I really hope this doesnt take off. I tried out Star Trek: Infinite and the tutorial uses an AI voice. It just sounded bizarre and jarring, completely took me out of the experience.
This deal solves the problem you're encountering, because it allows game companies to use real voices to generate dialogue. It will sound a hell of a lot better than the 100% AI generated voices you dislike.
And it will protect voice actors' jobs because the deal effectively requires new contracts for each use out of scope of the previous contract (i.e., the "opt out" language), and it encourages game companies to continue to rely on voice actors rather than switch to 100% AI generated.
Without this deal, game devs will just go 100% AI (and the tech will improve dramatically), and within a year or two, game voice actors will have no jobs to contract.
This is especially important in light of the trend toward dynamically generated dialogue in RPGs, etc. Without allowing an AI to train on real voice actors, dynamically generated dialogue will have to be 100% AI generated (no human voice involvement).
Voice acting in all fields is already a diminishing market because of AI generated voices. One of my coworkers had to get a job where I work because his VA jobs basically dried up. This agreement stanches the bleeding by permitting the use of AI trained on VAs (but only allowing use on a per-contract basis). Without that permission, AI would just be trained on open source / freely available voice samples, and there would be no contracts, and VAs would just .... not exist anymore.
I disagree with it “solving” the problem. I’ve yet to hear an AI voice that actually works/sounds like an actual person. I’ve heard sentences or two that are somewhat passable at times, but never enough for actual dialogue. Regardless, your entire comment also does not address the issue presented at all, that voice actors did not agree with this deal.
Clearly you haven’t seen the videos of Biden, Trump and others playing Minecraft… Because man that works… And probably that wasn’t the latest technology.
I have. If you think those are perfect replicas then I have a bridge to sell you. Go listen to them again, they’re close-ish but there is always something a little off that sticks out when listening to it.
If I have to listen close-ish then they don’t stick out or they do very little so sounds good enough to me. Let again we don’t need exact replicas for gaming.
Plus probably lot of usage would be to pregenerate stuff not realtime so they can fix specific cases where it sounds weird by editing or similar.
I agree. The key factor is getting this settled before some smart people get this working seemlessly. It’s stupid to hear that there wasn’t any unionised info decisions for a union though. I guess you ask the union to speak for you but it’s the unions job to speak back.
extreeeeeme doubt. The moment an AI has to inflect emotion it really fucks it up. You’ll spend 5 hours and $200 of compute costs getting it to say “Great, thanks” sarcastically, when an actor could do it in a single take as part of doing the entire script.
Honestly I just don’t think a lot of people will care. They’ll just get used to the lower quality. AI only has to be ‘good enough to still sell’. Do you really think that gamers are the consumers that are going to be ones to fight back against it? The same consumers that have rolled over to basically every other exploitative practice ever conceived of?
I think people will be bothered if the voice acting in their games sounds like it could have been done by Stephen Hawking (or with less exaggeration, like an actor doing their first reading of a script).
at the levels we’re talking - maybe an indie studio could deliberately, stylistically, pull it off. But a AAA studio? To whom their VO budget is less than what they pay an executive. It just leaves them open to competitors making a game with good voice acting, and their own game getting panned in the press.
Speaking of Star Trek and AI voices… Majel Barrett supposedly recorded her voice so that it could be used in the future by software to make her talk again.
So fuck Google Assistant or whatever. Where’s my Enterprise Computer app for me to talk to?
The finals uses ai voices for announcers and I could not tell the difference so there’s definitely something there. I think it works in that setting because the inflections is so set.
Accessibility options are good. Not everyone is a god gamer with the reflexes of a 14-year old hopped up on Adderall and Red Bull. Some people just want to enjoy the story and the atmosphere of a game and it should be normal for us to let them.
So much this! I love a challenging game but sometimes you just want to experience the game without the frustration, and lowering the difficulty for yourself has zero impact on people who prefer the original or higher difficulty
Black myth wukong would be so great with some difficulty options. I’m sure the rest of it story is great, but if I get stuck for a week on a boss I’m going to stop caring about that story.
It’s true I haven’t played the Elden Ring expansion, and I guess that’s the most difficult one now so it’s required to have played it to be able to parade around your gamer credentials? Whatever that’s supposed to mean? To me gaming is about enjoying a medium of culture, not a dick measuring contest. I’ve played Dark Souls, I’ve played Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Sister Friede, I’ve beaten Malenia.
Reading comprehension, even more challenging than dark souls nowadays eh? No idea what you’re even going on about now, but glad you got your nice rehearsed rant off your chest.
The main souls games have already gotten progressively more and more “””accessible”””, somewhat to the detriment of what originally made them appealing. Options are a mutually preferable alternative - people that enjoyed the original gameplay would still have their torture, or you can play on games journalist difficulty and have basically the same experience as watching someone else play on twitch.
