• Ubisoft says it is using an in-house AI-powered programme to help with writing dialogue in its games.
• Called Ghostwriter, the programme uses natural language processing to generate ambient dialogue and combat barks in order to save writers time and energy.
• Players have reacted negatively to the news with concerns that this will only drain more creativity and originality from Ubisoft’s games.

Right now in 2023, games are larger than ever, and the scope will only increase. AAA studios are ever more ready to pump millions to build giant, living, breathing worlds. This is a massive effort on the part of the developers, and companies like Ubisoft are taking steps to make the process a bit easier.

To reduce the time for its writing staff, especially for tedious tasks like writing ambient dialogue and short “barks” given by NPCs, Ubisoft says it is now using an in-house AI programme called, you’ll never guess, Ghostwriter.

According to a blog post from the French developers of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, Ghostwriter was created at Ubisoft’s R&D department La Forge, and seeks to alleviate “one of the video game writer’s most laborious tasks: writing barks.”

“Ghostwriter effectively generates first drafts of barks – phrases or sounds made by NPCs during a triggered event – which gives scriptwriters more time to polish the narrative elsewhere.”

It uses AI machine learning to generate short pieces of text to be used as scripting for voice actors. A dev simply needs to insert a prompt and adjust the type of response through a set of tabs and buttons and Ghostwriter will generate several responses that can then be edited down further.

Devs can change the feel and emotion of the responses too via “modes” and assign the responses to individual characters. These can be used to record voice lines and then plugged into the game.

“Crowd chatter and barks are central features of player immersion in games – NPCs speaking to each other, enemy dialogue during combat, or an exchange triggered when entering an area all provide a more realistic world experience and make the player feel like the game around them exists outside of their actions,” Ubisoft explains.

“…both require time and creative effort from scriptwriters that could be spent on other core plot items. Ghostwriter frees up that time, but still allows the scriptwriters a degree of creative control.”

Check out how Ghostwriter works in the video below:

The news of Ubisoft using this programme to generate its dialogue did not go well with players. The top comment on the video of the tool in action reads “This will definitely save scriptwriters time, which most of them will need to find another job. Ubisoft truly cares [about their stock price].”

Another user wrote “Wow! A tool to help make Ubisoft writing even worse than it already is! What an incredible innovation.”

“Ubisoft has found a way to rip even MORE of the heart and soul out of their games dialogue,” said another.

Video game development is an art. A creative process. Limiting the “creative” part of this process to reduce task time seems counterintuitive. Surely, writers should be chomping at the bit to craft the best, most interesting and most memorable dialogue. Even if it just combat barks.

These are not just throwaway lines. If done properly they can be incredibly memorable and important. Imagine if bandits in Skyrim didn’t shout “You should never have come here!” just as you pummel them to dust, or if enemies in The Last of Us Part 2 didn’t call out the names of their friends as Ellie tears through them.

Instead, Ubisoft is happy to replace these with cut-and-paste voice lines, and players seem resistant to the idea. Who would have thought?

In its defence, Ubisoft says that AI is no stranger to gaming. “AI in video games is not a new concept, with most associating this technology with NPC behaviors. Yet, this concept of machine learning is restrictive to its actual implications, as the industry now sees a place and need for not just AI tools, but machines that can learn through human feedback.”

However, the AI it is using for Ghostwriter and the so-called “AI” that programmers build for enemy behaviours are not the same things at all. In games, enemies are controlled by long and complex lists of if and then commands, for example, if the player switches to their fire weapon, then the enemy selects ability “Fire Shield.”

The more of these commands, the more it seems that the enemy has a mind of its own.

The Natural Language Processing tool crafted at La Forge is more complex and instead similar to systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It was built by R&D scientist Ben Swanson, who previously worked at Google Stadia and became interested in gaming narrative after he watched a talk on the story design of Watch Dogs: Legion, of all things.

There is also something to be said about the time of game development. While studios like CD Projekt and Blizzard are alleged to keep their developers under hectic crunch conditions when it comes to keeping deadlines, Ubisoft reportedly managed to make Assassin’s Creed Odyssey without “massive crunch.”

Ghostwriter will no doubt only add time for devs in order for them to focus on more important tasks, or be able to see their families at the end of the day.

Swanson and his team want to continue improving Ghostwriter, with the end goal being that Ubisoft’s narrative designers use the tool intrinsically in their process.

“Their hope is that teams consider Ghostwriter before they start their narrative process and create their models with a vision in mind, effectively making the tech an integral part of the production pipeline,” the company says.

These AI tools are only becoming more popular in game dev. Companies like Sortium use AI and prompts to create 3D assets to be plugged into games. No doubt these tools cut down on dev time, but they will also cut down on originality, creativity and the artistic integrity of game design.

Time will time which way the pendulum will swing.

[Image – Ubisoft]