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On Integrating Voice Commands Into Videogames 78

Posted by simoniker from the stop-gripping-yr-joystick dept.
Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing ways future videogames can use the player's voice more creatively. The writer notes of Rainbow Six 3 on Xbox: "It's the headset that really roped me into this one. While it's often easier to key in your commands from the controller, that's just a lot less fun", and goes on to suggest: "I'd like to be able to have my own macros of my own entry patterns. Heck, it might be cool if they laughed at a joke I cracked. I want a game where I can get in a shouting match with a character in the game - real Gene Hackman or Al Pacino business is what I'm talking about here." How would you like to see voice control in videogames evolve, going forward?
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On Integrating Voice Commands Into Videogames More

On Integrating Voice Commands Into Videogames

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  • Yelling at yourself? (Score:5, Funny)

    by JohnLi ( 85427 ) * on Monday February 02, 2004 @04:35PM (#8162291) Homepage
    What do you do when your girlfriend comes home and finds you yelling at yourself in front of the tv??

  • LifeLine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Akai ( 11434 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @04:36PM (#8162308) Homepage Journal
    Don't forget Konami's Lifeline which is coming in march in the US. It's a game where you "control" another person by having conversations with them.

    Looks really interesting.

    • Re:LifeLine (Score:4, Informative)

      by ectizen ( 128686 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:03PM (#8162702)
      some LifeLine info [gaming-age.com]
      • I read about this in a gaming mag. Seems really iffy at best. According to the magazine, EVERYTHING is voice controlled. You don't just interact with people via the headset, you move your character, shoot things, etc. I can see this being really, really bad. In a tense situation, do you really want to be yelling "Shoot straight ahead. No, AHEAD. AHEAD!"

        • Re:LifeLine (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          In a tense situation, do you really want to be yelling "Shoot straight ahead. No, AHEAD. AHEAD!"

          You have shot yourself in the head. Insert 2 credits to continue.

    • Yeah, it was called "Operator's Side" in Japan. The commercials for it looked really interesting. If I didn't have to give all the commands in Japanese, I would have definitely picked it up.

      Seems like more of a novelty, but it might have some interesting scenarios built in.

      You: "Shoot him!"

      Her: "Who?"

      You: "F**K!"

      Her: "Ok."

      (Porn music begins.)
    • Need For Speed: Backseat Driver [bbspot.com]

      from the website
      "Unlike ordinary driving games where the player controls the car with a game pad or steering wheel, BSD-players use voice command to control the car. With Logitech, EA has developed a new controller for the game: a headrest with force-feedback and a built-in microphone."

      I love bbspot.

  • Commanding other characters (Score:4, Interesting)

    by droid_rage ( 535157 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @04:37PM (#8162325) Journal
    I played a demo of this game for the Xbox the other day, but damned if I can remember what it was called. The premise is that you're a commander of a rebel squad in alternate future US.
    You command your team alternately to guard, follow, attack, etc. I found it difficult to switch to the correct screen to call my group while in the middle of a firefight. It would have been a lot easier if I could've Just issued voice commands.
  • often i really need to talk to my fellow players not tell the computer what commands i want to do. I could have saved myself from soooo many deaths if i had voice communication between players in MMORPGs. i never have the need to command a game with voice. in fact most of the time i talk on the phone while playing games.

  • Being too complicated? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @04:46PM (#8162448)
    Myself, if a game is complicated enough control wise to require this sort of voice-control, at least for basic commands, then the game might very well be TOO complicated.

    In this case, they should start thinking hard at putting a bit more focus into their game.

    However, voice is very cool for games, mainly for multiplayer games communicating with your teammates. The Half-Life engine was built with this in mind. It works for the more team based games. I've been playing a lot of Day of Defeat/Natural Selection, and people in those games rely on the voice communication. It works a lot faster than typing things in.

    Then again, in Subspace/Continnuum, Chat Macros are easy enough that voice never took off. Sooo..whatever.

    • Re:Being too complicated? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      On the other hand, a game with a voice command interface could simplify complex things. The best example I can come up with is a game where you're in command of a squad of soldiers. Try to come up with a better way to do the following commands without voice control:

      "Private, take point."
      "Hold your fire!"
      "Take cover!"
      "Be quiet."
      "Retreat!"
      "Fall back to checkpoint Bravo."
      "Call for an airstrike."
      "Delta team, go to point Foxtrot via waypoint Echo."
      "Call for reinforcements!"

