Nobody loves AI quite like tech CEOs love AI, and that includes Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot, who thinks the tech is going to power a new generation of reactive NPCs and far more dynamic versions of the publisher's traditional open-world games.
"What we see is that, in video games, we will be able to experiment with a lot of things that we will be able to re-use in the real world," Guillemot said on stage at Saudi Arabia's New Global Sport Conference, as reported by Game File (paid article link). "For example, we can make sure that, when you meet with Socrates [in a game], you have all the data that's about what he said, what he did, so you will be in front and speaking with a person that is actually very close to what that person was."
Of course, the idea of Socrates appearing in a Ubisoft game isn't far-fetched, since he was a supporting character in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. There – as characterized by human writers and animators and a human voice actor – he was one of the game's most memorable details, equally delighting and annoying players with his roundabout philosophical questioning.
Wouldn't it be better, though, if a simulacrum of Socrates simply served you a stew of the philosopher's beliefs as interpreted by AI? That's what Guillemot seems to think, saying, "You have to understand and learn his philosophy to comply with the challenges we give you in the game. You will not have the impression that you are learning. You will have the impression that you.. change yourself just to win the game."
Ubisoft has been talking up AI NPCs for some time now, but Guillemot isn't finished. He also believes AI tech will help make game worlds more reactive to your actions.
"The world we will be in will also be more intelligent," Guillemot says. "So, for players, the world will react to their behavior instead of pre-scripted things. We have been creating open worlds in the past, giving more choices to payers, and now we will go another step further, which is, OK, [to] make sure that you have an impact on the world, and the world will react to you. So it will be your world."
The idea of the best open-world games being more reactive to my actions is certainly a compelling one – but AI content generation still hasn't managed to move past an inherent feeling of empty meaninglessness. And man, if a technology somehow feels more profoundly meaningless than video games, I'm not sure there's a whole lot of hope for it to improve the medium.
