This solution shouldn’t be that hard, just create an AI model for every individual “voice” or character and then license it for use or receive royalties on it.
They’ll probably use it as filler for side dialogue and then have the VA do all the main lines to really nail the human presence, since AI isn’t as good at emotional inflection.
Honestly this would be a good method. Limit AI voice acting to only single use NPC such as Town folk when you visit a town and then have like shopkeepers or party members or the main character actual voice. You aren’t expecting much out of those temporary characters anyway so them having weird Oddity voices isn’t going to be super jarring for the environment. Plus it will help you as the player realize which characters are supposed to be part of the story and which ones are there for just Scenic effect
I mean even main characters could have AI generated dialogue, you have the VA do the voice until there is enough sampling data to train a model on, and then you can use that for any small or side content.
Then just have that characters AI model be owned by the actor and use of the voice gives them royalties for it. Then you can supplement actual lines with generated banter, etc. While still giving the VA compensation for their voice and likeness.
I’m torn, because on the one hand, the logistics of constantly recording new lines for minor stuff is really annoying. Imagine you’re playing a live-service game that really needs a certain balance patch, but that balance patch is reliant on a very slight change to a voice line (for instance, reducing the time it takes for a character to perform a special attack. To take an Overwatch example, maybe a certain archer is voicing his ultimate ability too quietly). Having to call someone in just for that is costly and unproductive.
But, we’re talking about delivering the source of someone’s work and livelihood (as well as all their creative influence, exaggerative tones, and delivery) into an algorithm. The line where it would go beyond convenience into worker-reduction efforts is going to be hard to draw.
I would rather that the voice actor retains the rights to their voice, even if it’s put into an AI algorithm. Thus, if the developers want to make a small change to a voice line, they still need to get approval for some AI-generated correction - and the actor would have the right to say “No, that one sounds terrible. I’m only going to agree to re-delivering this one myself.” Similarly, actors could approve limited sets of explicitly-defined live AI usage, for instance pronouncing the player’s name. Granted, some companies would become annoyed at actors being too inflexible, just like they have disagreements with actors today.
I’m definitely worried about too much signing-over of voice identity. I think it’s very easy to cut humans out of the equation that way, which not only damages the health of the industry, but also reduces creative output.
While I agree, the corpos dont and will fight tooth and nail to cut the cost anyway.
So unless the US gets the stones to collar and muzzle these businesses (they wont) we have to work around these monsters who will bite your arm off to skip lunch
In my mind, they should be paying the actor the same for the new lines regardless of whether they opt for them to come back in and re-record or use AI to generate the new line. The actor’s product (their voice) isn’t worth any less, but the company could save money by streamlining the creation of a new line through simplified logistics. This way the company has some benefit while preserving the actor’s livelihood.
Of course there’s no way these companies are going to want to pay full price for these new lines, since it’s an obvious point where they can pressure performers to accept a lower rate.
this seems soon-to-be the Embracer cut. this company fucking sucks man. hate this shit
VGC reported earlier this month that Free Radical was at threat of being closed just two years after it was established, as part of huge company-wide cuts at Embracer and its owned publishers.
Although Embracer has yet to publicly confirm Free Radical’s position, sources told VGC that Wingefors has now acknowledged in a company e-mail that the Nottingham, UK-based company could be closed on December 11, following the completion of a consultation process.
Borrowing money was cheap until it wasn't. When they bought the old Eidos stuff, everyone thought Square Enix was taking crazy pills. Now, given that everyone's cutting back right now, it looks more like they knew something Embracer didn't.
I think regardless of that deal, they were already on the debt-go-round for long enough it would’ve caught up to them eventually. I can’t imagine this was gonna be “one last job then we go clean.” The market would continue to demand more and faster growth until they hit the wall one way or the other.
I honestly don’t think anyone was taken back by Eidos being sold off. The biggest mess Square Enix did was let IOI go while putting out The Quiet Man. Hitman 2? No! The Quiet Man, one of the worst games of the decade, YES! MORE PLEASE! Eidos hadn’t made a great game in a while but IOI had just put out a rather successful Hitman 1 season with large seasonal plans to keep it going. Now they are working on a James Bond game that everyone is excited about and Square is looking like an idiot. While Eidos will probably flop and flounder until they can get back their roots and build something substantial.
Really? I didn’t hear that people were shocked at thinking 300 million USD was that little of money for Eidos. It seems about right to me. Especially through Square Enix’s eyes where they had just put out GOTG which didn’t sell well enough to them.
Square Enix was going to close down or sell IO Interactive as they had pulled funding and were talking to other companies to sell them off. IOI employees triggered the MBO clause and made SE sell to them. This was only 2017.
2017 is ancient history compared to the current economic climate, and that sale came out of an attempt to make games episodic to their detriment. $300M seemed low considering the buyer makes that money back with probably 1.5 Tomb Raider games, and Deus Ex and all of those other Eidos properties are a bonus. Yes, the deal seemed crazy for Square Enix at the time.
They sold 9 million copies of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I think I'm in the ballpark. And again, that's only Tomb Raider, when they're not blowing their money on a live service Avengers game that everyone knew was a bad idea.
Marvel’s Avengers was mainly Crystal Dynamics, not Eidos-Montreal. I don’t think another Tomb Raider would sell exactly as well as Shadow Of The Tomb Raider. Also, come to think of it, I don’t think Eidos-Montreal has the Tomb Raider IP.
