Video Game Industry Thread

[DownInFlames]

I thought we could use a separate thread for industry news to keep the other one for actual game talk.

So, the voice actors are on strike because of the threat of AI.

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...this-paradigm/

Of course, the big devs will do anything they can to save costs. I do support voice actors in this strike but I'm not sure AI is completely a bad thing. It's one thing if there is only written dialogue, but if a game uses AI to make nearly limitless responses for NPCs that sounds great to me, especially in an open-world game.

[Russic]

I don't understand how unions are going to be able to keep AI out of any industry, let alone this one. It seems like there's a tidal wave coming and everybody is pulling out their Wile E. Coyote umbrellas.

I feel for the voice actors 100%. The concern is they're going to have their voices analyzed and uploaded, which is completely fair. But there's nothing stopping a company from creating a new voice, and once those get good enough to emote better, I don't see how the bottom doesn't fall out of that particular industry.

[Bill Bumface]

I think it will be like graphic designers. You want a simple little logo for your hobby company? Those jobs are gone. High end graphic designers are more than safe for the time being however.

My bet is the top tier titles are still using high talent voice actors for a long time to come.

[calumniate]

Baldur's Gate 3 was all properly voice acted. Not sure we'll ever see that level again!

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by Russic

I don't understand how unions are going to be able to keep AI out of any industry, let alone this one. It seems like there's a tidal wave coming and everybody is pulling out their Wile E. Coyote umbrellas.

I feel for the voice actors 100%. The concern is they're going to have their voices analyzed and uploaded, which is completely fair. But there's nothing stopping a company from creating a new voice, and once those get good enough to emote better, I don't see how the bottom doesn't fall out of that particular industry.

We live in an era where I just listened to Frank Sinatra sing Lose Yourself by Eminem yesterday. A song that came out four years after Frank Sinatra died. I'm not sure Voice Actors are the ones who are going to have their voices analyzed, especially because most of the time voice actors do fake voices. We're about to enter an era where 12 year old children can be voiced by 12 year old children rather than 40 year old women.

[SuperMatt18]

Yeah think about the infinite resources that are hypothetically available for AI to asses...every song, movie, TV show, interview, etc could techincally be analyzed.

Now I'm not sure of legality of that...but really in a lot of these companies are so consolidated that they probably own all of that audio anyways...so not sure you could stop them.

For example Sony would have all of the audio from their TV, Movie, Video Game, and music catalogs that they technically own if they wanted to analyze that data with AI...not sure how you'd stop that because they own that audio.

[Inferno]

It's not game related but our photography/video guy here made a commercial for the college and after he showed it to us he said the voice talking was AI.

Some of the words did sound a little off ("can" sounded more like "Ken") but still pretty crazy and if he didn't tell us we all would have thought it was a real person.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Inferno

It's not game related but our photography/video guy here made a commercial for the college and after he showed it to us he said the voice talking was AI.

Some of the words did sound a little off ("can" sounded more like "Ken") but still pretty crazy and if he didn't tell us we all would have thought it was a real person.

This is a big part of it. Unless you're told to "find the AI version," very few people will notice. Combine that with the fact that this is the worst it'll ever be, and I don't know how voice-over people will ever be able to compete.

Of course the inverse of this problem is that your photography/video guy is now 5x more powerful than he ever could have been. With advances we're seeing in AI video just this week, his abilities to grow are getting out of control. Of course, there's always the chance they grow so aggressively many more will be able to do his job.

[chemgear]

Some good news.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1822785069766910151

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

I think it will be like graphic designers. You want a simple little logo for your hobby company? Those jobs are gone. High end graphic designers are more than safe for the time being however.

My bet is the top tier titles are still using high talent voice actors for a long time to come.

The issue I've identified is that it might hollow out the industry very rapidly. If you can't be a low level voice actor or designer, how can you get the opportunity to practice/be identified for higher end roles?

Unions might not be able to keep AI out, but I'm guessing they're going to at least demand that certain studios have to attempt to get human voice overs prior to turning to AI.

I do think AI will be excellent and huge for translations/dubbing without insane sways and changes in voices from one language to another.

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Some good news.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1822785069766910151

It would be hilarious now if Hi-Fi Rush grows as an IP and turns in to a big commercial hit with future titles. Microsoft had no idea what they had with it from the start.

[Fire]

Did Microsoft poach all the good people from Tango? If they did it's pretty much just buying IP.