Astarion-Schauspieler Neil Newbon versteht nicht, warum Spiele wie Arc Raiders, die eine „höllisch langweilige“ KI für die Stimmarbeit verwenden, nicht „zurückgehen und tatsächlich die Zeilen mit den Schauspielern wiederholen“, sobald sie groß rauskommen: „Das ist eine Option; ich sage nur.“
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/game-development/astarion-actor-neil-newbon-doesnt-get-why-games-like-arc-raiders-using-dull-as-hell-ai-for-voice-work-dont-go-back-and-actually-redo-the-lines-with-actors-once-they-make-it-big/
25 Kommentare
Actor recommends using actors. Typical. /s
Because money
Using a fraction of all those millions and millions to improve the game? Nah, those are going straight to the bonus pot for the executives of the parent company.
Oh yeah!
It’s coming…
Uhmmm…
Any moment, now…
Didn’t they set this up so the actors make residuals? A truly dynamic voice engine seems like one of the few implementations of LLMs in games that would be good, actually.
No salaries to pay (except a „prompt engineer“), no unions to deal with over fair pay etc, etc, etc
„Cost saving through AI enabled workflow and assets“ sounds better to shareholders than „We paid a real person a fair wage for their time and skill“
Why do people print stuff instead of asking a guy to fabricate? Its cheaper. Its faster.
Regardless of your stance on AI, this just seems silly.
Why wouldn’t company ever go back and spend more money on voice actors AFTER becoming successful? Clearly their success is not reliant on voice actors being used.
Like yes, AI voices aren’t as good as human voices, but it clearly doesn’t matter in this case since the game still became a success.
If you buy a home that has cheap paint on the walls, the previous owner isn’t going to come back and repaint it with higher quality paint after it sells because now they have the money for it.
EDIT: there are edge cases like Disco Elsyium where this is not correct, but broadly I believe the point stands. Studios don’t have motivation to spend a bunch of money fixing voice work after success (unless it’s a dialogue heavy game and they are adding to it while working on a re-release).
Because you risk breaking something for an extremely minimal gain.
They should.
This is such a nothing burger article. They used voice actors for a text to speech system in a game that has little dialogue.
During crunch on a limited budget: Just get the minimum out the door, we can revisit it afterwards once we start making money.
After release and they start making money: No, I don’t think I will.
The ai voices are so bad
Probably because it doesn’t matter for a game like Arc Raiders. Players are not playing that game for the deep emotional impact of the NPCs. What would Neil, or anyone, say about the matter if they didn’t have any voices?
This is the only reason I’m not playing the game, which sucks because I was really interested.
These small „unimportant“ roles are important to people’s careers. I have no interest in supporting the displacement of people’s livelihoods.
They already made it big. Why waste the money on a product people already bought?
I was under the impression the AI voice was the voice changer for proxy chat? Did he or I get it wrong?
This is ***the*** thing I hate about ARC Raiders. They could have easily hired VOs for the minimal quest story presented in the game recording some additional elements for shop interactions.
The AI voices are easily the worst part of the game. I really wanted to engage with the story but when your characters are wooden and lifeless, it just doesn’t inspire one to care about them.
if it’s made X amount of money with what it’s got, and people love it–why would they go and change things?
Most complaints are when people take something that’s working well and then they mess with the formula.
I don’t agree that AI should be used for ANY of this stuff… but why would they go and change up their winning formula by paying out for new voices?
Employee doesn’t want his job replaced by AI, more at 8
I feel like if he has a small point in there but it’s lost by using Arc Raiders as an example and delivered it like a whiny b.
Arc Raiders doesn’t have enough dialogue or meaningful narrative to warrant spending money on voice actors. IMO, real actors voices wouldn’t have any add-value in this type of game.
I don’t have an example of a game in the way he’s referring to, where AI voives hurt the characters/game authenticity, but one came to mind immediately in a „what if“ scenario that made me understanda little bit of his statement, or where some of it might be based.
I loved Dispatch!
The characters were all so unique and quirky. That studio did an amazing job casting the voice actors, which personally drew me in more as I played the game. There’s a lot of dialogue, meaningingful tone infections, a real need for human authenticity to entice audiences audibly and make the characterscome to life.
Trying to understand Neil’s statement pertaining Arc Raiders lost me completely, but I took some of the root of what he was saying to Dispatch.
I asked myself „Would I have been as drawn into the story and characters in Dispatch if they were AI voices?“ I don’t think so, and I believe it may have even been a turn off…but I can say with 1000% certainty that Aaron Paul’s voice saying „Hey, Raider“ or „Don’t Shoot“ would not have added any real value to Arc Raiders.
There are games who need real human voices and games that don’t, IMO.
Actor wants to know why actors aren’t getting jobs because money
Company using AI to save money on actors because money
What are we doing here?
Imagine that, the voice actor is voicing his dislike of the tool that will most likely replace him within 5 years, or greatly supplant him.
I always use Ikea as an example, and we’d better get used to this.
Before Ikea was so widespread, furnitures were made by someone locally and with better quality. But after it became so common, furnitures were synonymous with Ikea unless you go for design, which is not something common people buy.
After a while, people forget that furnitures CAN be made out of real wood, and can have decent craftmanship. Ikea became the new standard, and old expectations were gone.
This will happen to art in general too.
Because just the bare minimum is enough for most people. Just a functional chair is good enough for people. So is „just a voice“ that tells people „don’t shoot“. After a while, we will forget about games with good voice acting. Unless you’re a voice actor or someone who cares about quality, most people don’t care when their expectations are met.
So brace yourself, we’re going to get used to a lot of „just good enough“ because there’s simply no alternative.