      All of this could be made

    • Re:Being too complicated? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The Half-Life engine was built with this in mind.

      The voice comms in Half-Life are a fairly recent addition, but I get the impression that it's been extremely well integrated. Some friends were talking about how impressive some Xbox Live thing was, and I couldn't help but laugh - I'd been using something similar in Half-Life for ages.

      Probably the best use I've seen (heard?) is in Natural Selection, playing as a marine when the commander has a microphone. No silly typing getting in the way of the commandi
      • Voice mod was recent addition? Hmph. I'm a new subscriber to the Half-Life engine. (Relativly speaking. About a year or so)

        Natural Selection is great for voice mod, as people tend to get into it :) Screaming for help when an Oros has you in its tummy is fun. As well, people tend to try and help you more. The game also requires much more communication than the average FPS to play well.

  • Are you sure? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Unknown Kadath ( 685094 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @04:47PM (#8162463)
    "I want a game where I can get in a shouting match with a character in the game - real Gene Hackman or Al Pacino business is what I'm talking about here."

    Are you certain you want to lose arguments to video game characters? They'll have scriptwriters. You won't.

    -Carolyn

  • Shields down (Score:4, Informative)

    by Godeke ( 32895 ) * on Monday February 02, 2004 @04:49PM (#8162485)
    I tried voice command with the Starfleet Academy game, and decided to revert to keyboard when it decided "one half impulse" = "shields down" repeatedly. Or "fire photons" = "all stop". Perhaps the recognition is better today, but that combined with my cell phone's continual "please repeat the name" on voice dial just don't give me a lot of faith in voice recognition.

    I did get good recognition rates out of the Dragon Dictate program, or whatever it was called. I suspect stress changes voices enough to make it a harder challenge to recognize the same command when it was recorded originally in an unstressed environment.

    • Re:Shields down (Score:2, Informative)

      by bmyers ( 643397 )
      Actual speech recognition is still best when there's a limited vocabulary -- the more limited the better, especially if the vocabulary can be constrained so that the words are very different. I am surprised you got such lousy recognition on things like "fire photons", etc. The recognizer in Starfleet Academy sounds pretty bad.

      Dragon's program was called Naturally Speaking (IIRC). There's also ViaVoice (from IBM) and a few others. My wife works in this field, so I know far too much about it for my own

    • If you liked Dragon Dictate you'll love Dragon Naturally Speaking. They were the formost authority on voice recognition but they got bought out :(

  • Spellcasting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:06PM (#8162734)
    I would love to see a game based around magic and spellcraft where you speak the words. It would be very simple, and with the addition of a peripheral like the eye-cam on the PS2, using hand gestures in addition to vocal commands would be quite engaging.

    • I've fantasized and posted about something like this before. I think it would add a whole new dimension to MMORPGs. Suddenly, everybody and their brother CAN'T just roll up a mage. They actually have learn complex semantic gestures and incantations. Add something like a sensor glove to give more accurate feedback, and suddenly magery is a shitload more scalable in its complexity.

      A simple light spell at 1st level could be done by tracing a simple circle above your head for example while saying a couple m

      • Uses a gesture based system for spells.
        For instance, you cast a shield by drawing a circle around the area you want to shield.

        Apparantly, the more perfect your circle, the stronger your shield, though I haven't been able to notice a large difference.
    • PATENT IT.

      I doubt it's been thought of before, and a well-made game with elements like that would be awesome.

    • Could you imagine what would happen when the "D&D is satanic" crowd got ahold of that? Hell, they thought that rolling dice was the same as casting spells.

      It will be fun to watch. :->
  • I never got the hang of using a mouse in an RTS. Between building units/buildings, giving them orders, waypoints, and all that, I find it difficult to monitor the entire battlefield. I would prefer to use the mouse just for viewing the map, the status of buildings/units, etc...
    What I think would finally immerse me in an RTS would be the ability issue voice commands to a virtual lieutenant, set waypoints with the mouse, but otherwise have him control the squad. It would also be nice to just station a squa
  • Yeah, baby, that's what I'm talking about [imdb.com]....

  • No, not a prison escape game...

    Some sort of intelligent voice-recognition work would allow (for example) a Karaoke version of Dance Dance Revolution where the console tracks how well you stay on key while singing along to various tracks? Hmm...

