Ubisoft announced “Teammates,” an “artificial intelligence experiment that will change the game” and “enhance the player experience.”
The developer/publisher said the project is “more than just talk” and will add “depth to the gameplay, going beyond AI chatbots and turning NPCs into real teammates” when you play the first-person shooter.
The news came after Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told investors yesterday that Generative artificial intelligence is integrated throughout the companycalling it a “revolution” for video games, as big as the transition from 2D to 3D.
“First and foremost, Teammate is an experimental research project, albeit a playable one,” Ubisoft. explained. “Building on first-person shooter mechanics, players take on the role of a resistance member in a dystopian future, tasked with going through an enemy base to find five missing members of their team.
“In the short game level, players must recover the final memories of those who were sent away earlier to discover their fate, while fighting off squads of enemies along the way. In addition to the AI voice assistant, Jaspar, the player is accompanied by two NPC squad members, Pablo and Sofia, who also have new advanced capabilities.”
AI assistant Jaspar can highlight enemies or objects, provide details of history and lore, change game settings on the fly, or even pause the game – all with simple and natural voice instructions.
“But more than that, he is a dynamic and compassionate character in the story,” the company added. “The core systems can process information available in the Teammates experiment environment, as well as contextual cues, interpreting and adapting to the player's voice input and actions.”
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You can also directly command or “chat” with your NPC teammates, Sofia and Pablo.
“Our early experiments showed that players quickly connected to AI-controlled NPCs and the concept of a voice assistant,” added GenAI Gameplay Director Xavier Manzanares.
“Jaspar helped players when they got lost or didn’t know what to do. He could access menus and settings and tell players more about the world and story. We really liked Jaspar and saw how a system like this could be interesting for a variety of games.”
“This technology opens the door to new, personalized experiences,” added Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer Rémi Laborie. “Player input shapes character reactions in real time, something traditional development can't achieve. We also provide a complete pipeline that takes players from onboarding to debriefing, which is the first.”
The team said it is “aware of the criticisms of AI in games” but insists the goal is “not to replace creatives, but rather to find ways to improve them by combining the strengths of technology and the human creativity and ingenuity that are critical to making games.”
“At first I had the same concerns as many others,” explained director Virginie Mosser. “But I've found that it's the exact opposite of taking a person out of the process. I still write the story and personalities of the characters, but instead of fixed lines, we create sort of fences that allow NPCs to improvise in the world but remain within the boundaries of the knowledge and motivations we've given them. They can improvise, but we still set the rules and control the story and characters.”
Finally, Ubisoft said that Teammates has already been made available to several hundred players through closed play testing. The company will continue to test and develop the technology, “building tools and gathering important feedback and suggestions from real players and creative teams within Ubisoft to improve and expand the systems they create, all with the philosophy of human creativity, ingenuity and curiosity at the core of their work.”
The news follows Ubisoft's trading halt, plunging the entire industry into massive speculation. Ubisoft later confirmed that this was due to problems with the new auditors.despite widespread rumors of a more ambitious acquisition.