Embracer got all of these studios and most of their IPs in the sale, the two biggest being Tomb Raider and Deus Ex. I focused on Tomb Raider because it's the most valuable one in that purchase and almost makes the sale worth it on its own, or it seemed to before the economy turned, but they got plenty more besides just Tomb Raider.
Hmm, that’s a good point, and looking back I didn’t realize it was 300 million for both Crystal and Eidos… that’s pretty cheap considering the IP attachment but I think Square Enix was also looking to shed a lot of their studios.
They bought everything up because loans were cheaper and this positions Embracer as a strong IP holder. They now have lots of IPs they own and while you might think “Well they got no one to make the IPs for them!” that might be true in-house, although they certainly have plenty of successful studios still they are busy they have their pick of IPs. Additionally, you can license out IPs for a lot of money with additional funding from the actual sale of the game while a third-party publisher foots the bill entirely.
Even simpler, just having that IP denies the competition access to it. In their eyes that creates value and at the end of the day that's all that matters to these companies holding IP. They can just sit on it.
It’d be really cool if developers would stop remaking old shit and instead, start creating new shit. But I get it- remaking old stuff is cheap and people eat it up. I mean, look at Hollywood. Same thing. And gaming is all about cash cows now.
Once you turn what you love doing into a business, there’s no going back. There are still people deeply passionate about making games, but that’s just not the reality of these massive studios. They’re in for the money, and the leadership aren’t even… gamers themselves, somehow
Start playing more indie games with passion behind them and less AAA money grabbing half polished turds they keep pumping out. It’s the only way out of this mess.
That’s basically all I do at this point, and it’s been really nice. A lot of genuinely fantastic experiences. Always labor of love, a game they’d love to play themselves
I personally don’t mind remakes as long as they’re well done. The thing is one the greater horror films of all time, it also happens to be a remake. The Departed is a great cops and robbers movie, it’s also a remake. Oceans eleven, Casino Royale, magnificent seven are all remakes. But people don’t remember the good example of remakes, only the bad ones.
And also in gaming. System Shock remake is great. Residential evil remake, great. Demons souls, great. There’s nothing wrong with getting good remakes, there are plenty of games that absolutely could have a remake. Like I would 100% want a New Vegas remake, one that does Vegas (freeside and strip) and Legion justice. After all the remake doesn’t need to be 1 to 1 with the original
When it comes to Max Payne I’m not sure how they could make it better than the original, but I’m not going to instantly write it off.
you’re complaining about Remedy remaking one of their older and most famous games when their last three releases have all been new IP, so i feel your criticism is misplaced. this isn’t coming at the expense of anything “new”.
If the opt for adding a GM mode and level editor they may just have the ultimate digital tabletop for D&D. Not only would it instantly be better than every other implementation I tried, the basegame additionally also managed to improve upon the D&D ruleset by adding Weapon skills for martial classes. They would not even need to add more content. There are already mods that add the missing spells, feats and subclasses.
This is exciting of course, but alas, I haven’t touched my switch since I got a steam deck. There’s a few Nintendo games I would want to play but I’m not sure I’ll buy a new console for them.
Pikmin 4 just dropped. Super fun! I don’t know where else you’d play that. I haven’t even had time to touch LOZ TOTK, but that’s life stuff. There’s plenty to play on Switch. And there’s reason to play on the lighter package as well.
Unfortunate, but sometimes you need to cut support for 12 year old hardware in order to do more with your game. I come from MMOs, and this sort of thing would regularly happen when a new expansion would be announced. Minimum specs rise, and support for old stuff gets cut.
yeahhhh it makes sense, just kind of wild because live service games THRIVE on old hardware. Stuff like Fortnite and Overwatch has kept the PS4 platform pretty damn lively, and i’m sure it accounts for a significant chunk of sales, so seeing a live service game cut off that revenue stream is interesting. The hardware may be 12 years old, but the new hardware has sat in a pretty steep price point for its entire history so far, so somehow this still feels premature.
Yeah, I’m sure they ran the numbers and a decision like this didn’t come lightly. Also, since this is a multiplatform game, there’s a good chance the displaced ps4 users already have another device they can play the game on. Ultimately though, if the devs want to grow the game, then these decisions have to be made. Back when I played, after every major patch, you were guaranteed to see people lamenting that they could no longer play the game because their device no longer had enough storage.
While I understand it’s not a 1:1 comparison, Final Fantasy 14 dropped support for PS3 in 2017, and the console was only 11 years old at the time.
While I understand it’s not a 1:1 comparison, Final Fantasy 14 dropped support for PS3 in 2017, and the console was only 11 years old at the time.
I don’t want to say too much bc you acknowledged the apples to oranges comparison, but I’ll say the quiet part out loud for others: technology advanced way more in those 11 years than it has in the last 12 since the PS4 launch. The only conceivable limiting factor at this phase is storage speed, and as others have pointed out, Genshin on PS4 is currently MISERABLE with load times. So like, it makes sense, but still feels wrong.
It is. But if you read interviews and watch the podcasts where they talk about it they seemed pretty confident they could make it look just as good. I’m skeptical but hopeful.
i think the article specifies that this is a new forecast based upon the Trump admin solidifying the final shape of the tariffs. So it seems unlikely at this phase that they will fold the current numbers, but we all know how smooth and predictable the Trump admin is.
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