There‘s a potential discussion to be had about how much of the Soulsborne/-like experience is about overcoming difficulty - and let’s be honest, the vast majority of people won‘t finetune difficulty but just go as easymode as possible - but on the other hand I strongly dislike elitism in games and in the end it should be on the player if they wanna potentially ruin their own experience or not, as such I agree with you.
Would Dark Souls have ever become the iconic game it is and FROM/Miyazaki the iconic devs they are with an easymode (in their games)? Hard to say.
I‘m always happy to see these options especially in indie games, which so often go crazy hard on difficulty towards the end (Celeste endgame for example).
Yeah, is a double edged sword. But if it makes more people to stick to the game rather than abandoning it, is nice.
My brother has Elden Ring for PS5 sitting on the shelf. The only serious playtime he’s had was a year ago when I visited him and made some character progress. Now, he keeps asking if I’ll play it again during my next visit. I always tell him, ‘No, I’m good-it’s a great game, but I’m coming over for peace and relaxation, not to get frustrated.
I usually start on easy mode and then steadily increase difficulty as I go. Nothing will make me refund a game faster than being 20 minutes in and dying 74 times in an impossible encounter. LoP is one of those games.
That’s kinda the point of Souls games though. The encounter isn’t impossible, and once your skills and attitude change, you get through it - even though the encounter itself didn’t change a bit.
I’m a perfect game sure, but most of these are far from perfect. They often don’t explain mechanics, rely heavily on changing Metas, RNG, pure chance, reflexes that some people just will not have no matter what their attitude or mindset is, and so on. Let’s have it, these games are FULL of jank.
At the end of the day, the “pros” don’t need to adjust their difficulty if they don’t want to. More options is never a bad thing.
Agreed, it’s a great idea. I don’t even think I would have been good at soulslike games when I was 14. I just don’t have the patience for those sorts of constant boss battles where it takes so many hits to kill the boss but you die in 1 or 2.
You hit the nail on the head. Soulslikes aren’t about difficulty, they’re about patience. And when school was the only thing I had to worry about I had patience. Now that I have to fight for 30 minutes of game time I don’t. Great decision by the devs!
Not everyone is a god gamer with the reflexes of a 14-year old hopped up on Adderall and Red Bull. Some people just want to enjoy the story and the atmosphere of a game and it should be normal for us to let them.
Not everyone just wants to enjoy the story. Some people want a challenge which requires the reflexes of a 14 year old hopped up on Adderall.
Why should every single game be changed to suit your specific play style?
Instead of demanding their games change, maybe you could just accept its okay some audiences have different likes than you and just play the ones that cater to your style?
I have to be honest here and say I don’t understand where you’re coming from at all.
Why should every single game be changed to suit your specific play style?
Literally nobody is asking for this. Accessibility options, not “permanently and irrevocably reduce the difficulty of all games”. The good thing about options is that they’re option-al. If you want the game to remain challenging, the presence of accessibility options does not affect you in the slightest. You can just ignore them and go on with your day, enjoying the game just as it was.
I have to be honest here and say I don’t understand where you’re coming from at all.
Thats okay! Thanks for asking. I’m coming from the place that video games are art.
If games are art, then I choose to support artists, even if they want to make weird or unconventional art. If an artist has a vision which clashes with my own I want them to be able to follow their vision that instead of always conforming to “general audiences”.
As to the rest of your comment I already said first thing accessibility options are good so I’m not sure what got miscomminicated there.
B. The game is a product that they want to sell to more people, adding difficulties sells more
Sure. Not not necessarily untrue.
I don’t see the issue either way
My stances is forced here. I support the artists.
Unfortunately, supporting artists means sometimes you have to disagree with the businessmen when the two groups disagree.
Selling microtransactions and skins and deluxe editions and pre-order exclusive content, etc, etc all “sells more” (or at least makes more money).
If the artists feel for whatever reason adding more difficulties is too much to manage or prevents them from making the experience they want to make, I have to take the side of the artist.
There’s always going to be an argument the product needs to change to make more money, that’s not the art I find super interesting.
Why care what audience it’s conforming to, you’ll either enjoy the game or you won’t?
Because I think of the people who make games as artists and it pisses me off to think of some guy in a suit pressing his fingers into the Mona Lisa and pestering Da Vinci to make her smile and show cleavage so it can sell more.
I get that a business needs to make money, but those should be decisions the artists are in the room for at least.
It’s especially weird to have all that time dedicated to something nobody cares about. Who goes looking to see if a game or movie was made using Dolby?
But do you as that person need to know that fact every time you launch the game or is finding out about it before you buy it from it’s technical information sufficient?
You can care about surround sound options, but a non skippable splash screen on every launch gives you zero information or use.
Nobody is advocating for the sound to play at startup. The comment that started this conversation specifically uses the word “looking”. We’re just saying people do pay attention to what kind of surround sound something has.