  • SOCOM voice activation (Score:4, Funny)

    by samsmithnz ( 702471 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:23PM (#8162933) Homepage
    I've played SOCOM 1 (not two yet), and had great fun yelling into the microphone in an American accent (it didn't understand my Kiwi accent). My flatmates would come home to find me talking to myself "Bravo attack at will" "Bravo ATTACK at will" "Damn it Bravo ATTACK AT WILL!!!" Good fun though once I got the accent right...
  • I have a microsoft (yeah I know) sidewinder headset and hub, and I love useing the voice command and chat for gaming. It works especially well for flight simulator types where you have to give commands to your wingmen. The only thing I dont like about it is being 'locked' in to old unsupported microsoft software. So if anyone wants to do an open source project thats compatable with this thing, I would be eternally grateful.

    Jainith
    • If you ask me, of all MS products, the Sidewinder series is the stuff you can feel most justified in using. Comfort (for right-handers) and function. Heaven.

      And then they made the XBox controller.

  • Shoot (Score:4, Informative)

    by FrenZon ( 65408 ) * on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:41PM (#8163169) Homepage
    While this is a generic utility, I've found that Shoot [gameclubcentral.com], by Martin Traverso provides an excellent way to add voice control to any Windows game, and it's free. Once trained, the accuracy is phenomenal.

    --
    Freelook [freelook.org] - A Free Headtracker for Games and Disabled Access
    • That's what I was going to say, but instead I'll provide some more details.

      All shoot does is take an already parsed string of what you said, compare it to an xml file, and execute a number of keystrokes. So, as long as you have some kind of voice rec software (there's stuff somewhat built into WinXP, but I can't promise for other OSes), and a game that isn't too reliant on a mouse for commands, and you've got a great solution to binding (but mostly remembering) lots of keys.

      I currently use SHOOT for
  • Consider the most common, vulgar single word utterance made by most gamers, usually when they are killed.

    Now, do you REALLY want your game to be voice controlled?

  • Of Accents and Multiplayer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Undefined Parameter ( 726857 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .modeerf4leuf.> on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:08PM (#8163424)
    Alright, the first thing which came to my mind was "what if a person has an accent?" What happens when the game can't understand what you're saying or, worse, misinterprets one verbal command for another? Theoretically, a stuffed up nose could turn "attack the house" into "a tank the how's," leaving the units in a strategy game to stand around looking for a tank when they should be advancing.

    Joking aside, there could be (and have been) problems with voice-recognition/speech-interpretation software. Probably the only device which has the capability to correctly interpret languages through accents, slurs, and illness is the human brain... and even that fails, sometimes.

    Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see some voice control for NPCs in computer and video games. I'm just not daydreaming of A.I. which can engage in arguments and intelligent debates, or a piece of software which can translate any accent correctly, even the accents of non-native language speakers (like Americans speaking Japanese or vice-versa).

    So, in my opinion, there's a long way to go before we should make speech an integral and necessary part of controling actions in a game. And, to answer the question posed, that's an area where I'd like to see voice control progress. The other area is to simply include it in any relatively complicated game which has a multiplayer component.

    Take, for example, Halo PC; it has no voice control built in, but the fast-paced nature of the game prohibits typing out instructions, observations, etc. If I take time to type out "watch left!" while driving across a bridge in a Warthog, I and my passenger(s) will be smoked or the warning will be made useless by the fact that we'll be across the bridge before they can read and react to it.

    After we reach these two aspects of voice recognition/control in games, we can talk about where and how it should be implimented, and why. In the mean time, I'll go back to shaking my fist at my broken PC.

    ~UP

    (P.S. My apologies for the grumpy tone of this message. I didn't get enough sleep, last night.)

    • That's okay--then you could only play as the bad guys. Everyone knows that the bad guys have accents.

      Think of the possibilities--terrorists, nazis, Japanese jungle troopers...

      "Ve heff vays of makink you talk, Doktah Chones"...

      Or for commands..."Klaus, take zis man outside and BEAT HIM!"

      Or you could be like the guy in the movie "Midway" who runs up behind James Shigeta on the Japanese carrier, yelling "DIVE BOMBA! ENEMY DIVE BOMBA!"

      Man, the possibilities are endless.

      If you made allowance for the Brit

  • SOCOM (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GeorgeH ( 5469 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:12PM (#8163465) Homepage Journal
    Voice recognition works well in the SOCOM series. For the single player campaign, you can order your 3 squadmates around, telling them to hold fire, escort you to a waypoint or cover an area. It's a gimmick, but it's a fun gimmick and probably provides enough leverage to get people on the mics for the online game.

