NVIDIA Partners With Ubisoft To Further Develop Its AI-driven NPCs

NVIDIA has been working on adding generative AI to non-playable characters (NPCs) for a while now. The company is hoping a newly-announced partnership with Ubisoft will accelerate development of this technology and, ultimately, bring these AI-driven NPCs to modern games. From a report: Ubisoft helped build new "NEO NPCs" by using NVIDIA's Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) technology, with an assist from dynamic NPC experts Inworld AI. The end result? Characters that don't repeat the same phrase over and over, while ignoring the surrounding violent mayhem. These NEO NPCs are said to interact in real time with players, the environment and other in-game characters. NVIDIA says this opens up "new possibilities for emergent storytelling." To that end, Ubisoft's narrative team built complete backgrounds, knowledge bases and conversational styles for two NPCs as a proof of concept.

Drive up the cost

[cyd1stic55]

Companies are already complaining AAA games are too expensive, and AI isnt free. For all the realism they want, this is going to be unsustainable for the industry.

Re:

[Ferocitus]

Companies are already complaining AAA games are too expensive, and AI isnt free. For all the realism they want, this is going to be unsustainable for the industry.

Thanks, Mystic Meg.

Re:

[codebase7]

More like will drive down the quality of the game's characters and open up the companies to legal liability if one of those characters gets tricked into spewing wrongthink / hatespeech / etc. in front of a child.

As much as I might like the idea of a game character having a little bit more sense to what's going on, (or perhaps the game generating new quests based on real world events as reported by news sources), the risk of failure here is simply too high for it to occur in anything but an MMO. Where the

Re:

[Rinnon]

More like will drive down the quality of the game's characters and open up the companies to legal liability if one of those characters gets tricked into spewing wrongthink / hatespeech / etc. in front of a child.

Honestly, this sounds ideal for random civilians in GTA VII.

Re:

[PhrostyMcByte]

In a single player game, I think it's fine. Kids (and adults) will always try to break the rules, and this is probably the safest form to allow them some rule breaking to learn from. Multiplayer is where you need to watch out. I can imagine an MMO being hot garbage with people screwing with bots.

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[thegarbz]

Companies are already complaining AAA games are too expensive, and AI isnt free. For all the realism they want, this is going to be unsustainable for the industry.

No you have it backwards. The cost an expense of AAA games is in the storyboarding. Generative AI as well as decent procedural design drive costs down. The complexity here pays for itself many times over by not having to script individual characters.

Re: Drive up the cost

[Viol8]

Except a lot of characters do need to be scripted or the game doesnt work. And do you realise how much hardware, power and hence money training a base copy of one of these AIs would cost? Why would a games company on tight margins pay millions when a scripted NPC can be made much cheaper and easier to control and hence easier game dev overall.

They should use AI to evade gambling regulation

[TheNameOfNick]

Guilt-free looting the players, to the moon!

Rimworld

[TJHook3r]

Games like Rimworld are only going to get weirder!

That's nice but how many fingers do they have?

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

I prefer when my AI have at least 6 on each hand.

AI to optimize loot box sales

[sinij]

UBI is only capable of optimizing bilking customers.

New Only to the Ignorant

[BrendaEM]

AI driven NPCs have been in video games for decades.

I remember when I took an Arrow to the Kn ....

[garlicbread2]

I remember when I took an Arrow to the Kn ... ee
Wait I've been here before. Traveller have I seen you somewhere before?

And you know what this means...

[DrXym]

... Ubisoft is notorious for their habit of cutting and pasting a handful of quest types across some sandbox. And now they can't even be bothered to write those quests and will just make some AI shit out some words. So yeah. Progress.

Ubisoft = sigh

[reynolds_john]

Well, they certainly need _something_. The recent Ubisoft game "Prince of Persia" NPCs compared to say Cyberpunk 2077 are literally brain-dead experiences. It's embarrassing how poorly done the Ubisoft characters are.

While the NPCs could get demonstrably better, I fear that Ubisoft's management is so financially driven that there will just end up being absurd tiers of AI NPCs ... literally everything will be monetized, and thus a pickpocket experience.

I could see Larian Studios doing amazing things

Always Online Required

[Gibgezr]

"NVIDIA's Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) technology" = the game only works with an online connection, and only works as long as compatible ACE services are available online.

Nemesis System

[Grendel.Gaidin]

Ubisoft already had this in the Shadow of Mordor Games, the nemesis system. NPC characters you fought would remember the last time you encountered them, if you defeated them previously they would have attributes and cosmetic changes reflecting that. For instance you used fire to finish them off, they might now be afraid of or particularly weak to fire attacks. Their appearance would be scarred from where you attacked them. They would have dialogue recognizing you and your previous encounter. It was such an

Video Game Voice Over Artists Will Evaporate

[manlygeek]

I would love to have gotten into this work. AI NPCs will cut down the cost of game production, but at the expense of voice over artists, mocap, and other performance related fields in the video game industry. You can already creates mods for NPCs that fabricate other famous voices. This is just the next step in that evolution.