“A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s just how it is.”
Of course, you numbnut… That’s why if you can afford freaking actual people to do the work, YOU FUCKING GO TO THEM.
Look, I’m okay with genAI usage where it’s justified. An indie game utilising it in a phase where they’ve got no money, no income, and need to budget for things? Go crazy, hell, with voice stuff you can run the models locally with 2x-4x generation speed on low end hardware (my Home Assistant talks to me in a voice I pulled from a TV show, with automatically extracted voice samples used for the training, and even on an old crappy Intel N5105 the generation speed via Piper is about 2.5x, so every second it generates 2.5s worth of audio). If you need placeholder graphics, use AI for it. And so on.
But when you’re releasing an AAA title, when you had the money because a publisher has already paid for everything, YOU DON’T FUCKING CHEAP OUT. Why? Because everyone involved in the creative process will know that they were a second thought, and if companies don’t respect the artists, the artists simply won’t work with the company. Imagine needing a dozen VAs and hundreds of them turning you down, because you initially thought going with AI generated crap is fine, just so you can save some money and pad your managerial/C-suite pockets.
They’re their own publisher. Which is worse as you can’t look at it from an angle of them pocketing a publisher’s money. Besides they probably have mountains of it from selling a shitload of cosmetics in The Finals.
because you initially thought going with AI generated crap is fine, just so you can save some money and pad your managerial/C-suite pockets.
It’s worse than that. A lot of places are pivoting to AI despite knowing it’s terrible and self-defeating, simply because adding AI to a product is the only way to get investors interested right now.
The discourse around Arc Raiders has been pretty messy lately. I’ve seen a lot of people on BlueSky claiming the game has no human voice acting, which is just factually wrong (they’re using a mix of both)
I get why studios look at this from a business angle; when you need to iterate on lines quickly the efficiency of Al is hard to ignore. I also see why people are so defensive about it: it’s not just a ‘non-issue’ for everyone, there are legitimate concerns about how this shift affects job security for actors and whether the industry is losing that human touch in the process.
Since you didn’t say it, I will. Fuck AI. Real people need jobs, and AI needs to be heavily regulated, or banned completely in order to protect countless human beings from destitution both now, and in the future.
Do we really? We produce way more than enough for everyone already with very few people involved. What we need is better distribution of those resources.
I literally said there are legitimate concerns about job security and losing the human touch… Just pointing out that ‘no human VO’ is factually wrong for this game. Facts matter.
It has very little human voice acting. The vendors you interact with, which you’ll probably interact with the most, use sound-generated voice lines. And they have the flattest, blandest line deliveries.
It’s not like there are a lot of lines they say in the first place. For a studio that wants to shove AI into everything they’re not using it in any way that would justify AI. Like, there are no characters that call you by name, or generate responses based on your actions. They just have 5 or 6 voice lines each… Something you’d expect in a regular game!
On the other hand Arc Raiders is the only UE5 game that actually runs well, due to the studio completely reengineering it’s rendering pipeline. Basically they built their own version of UE5. Though I wonder how much vibe coding was used in the process. Perhaps the cracks will start showing eventually.
You’re talking to someone who grew up gaming in the 90s.
“Voice-acting” to me was nothing more than a few chirps or tones to convey talking. For such a minor and insignificant part of the game (vendor dialogue) it’s a non-issue for me. In fact, I’ve heard flatter voice acting in high* budget games from the 2000s and it didn’t bother me then and that was real people.
I’ve been enjoying the actual game a lot and I think anyone avoiding it based purely on “AI = bad” is doing a disservice to themselves.
I frankly don’t really care if in the past there was no voice acting in games.
The point is, there is voice acting now, and if they’re going to add voice acting to their games they could have the decency of hiring actual voice actors. And if using AI is a must, they better make sure it’s used in a way that justifies it.
I was born in the early 90s, so I grew up with plenty of late 90s and early 2000s videogame jank. But I don’t see how that can be used as an excuse for corner-cutting practices today.
You’re out here demanding ‘decency’ from a game studio while opening with ‘I don’t care what you think’ to another person. The irony is apparently lost on you. Maybe reflect on why you talk to strangers like that. Have a good one, Bucko.
I don’t need to. You fail to see how completely irrelevant “how games used to be” is to the discussion of ethics in AI use. If you’re going to use that as some sort of excuse to give a pass on a studio, then you’re right; I don’t care what you think, and neither should anyone else, because it makes you part of the problem.
