So they can Ubisoft their Ubisoft whilst they Ubisoft
Part of me is saddened by the fact that Ubisoft has trended towards every single negative I pre-emptively assumed they'd fall for back when I first picked up on the woes of the 'Ubisoft formula' a few years before that term became the mainstream consensus. And the other parts of me are just aghast and agog about how utterly clueless Ubisoft management truly appears to be concerning the optics to literally every single daily thing that the company does. It doesn't take no crystal ball or Nostradamus insight to perceive the most basic concepts of 'action meets consequence' in Ubisoft's world; but it seems that their higher management consists of true aliens with no grasp of basic human empathy of any sort. That is the only reason why I can see Ubisoft themselves posting a video on their own Youtube channel that already uses the title of a theoretical hitpiece against themselves. "Ubisoft is developing an AI ghostwriter to save Scriptwriters Time."
Do I need to record the bare basic problems with such a headline? Probably not, because you are not a robot totally lacking in presence and being; but seeing as how Ubisoft is, shall we entertain their rudimentary attitudes? Firstly, the fact that Ubisoft are taking the actual work away from humans thus reducing the amount they have to pay those humans to work, and providing the ever so subtle implication that they might one day give that AI more of a role if the human team doesn't 'prove their worth' or whatever dystopian attitude the studio runners are looking to set. Replacing humans with machines is perhaps the most lionizing red alarm that any company can embark on, and Ubisoft have rung that alarm with a seeming gusto that I and many others find just utterly perplexing.
Now for the time being this is being limited to the speech of NPC characters who populate the garishly over-big open worlds that Ubisoft seems to insist they're good at making despite nearly two whole console generations worth of proof otherwise. Ubisoft wants the machine to work on the dialogues that populate the open world around the player, probably figuring that such dialogues are unimportant enough to relegate to a machine. But here's a shocker for you, basic craft knowledge insists this isn't the case. Any narrative designer worth their salt will tell you that NPC world dialogue is another avenue for world storytelling, with the attitudes, topics and temperance of NPCs talking to one another painting the outlines of the world you're in. They may not be discussing mission pertinent information, but that doesn't make their conversations any less valuable in the grand tapestry that is artful game design.
Take it from a company that still cares about their open worlds, like Rockstar. Walk around Los Santos and listen to the NPCs talk, and you'll notice that a great many of their conversations contain their own little metajokes and humorous commentaries on modern American culture. As GTA is about satirizing American culture, this obviously sets the mood and creates an environment supplementary to the overall setting. Those aren't details that every player picks up on, obviously; but they're an extra layer of care and attention that the odd few players will pick up on and respect the amount of dedication and love that has touched every corner of this tailor made experience. Compare that with Oblivion, where NPCs throw random disjointed topics at one another picked by an algorithm and call it a 'chat'; and the unnatural stiltedness of it all becomes a meme in itself. Which direction does it sound like Ubisoft are currently heading in?
For me, I find the idea of 'saving time' for the scriptwriters concerning on two fronts. For one, Scriptwriting is a deeply iterative process of seeing what works for the moment, moving forward under those presumptions and going back and making tweaks where necessary; you rarely ever get it perfect the first time and it takes an intelligent self appraisal to see where improvements can be made. Secondly, scriptwriting is just something that takes time. Now typically that time is condensed and squashed and layered upon other parts of the script and brought back home to have nightmares over, but there is no circumventing that time put in to making a solid script. Now I understand that Ubisoft hasn't had a decent script in years now, so they must have forgotten how much work typically goes into that, but that's why we're all here. To remind them.
And perhaps the biggest head scratcher of them all: of all the most advanced AI writing bots on the market right now, including many made by companies who specialise in the development of AI; the weakness of the platform seems to be, by and large, creative writing. So why has Ubisoft hired the software to creatively write? Even the newest iteration of ChatGPT, independent from it's rampant lying, is regularly put to various tests to see how it fairs up to human averages; but time and time again what we get as a take-away is simply: technical papers it does well, creative writing papers lack in language diversity and narrative complexity. Which is... well that's obvious, isn't it? Computers can't create and store context; if they could we'd be having entirely different conversations about the overreach of AI right now. So why can't Ubisoft accept that?
I suppose from Ubisoft's perspective, their idea is to train their AI ghostwriter to write within the parameters of their scripts. Teach them specific context and verbiage so that the AI vomits out inoffensive and generic lines of chatter that the AI presumably then also voices in that unnatural gait which made half of Watch Dog Legion's cast so inhuman. Of course, a human would need to be writing that context, going through the dialogue, correcting obvious mistakes, looking over every single aspect of the output and trying to salvage useable text out of heartless drivel. Probably editing a lot of it but still going uncredited for being the only actual artist involved in the work. So in essence, Ubisoft have saved themselves having to pay an artists wage for doing the pick-up work of a artist. Really innovating the industry, guys.
It seems both gaudy and combative to paint Ubisoft as the inexcusable 'bad guys' of every single aspect of the game development space; but they just seem to compete for that role so vigorously! Even as they and other storied studios slowly shrivel down from the heights they once dominated, I can't help but cluck my tongue as I try to squint and remember a studio I used to be excited for. I played every Assassin's Creed, I greedily consumed every Ubisoft E3 show, I was sold by the pomp of the big company doing big things. But now, how abhorred in my mind those times are. My gorge rims at it. In many ways, this is Ubisoft quiet literally baring it's heart for all the world to peek at and realise that it was, all this time, totally synthetic and broken. That's the Ubisoft of 2023. On the bright side, they showed off some Watch Dogs Legion with the announcement so... Watch_Dogs 4 still a possibility?
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