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the one where darth vader gets clipfarmed
title is clickbait
According to Bloomberg I have a hot take: If every other kid is currently using ChatGPT/Gemini to get through school work today, “players won’t tolerate AI in games” takes are inevitably going to end up in “lol can you believe old timers used to believe this?” deck slides in the near future.
Similar to how most reasonable people would agree smartphones drive a lot of unhappiness– critics have great points!– but also personally average 6+ hours of screen time daily.
Anyone working in the industry in 2018 remembers the furious reaction by longtime Diablo fans to Blizzard’s announcement of a Diablo mobile title at Blizzcon. Critics who came away from that debacle with the takeaway “mobile: gamers don’t want it” absolutely missed the plot.
Poorly executed AI integration will definitely get dunked on, just like poorly executed mobile game announcements. The flip side is when done well AI won’t even register as an issue. Players will focus on how resonant the actual product or feature is, not the underlying tech stack. Which is the same as it ever was.
That brings us to AI Darth Vader!
AI VADER
It’s an interesting time for gaming: despite a ton of recent tailwinds the industry has been notoriously slow to embrace AI, particularly in flagship games with 100M+ monthly active users.
Some of this is likely due to fear of current player backlash or still-fresh memories of crypto gaming debacles from just a few years ago.
And you know what? Understandable.
That said, the drought broke recently when Epic Games x Google Gemini x Eleven Labs announced the launch of an AI Darth Vader NPC in Fortnite. After a little less than two weeks of stress-testing by one of the largest player bases in gaming the overall verdict is… overwhelmingly positive?
Good faith skeptics have largely responded with grudging admiration (Fortnite’s AI Darth Vader Is Unfortunately Very Funny.)
Most players have responded with a mix of curiosity, gleeful limit-testing (of course), and delight at how responsive Vader is:
Provoking him about Padme Amidala or mocking him as “good boy” can trigger Vader to un-ally with the party and seek immediate murderous vengeance
Asking about late rapper Juice World can get you an admiring eulogy about the rapper and the impact of his music on the galaxy
Trying to provoke a reaction with sexual innuendo can get Vader to sternly recommend you seek professional help
There were hiccups along the way as Vader responded to players gleefully clipfarming him by swearing, falling for bait, and generally crashing out. Honestly though? Pretty tame considering who Vader was up against.
Let’s face it: no AI safety plan is going to survive first contact with gamers.
On that note, Epic, Google, and Eleven Labs deserve their flowers. It was genuinely impressive how quickly they were able to whack-a-mole issues and get Vader to an entertaining-but-not-feral equilibrium without lobotomizing what made him amusing in the first place.
Epic also deserves credit for making several high EQ comms decisions before and during launch, including emphasizing:
James Earl Jones consented to AI allowing him to voice Vader even after death
His living family was on board with AI Darth Vader in Fortnite
Google wasn’t using player comms to train their models
PARTING THOUGHTS
Fortnite’s AI Vader collab feels closer to a nifty proof-of-concept than a watershed moment for revolutionary new AI NPCs. That said, it was nice to have a throwback moment of a AAA video game successfully acting as a proving ground for bleeding edge tech.
On a related note, if you’re the type of person who (reasonably, IMO) occasionally feels existential dread thinking about what’s going to happen in a future where AI has decimated knowledge work, shared sense of truth/reality, and human connection…
…consider playing Mimesis, the upcoming hit from ReLU Games where AI-powered NPCs trained on your team’s voice comms and movement patterns will try to trick you into trusting them so you can be hunted down and killed :D
The future doesn’t just have to be terrifying– it can be hilarious too!
The closed beta runs from June 4-6 and you can apply to be a tester here.