Glad to see my suggestion about reflection landed, even if the point itself didn’t.
You’re still arguing against something I never said. I shared my personal tolerance for AI dialogue, not a defense of studio ethics. Reading comprehension would’ve saved us both some time. Enjoy your crusade.
The finals thing is especially fucking stupid, when I heard they used ai for the announcer I assumed that meant you could name your teams and the ai announcer would be able to read your unique player made team names. Nope, they needed ai to do the announcer voice because… Who the fuck knows? Like they needed ai to somehow do something less impressive than codsworth saying your name in fallout 4 (making something less impressive than Bethesda is impressive). Its a fun game, but the announcer ai bullshit just always pissed me off with how pointless it was.
I played the finals before launch and i thought the same thing. I assumed it’s so the announcers don’t just repeat the same 4 phrases like in a fifa game, or say things that are more relevant. But they really don’t so i don’t see the point. Arc raiders is the same. You could take out the voice acting completely and it wouldn’t even change all that much.
They only did this because of the backlash.
Absolutely agree. My main thought regarding having AI commentators would mean that it could be reactive and fluid, actually incorpating names and actions in a dynamic manner. But it’s just canned responses on repeat to save paying a human to do it. Before they revealed it was AI, I thought it was bad and stilted on purpose. Like some sort of joke, but it’s just plain bad.
Going back on ai generated voice lines would be a meaningful step in earning good graces again. As of right now, I’m not sure I believe the CEO on anything. They don’t seem to understand what made their game successful and they seemed okay with cutting corners where they could. They feel like a corporate group in its infancy and I’d like them to feel like a AA company run, operated by, and full of artists and real people - not corpos.
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Most of my friends now pronounce reagents incorrectly because of the voice line
How do they pronounce reagents in the game?
Like regents. Ree-jents
Yikes. :D Glad they’re fixing this.
Ah… I’ve always pronounced it as re-agents. I’ve also spoken with several British people who pronounce it that way.
Of course, you numbnut… That’s why if you can afford freaking actual people to do the work, YOU FUCKING GO TO THEM.
Look, I’m okay with genAI usage where it’s justified. An indie game utilising it in a phase where they’ve got no money, no income, and need to budget for things? Go crazy, hell, with voice stuff you can run the models locally with 2x-4x generation speed on low end hardware (my Home Assistant talks to me in a voice I pulled from a TV show, with automatically extracted voice samples used for the training, and even on an old crappy Intel N5105 the generation speed via Piper is about 2.5x, so every second it generates 2.5s worth of audio). If you need placeholder graphics, use AI for it. And so on.
But when you’re releasing an AAA title, when you had the money because a publisher has already paid for everything, YOU DON’T FUCKING CHEAP OUT. Why? Because everyone involved in the creative process will know that they were a second thought, and if companies don’t respect the artists, the artists simply won’t work with the company. Imagine needing a dozen VAs and hundreds of them turning you down, because you initially thought going with AI generated crap is fine, just so you can save some money and pad your managerial/C-suite pockets.
They’re their own publisher. Which is worse as you can’t look at it from an angle of them pocketing a publisher’s money. Besides they probably have mountains of it from selling a shitload of cosmetics in The Finals.
They’re fully owned by the publisher Nexon.
Sorry forgot about that, since they’re owned by them and all
It’s worse than that. A lot of places are pivoting to AI despite knowing it’s terrible and self-defeating, simply because adding AI to a product is the only way to get investors interested right now.
Investor irrationality fucking shit up for everyone since…
Actually, irrationality by people with influence has been an issue forever, I guess.
Good for him for catching up with the rest of us.
Such a brave thing to say!
The discourse around Arc Raiders has been pretty messy lately. I’ve seen a lot of people on BlueSky claiming the game has no human voice acting, which is just factually wrong (they’re using a mix of both)
I get why studios look at this from a business angle; when you need to iterate on lines quickly the efficiency of Al is hard to ignore. I also see why people are so defensive about it: it’s not just a ‘non-issue’ for everyone, there are legitimate concerns about how this shift affects job security for actors and whether the industry is losing that human touch in the process.
Ok.