It must be weird to care about being reminded of what surround sound the game is using everytime u play it? Nobody’s saying they don’t care about sound quality, nor options. Idk how u can read this thread and that be your takeaway. It should be on the box/product description, no need for a splash screen in the game is what the argument is about…
I was originally responding to the comment about looking for surround sound options and was not trying to defend the sounds. Obviously, the info on the box is usually the best way to tell.
But as we discuss it, some use cases for the sound come to mind.
If the media is just a file on a hard drive or if the original packaging is lost or damaged, I might appreciate having the sound to indicate what settings to use on the receiver.
And honestly beyond all that… Who cares if somebody does like having the sound play every time? We all do weird shit.
Dolby (and others) have determined that it is in the best interest of their brand to put this alongside developers, producers, publishers, and others. It is now part of their license agreement.
Okay, and their ego maniacs for thinking they’re that big of a part of the game to be credited everytime. That’s why most people in the thread applaud the move.
This game leaves behind a legacy of extremely funny poor decisions and mistakes, culminating in becoming one of the few games that got to be shut down twice.
Games as a Service wasn’t even the fatal flaw here. Brawlhalla is another platform fighter that is doing just fine off that model. The dev team for MultiVersus just couldn’t handle the project, for one reason or another.
A lot of speculation on the specifics of what went wrong, plenty of players looking for who to blame, but there will probably never be any reliable or concrete info on what exactly happened.
They said it about the DS at the time. It was meant to run in parallel with the GBA as a "premium" thing for adults. They said it about the SNES, too, actually.
This bit of random outrage is fun to me because it's something that has been Nintendo's official stance since the early 90s, but it's swung back around due to Don Mattrick being such a charisma black hole that what used to be the natural, go-to response to "how come the new, more advanced version is more expensive" has now become a genuine snafu.
And then there’s me, who bought the trilogy, and will now buy the duology, so I’m getting 4 games for $130.
Edit: why down vote this? Can you explain why this is off topic or otherwise down vote worthy? I’m not saying I’m being smart with these purchases 😆 I’m just saying it’s another situation. I’m buying these games for my kids as they love Mario.
Cool, thanks… I’m doing it for my kids. I know full well I’m being scammed. But my love for my kids doesn’t care. I love playing these games together with them and it’s worth every penny.
But where you are right now it’s like saying “I voted conservative” in the highest amount of democratic voters where you’ll get lynched for voted conservative.
I’m… I’m not bragging though? It’s just another situation/combination, like I said. And it’s been years now since I bought the 3D All Stars games, over time this doesn’t amount to a lot of money per year, or especially per month. My kids play all the time. The games have almost paid for themselves. 🥰 Watching them experience what I did when I was a kid. It’s been great.
Are people angry that I somehow “wasted” my money? I don’t get it.
Dunno.
But (I feel like) every cent paid to Nintendo is too much.
They make great games (at times) but demand so much more for so little progress it’s not quite justifiable anymore.
And some of Lemmy (probably) feel similar to that sentiment.
Edit: And if you have the money to justify the purchase, then feel free. If it makes you and your kids happy even more so :)
I agree that Nintendo is crummy for the price tag, and it’s a smoke screen for not having any AAA Mario or Zelda ready for the new console. But my nostalgia and my kids are just simply winning. It’s definitely a 🥰🤮 kind of situation. Can’t help myself. Icky…
Nintendo can sue me any day, I’m out here making RC hang gliders and making tiny 3 second games where the only purpose is to pull out a glider and put it away instantly.
And like every other DRM, it’s just going to be something that the people who bought the game and play it unaltered will be forced to deal with in one way or another… while those who modify the game, emulate or pirate it, won’t. I love DRMs. Nothing like feeling like a sucker for actually buying the game and not cracking it.
It shouldn’t be a problem if it’s properly implemented, but games are so broken these days and take months to fix if lucky that it’s insulting to paying customers. Properly implemented DRM is not a guarantee when games have been unoptimized even without it.
At the very least even if it runs beautifully it ends up being an annoyance on Steam Deck and offline play interrupting your game session as though you are the pirate as opposed to an actual customer who paid. While the pirates laugh at the experience you should be getting.
You realize that AAA is used to refer to the budget, scale, and expectations of the game, right? And that it’s more of a reboot than a remake, meaning it’s probably not going to be an arcade style game. They’re talking about their aims for the game, and trying to justify charging $60-70 for it beforehand.
If Rockstar made a fully-fledged open world Crazy Taxi game with the scale and quality of Red Dead or GTA, that is quite indisputably deserving of the “triple A” label. Putting aside where you draw the line for it to be considered AAA, they clearly mean that their goal is an AAA experience. It’s not that deep.
“This is a really random tidbit, but Moonrise Towers used to be two towers,” Vincke explained. “And now, we shipped with only one tower. And for a long time, there was actually the ruins of the second tower, and then we removed that also.
I was wondering about this all through that part of the game. I scoured every path I could figure out how to reach, inside and out, but ultimately found no second tower. Welp, that explains it.
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