Ubisoft has shown off “NEO NPCs”, a new prototype technology to combine AI responses with narrative backstories and clues designed to make NPCs appear to “have a soul”.
Ubisoft released this information through its social media. If you’re interested in the state of the video game industry, you can check out our other articles here.
What is NEO NPC?
In its official announcement, Ubisoft described NEO NPCs as follows:
The first player-facing generative AI prototype that can change the way players interact with Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) in games and opens up new frontiers for games that natively integrate generative AI features.
Ubisoft
In the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024 event attended by GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft showed several demos where players would interact with AI-powered characters using voice commands.
According to Ubisoft, the purpose of some of the demos is to “enhance the immersive narrative” and provide a glimpse into the various roles that advanced NPCs could take on in future games.
The NEO NPC is the result of an R&D initiative led by the team at Ubisoft Paris and supported by Ubisoft’s Production Technology department. Ubisoft also collaborated with NVIDIA and Inworld AI for the prototype.
Inworld’s Character AI engine and LLM technology allowed Ubisoft’s narrative team to build a complete background, knowledge base and conversational style for each NPC, while Nvidia Audio2Face, part of the NVIDIA ACE technology suite, was used to enable real-time facial animations.
Ubisoft
Below is the official statement from Xavier Manzanares:
This could be the beginning of a tremendous paradigm shift. For the first time, the game world is listening and responding dynamically to the players. Social interactions and skills become part of the gameplay.
More intelligent NPCs like our NEO NPCs have the potential to be a groundbreaking addition to the traditional NPCs we see in games today. They provide the ability to create more immersive worlds and emergent stories.
Xavier Manzanares, Director and Producer of NEO NPC at Ubisoft
Yves Guillemot: Generative AI is just a new technology to be tested
In a Q&A session after the demo preview, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot was asked by VG247 if he was worried that the company’s push would be received negatively like NFT and Web3.
I think what you should consider is that all new evolutions should be considered and tested. I think generative AI has been in our industry for a long time.
Now we are taking another step because there is a lot of investment in the field, so video games will use it like other industries do.
Yves Guillemot, Co-Founder and CEO of Ubisoft
Eurogamer asked whether Ubisoft sometimes uses new technologies too early, to which Guillemot replied:
It’s not always too early. Sometimes, you’re right. But being able to adopt the Wii early was a good move because we were able to do things we couldn’t do before. Kinect was also very exciting because it gave us the opportunity to create new experiences that were very reactive. We created Just Dance with the Wii.
We think every time new technology comes on a new machine, you can create new experiences. When the Xbox capacity came, we were able to create Splinter Cell… You can always do new things that you want to do because the technology is at a level that lets you create those experiences.
But it doesn’t work all the time. Sometimes you come too early.
Yves Guillemot, Co-Founder and CEO of Ubisoft