Since you didn’t say it, I will. Fuck AI. Real people need jobs, and AI needs to be heavily regulated, or banned completely in order to protect countless human beings from destitution both now, and in the future.
Fuck. A. I.
Do we really? We produce way more than enough for everyone already with very few people involved. What we need is better distribution of those resources.
I literally said there are legitimate concerns about job security and losing the human touch… Just pointing out that ‘no human VO’ is factually wrong for this game. Facts matter.
Nuance getting lost in the chorus of outrage… I wish lemmy was above that.
It has very little human voice acting. The vendors you interact with, which you’ll probably interact with the most, use sound-generated voice lines. And they have the flattest, blandest line deliveries.
It’s not like there are a lot of lines they say in the first place. For a studio that wants to shove AI into everything they’re not using it in any way that would justify AI. Like, there are no characters that call you by name, or generate responses based on your actions. They just have 5 or 6 voice lines each… Something you’d expect in a regular game!
On the other hand Arc Raiders is the only UE5 game that actually runs well, due to the studio completely reengineering it’s rendering pipeline. Basically they built their own version of UE5. Though I wonder how much vibe coding was used in the process. Perhaps the cracks will start showing eventually.
You’re talking to someone who grew up gaming in the 90s.
“Voice-acting” to me was nothing more than a few chirps or tones to convey talking. For such a minor and insignificant part of the game (vendor dialogue) it’s a non-issue for me. In fact, I’ve heard flatter voice acting in high* budget games from the 2000s and it didn’t bother me then and that was real people.
I’ve been enjoying the actual game a lot and I think anyone avoiding it based purely on “AI = bad” is doing a disservice to themselves.
I frankly don’t really care if in the past there was no voice acting in games.
The point is, there is voice acting now, and if they’re going to add voice acting to their games they could have the decency of hiring actual voice actors. And if using AI is a must, they better make sure it’s used in a way that justifies it.
I was born in the early 90s, so I grew up with plenty of late 90s and early 2000s videogame jank. But I don’t see how that can be used as an excuse for corner-cutting practices today.
You’re out here demanding ‘decency’ from a game studio while opening with ‘I don’t care what you think’ to another person. The irony is apparently lost on you. Maybe reflect on why you talk to strangers like that. Have a good one, Bucko.
I don’t need to. You fail to see how completely irrelevant “how games used to be” is to the discussion of ethics in AI use. If you’re going to use that as some sort of excuse to give a pass on a studio, then you’re right; I don’t care what you think, and neither should anyone else, because it makes you part of the problem.
Glad to see my suggestion about reflection landed, even if the point itself didn’t.
You’re still arguing against something I never said. I shared my personal tolerance for AI dialogue, not a defense of studio ethics. Reading comprehension would’ve saved us both some time. Enjoy your crusade.
Cool. Now do it for The Finals.
The finals thing is especially fucking stupid, when I heard they used ai for the announcer I assumed that meant you could name your teams and the ai announcer would be able to read your unique player made team names. Nope, they needed ai to do the announcer voice because… Who the fuck knows? Like they needed ai to somehow do something less impressive than codsworth saying your name in fallout 4 (making something less impressive than Bethesda is impressive). Its a fun game, but the announcer ai bullshit just always pissed me off with how pointless it was.
I played the finals before launch and i thought the same thing. I assumed it’s so the announcers don’t just repeat the same 4 phrases like in a fifa game, or say things that are more relevant. But they really don’t so i don’t see the point. Arc raiders is the same. You could take out the voice acting completely and it wouldn’t even change all that much. They only did this because of the backlash.
Absolutely agree. My main thought regarding having AI commentators would mean that it could be reactive and fluid, actually incorpating names and actions in a dynamic manner. But it’s just canned responses on repeat to save paying a human to do it. Before they revealed it was AI, I thought it was bad and stilted on purpose. Like some sort of joke, but it’s just plain bad.
Their best use for AI was the deep learning algorithm they used for the drone’s movement system.
Everything else is…
I do wonder how much of their games are vibe-coded. But glad they’re seeing the light when it comes to VC.
Going back on ai generated voice lines would be a meaningful step in earning good graces again. As of right now, I’m not sure I believe the CEO on anything. They don’t seem to understand what made their game successful and they seemed okay with cutting corners where they could. They feel like a corporate group in its infancy and I’d like them to feel like a AA company run, operated by, and full of artists and real people - not corpos.