Ubisoft, the developer of popular games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, has announced that it is using an AI ghostwriting tool to write dialogue for some of its games, aiming to make NPCs (non-playable characters) individually interesting and realistic make , with less manual labor.
The company states that the tool won’t replace video game scriptwriters, but instead allows facilitating the task of writing “barks,” which are phrases or sounds made by the NPCs during a triggered event . Ghostwriter generates early drafts to give writers more time to focus on the storytelling itself.
Chatter and barking from the crowd are central elements of player immersion in games – NPCs talking to each other, enemy dialogue during combat or a change triggered by entering an area, all of this offers a more realistic experience of the world and gives the Players have a sense that the game around them exists outside of their actions,” Ubisoft wrote in a blog post.
However, both require time and creative effort on the part of the writers that could be expended on other essential elements of the plot. Ghostwriter buys this time, but leaves the writers with a degree of creative control.
As games get bigger, it becomes more difficult for authors to make NPCs interesting and realistic. How do you make each interaction with them—especially if there are hundreds—separately? That’s where Ghostwriter comes in, an in-house AI tool developed by La Forge, Ubisoft’s research and development division.
Ghostwriter does not replace the video game screenwriter, but makes one of his most tedious tasks easier: writing boats. Ghostwriter actually generates the initial drafts of Barks – phrases or noises made by NPCs during a triggered event – giving screenwriters more time to refine the narrative elsewhere. Ben Swanson, R&D researcher at La Forge Montreal, is the creator of Ghostwriter.
The Beginnings of Ghost Writers
Ben’s interest in creative applications of natural language processing began during his PhD in Computer Science at Brown University, where he took a course in digital literature with two creative writers from Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. This course introduced Ben to the idea of creating artworks using generative models and has since explored the possibilities of combining this technology and creative writing. This interest led him to Google where he worked at Stadia Games and Entertainment in 2019, then from Latitude to AIDungeon where he continued his research on machine learning and published an article on the subject in 2021.
In 2021, Ben was inspired to join Ubisoft as he was intrigued by a GDC talk by the Watch Dogs team. I actually attended a Watch Dogs: Legion narrative design conference and was very impressed, he explains. “I thought I’d like to work on something like this with professional writing teams, so I applied.”
This coincidence allowed Ben to get in touch with Ubisoft La Forge, which was already looking for a solution to some of its technological issues. “It was the perfect timing because they were looking for someone who could do exactly what I wanted to do.
Ben’s desire to work with professional and like-minded teams materialized when he began working with team members from La Forge in China, whose expertise in UX/UI and web application development has enabled the creation of a tool that is now ready to go : ghostwriter.
The spirit of the AI is present
Ghostwriter is the result of conversations with narrative designers that revealed a challenge, a challenge that Ben believes could be solved with an AI tool. Chatter and barking from the crowd are central elements of player immersion in games – NPCs talking to each other, hostile dialogue during combat, or a switch triggered by entering an area are all elements that offer a more realistic experience of the world and make the player feel like they want the game around them to exist outside of their actions. However, both types of dialogue require writers’ time and creative efforts that could be expended on other essential plot elements. Ghostwriter buys this time, but leaves the writers with a degree of creative control.
Rather than writing the initial drafts themselves, Ghostwriter allows authors to select and refine the patterns generated, Ben explains. In this way, technology is a tool used by teams to support them in their creative journey, with every interaction and feedback coming from the members using it.
Ubisoft has introduced Ghostwriter, an AI tool that generates NPC barks, the phrases said by characters when players interact with the game world. It should help screenwriters save time and create more realistic interactions.
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To summarize the process, writers first create a character and some type of interaction or expression they want to create. Ghostwriter then offers a number of variants from which the author can then freely choose and modify according to his needs. This process uses pairwise comparison as an evaluation and improvement method. This means that Ghostwriter offers two choices for each variant generated, which are compared and selected by the author. Once the choice is made, the tool learns from the preferred choice and becomes more efficient and accurate after thousands of people have made choices.
Challenges and worldwide support
Working with Ubisoft La Forge with this cutting-edge technology has not been without its challenges. AI in video games is not a new concept as most associate this technology with NPC behavior. However, this concept of machine learning is restrictive in its real-world implications, as the industry now sees a place and need not only for AI tools, but also for machines that can learn through feedback. Ben’s research and work on ghostwriting, as well as his collaboration with teams around the world, has resulted in an AI infrastructure at Ubisoft that recognizes this potential, while working hand-in-hand with narrative designers to guide their storytelling and creativity support games.
However, working with like-minded teams and adopting the tool from the Ubisoft design was only half the battle, as Ben explains that the goal now is to support production adoption of the tool. Working closely with authors allows the team to understand their needs to better tailor the tool to each game’s unique worlds. Technologies such as ghostwriting require that authors not only learn to use the tool, but also integrate it into their video game production processes .
The team’s goal is to bring these AI capabilities to narrative designers, who will eventually be able to create their own AI system, customized to their own design needs. To do this, they created an easy-to-use website called Ernestine, which allows anyone to create their own machine learning models to be used in Ghostwriter. They hope teams will consider ghostwriting before they start storytelling and create their models with a vision in mind, making the technology an integral part of the production pipeline.
Source: Ubisoft
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