    Karaoke Revolution provides a sort of inverse fun to this. It matches pitch but doesn't bother with voice recognition. This means when you're playing with your friends, you can suddenly in the position of improvising clever lyrics to a cheesy song.
  • Here's the thing. Voice control is great if it works... and if it's not tied to simply five or even fifty commands. I think if someone's talking to you in your game, you should be able to talk back freely... and I'm sure that's where it's going. Here's my problem however:

    I'm playing the game with virtually the same joystick that I played the atari 2600 with. Sure, it has a couple of more buttons, but that's about it (and yes, digital and analog blah blah). In fact, with Kirby and some other new games,

  • Well... (Score:3, Funny)

    by daVinci1980 ( 73174 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:47PM (#8163923) Homepage
    If...you...are...willing...to...yell...yell...YELL ...at ...the...game...at...about...this...speed......You ...might...be...able...to...have...an...in-game... conversation...conversation...con-ver-sation...wit h...it.

    Natural language processors kinda suck. :-)

    • Re:Well... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 )
      Captain Kirk Simulation!

      Spock... we seem to have stumbled... upon... a nebulous... galaxy which has no apparent reason... for existing... at all.

  • Microsoft Game Voice (Score:3, Informative)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:50PM (#8163954) Journal
    This is have out for a while. I had one and it worked really well; the headset is exceptionally high quality and is made by Platonic. It worked pretty well for player conversations and you can also macro commands to your voice.

    Altogether it worked pretty well. Personally I am more of a keyboard guy, but this may be just what you are looking for.

    Link Here. [microsoft.com] Good luck!

  • Manhunt (Score:3, Interesting)

    by angle_slam ( 623817 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @07:39PM (#8164437)
    The PS2 game Manhunt [gamerankings.com] has an interesting use of the headset. In the game, you play a person on death row who was not really killed, but instead is being hunted by others.

    In the game, regular sounds come from the TV, but a tormentor speaks to you through your headset (if you are so equipped). Also, stealth is an important part of the game, and people who are trying to kill you hear your voice in the microphone. You can use the tactic to distract others.

    • You know those games where you're trapped somewhere, and there's somebody on a radio guiding you through puzzles, giving you advice, and what not?

      There's a PS2 game, I think it's called Lifeline, coming out, where you play the guy on the radio, via the headset, and try to help out somebody trapped on the space station after the Terrible Accident.

  • How would you like to see voice control in videogames evolve, going forward?

    Personally, I'd prefer slightly to the side. If that's all okay with you.
  • you talk to the game and it would talk back. The game sucked thu.
  • How would you like to see voice control in videogames evolve, going forward?

    First, how about we expand the average gamer's vocabulary beyond the words; f***, s*** or homosexual terms. Then I'll consider wearing a headset with some stranger online talking to me in a game.

    Otherwise I'll just stick to talking on the phone and playing with someone I know. Or better yet, play at a LAN party.

  • Heck, it might be cool if they laughed at a joke I cracked.
    This must be the guy in the group who tells the jokes that are always followed buy awkward silences.

    He just wants to be loved!
  • I can just see myself yelling at the squad guys in Rainbow 6 until they start to cry, then feeling bad and taking them all out for a beer. Then we'd forget completely about the mission.

    The moral of the story? Voice recognition makes the terrorists win. Or something.
  • I was thinking of making an operating system based on a audio interface that could be controlled over a cell phone. But then I had a terrible though, what if M$ made one. And I couldn't really submit people to that kind of horror.

    But as far as gaming is concerned, people can't organize with each other very well what makes us think we can do it with a computer.

  • Finally! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Thedalek ( 473015 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @01:20AM (#8166697)
    A satisfying solution for all those people who already talk to the screen!

    "Don't go in there! Don't go in there!"

    "Hmm... I don't think I'll go in there right now."

    Then again, think of all the people who insult the on-screen character whenever they're doing badly.

    "Stupid @$%* Mario!"

    "Oh, yeah? Let's-a see you do any better, wise-a-guy!"
  • who remembers that old game on the N64 where you could talk to pikachu?
  • If you haven't tried Rainbow Six 3 on xbox with voice command, you owe it to yourself to give it a spin. It's REALLY cool. I find myself wishing all sorts of games had this feature, and on the PC as well!

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