehand. If they can integrate LLM type AI into games successfully, it'll be a total game changer in terms of being able to accommodate player choice and freedom.

[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

This is something I used to be excited for but I only have been losing interest the more I hear about AI. What are the chances this will lead to moving character arcs or profound messages? The way LLMs are today, the best we can hope for is Radiant Quests Plus. Not sure a game driven by AIs rambling semi-coherently forever will be more entertaining than something written by humans with a clear vision.

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[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I wonder if they'll spend as much time defining what an LLM shouldn't be talking about/doing as they would defining what a non-LLM should be talking about/doing.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Characters in games with whom we as players can have believable conversations that the devs didn’t have to think of beforehand.

Correction: characters in games will have soulless cookie cutter paint by numbers responses that sound hollow and lifeless. AI doesn't generate, it only remixes.

Also, have you interacted with a LLM? They're full of restrictions and they're not very good at finding recent data. How would that implement in a video game? Devs would have to train the LLM to basically annihilate their own job as writers. Which still wouldn't really save the dev company/publisher any money or time.

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[-] stephfinitely@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago

Honestly for open world RPGs I can see AI used for making the world feel more alive and creating side quests on the fly. But it really needs to be done right.

[-] Phegan@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago

That's still not really AI, it's just procedural generation wrapped in a new buzz word.

[-] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 6 months ago

Side quests on the fly? That already exists. Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 had radiant AI quests. I would much rather have a game that was hand made by humans where the quests that exist are the quests that were designed. Or, in the case of radiant AI, heavily guardrailed randomness.

[-] Zahille7@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

The only radiant quests I can think of in Oblivion were after you had finished the Dark Brotherhood or Arena quest lines. I don't remember any other random quests from that one.

[-] harmsy@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

inb4 the AI starts pulling its hair out because a middle school girl with no gaming experience dummies her way into being the most powerful player in the game.

[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Bofuri?

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[-] dumpsterlid@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Hmm do y’all still believe the video game industry needed to make cuts and fire workers to the degree they did this year because of overshooting growth with covid? Yes I am sure it is part of it but why is nobody talking about the AI elephant in the room. The video game industry is in the midst of trying to strong arm workers into accepting a fundamental reduction in their quality of life because they can use the threat of replacing workers with AI. It doesn’t matter if it actually works to replace workers with AI, it only matters that it appears fairly plausible for it to pay off for massive companies trying to extract every bit of profit from video games they can.

[-] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Didnt he also say square was going to aggressively get into NFTs until the overwhelming negative response cockslapped the fuck out of him?

I swear, Its getting to the point where I miss SquareSoft and Enix as individual companies, and the SNES as an era for RPGs.

[-] Tronn4@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago

I rwas this as them saying they'll be cutting jobs left and right using an AI based solution to keep more profits for the top instead of making game characters smarter

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[-] ekZepp@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

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