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One idea I've had (heavily influenced by The Diamond Age, I must admit) - a premium video game experience where NPCs you meet are sometimes voiced/acted by acto

One idea I've had (heavily influenced by The Diamond Age, I must admit) - a premium video game experience where NPCs you meet are sometimes voiced/acted by actors hired real-time on-demand with face or even body mocap. The NPCs revert back to regular AI versions if an actor is unable to be hired at that time. The player could interact by speaking with their own voice, naturally role-playing the scene. This would of course be astonishingly expensive, but people are clearly willing to spend a lot of money on video games these days so there might be a market. You could create the company providing the real-time on-demand acting service to whatever game company wants to integrate with your services, either contracting or hiring actors to wait around for requests. They could even work from home if their internet setup is good enough. Reasons this sector might take off: recent greater consumer spending on video games (especially with the pandemic) & their normalization as a field of entertainment, recent greater consumer spending on online services where you pay to interact with actors (although they're all of the, er, amorous type), and the growing popularity of mixed reality driven by the release of Half Life: Alyx.

nafix 6y ago
That's a really cool idea. You should pursue it.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Sadly my specialty is in formal methods and distributed systems and I don't think I have any domain expertise: * No knowledge of acting or actors; never even been to LA * Never worked with mocap technology * Never worked with video game development * Never worked with voice or streaming services Maybe I can pick up some of this as a hobby. Anyway it's not really a novel idea (like I said, you can read this exact concept in The Diamond Age, a very popular novel among the tech crowd) so I'm sure someone is trying it. Who knows, we'll see in a few years!
Guest19023892 6y ago
I don't think this makes sense for a number of reasons. 1. As you said, the costs involved. You'd probably need to charge people something like $10 per interaction with a voice actor, plus $2 per minute. This makes for a very limited market. 2. Actors need to be waiting for a request on a wide range of characters since there would not be enough demand for them to consistently play the same character all the time. So, when a player triggers an interaction, there's going to be a delay as the actor is brought up to speed on their role, the person they're interacting with, the world they're in, etc. 3. When players return to a NPC, they'll likely be assigned a different actor since the previous one is either in another call or not working. This kind of ruins the premium interactions since the player remembers the voice and small details of the last conversation, but now the NPC has suddenly changed. 4. You're in the business of matching up adult voice actors with children playing games. You'll need a record of every single conversation because it's only a matter of time before you get reports of inappropriate conversations unfolding. 5. This isn't a long term business. Technology gets better each day at speaking and understanding human voice. It will replace the voice actors and it also solves all of the above issues.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Oh yeah, these are all great points for sure. (2) could probably be solved with game design (like how Mass Effect hides loading screens behind elevator rides and such). Actors are quite good at improv, but regardless they can restrict their availability to a certain number of characters they've learned. (3) is definitely an issue, could probably only be solved by having actors write notes after each interaction for the next ones to read. We have to remember that there are a lot of very, very talented actors out there and they can deal with all sorts of curveballs like that - benefits of having smart humans in the loop! Voices could possibly be postprocessed to all sound similar for a particular NPC. For (4) given the price I think the target market is mostly adults, but yes of course this would be a concern. For (5) I agree this enterprise is to some extent a bearish take on the near-term possibilities of AI.
- Impossible 6y ago
  None of this is a problem for immersive theater experiences. I think in this case you build a product that doesn't scale. This way you don't have to think about children playing games because you can enforce 18+. The cost per sessions doesn't matter if you find product market fit with your experiences. I know that SV startup types see games as disposable time wasters to sell microtransactions to whales, but if you think of it at ondemand high quality TTRPG sessions or scalable immersive theater I think there is a profitable business with a good sized market. Matching actors don't matter because you can do short form content and sessions, etc. The last point #5 puts the business in an even better position. If you can eventually automate the product you can scale parts of it much better. Also remember players aren't paying for voice actors to read lines, they're paying for someone that can react and be improvisational. If you play AI Dungeon (which is state of the art), you'll see that AI is still a ways off from this.
- lobotryas 6y ago
  A lot of these issues can be solved with ML ala “deepfakes” Purchase a license to use an actor’s voice/likeness. Have them complete a training set. Now you have their digital doppleganger who can act almost any role required of them.
  - 6y ago
Impossible 6y ago
I've seen working demos of this in early stage stealth format. I'm a pretty strong believer that it will happen. It requires some cultural shifts and won't be a big market instantly. We'll probably see a few players try and fail at first

nafix 6y ago

That's a really cool idea. You should pursue it.

ahelwer 6y ago
Sadly my specialty is in formal methods and distributed systems and I don't think I have any domain expertise: * No knowledge of acting or actors; never even been to LA * Never worked with mocap technology * Never worked with video game development * Never worked with voice or streaming services Maybe I can pick up some of this as a hobby. Anyway it's not really a novel idea (like I said, you can read this exact concept in The Diamond Age, a very popular novel among the tech crowd) so I'm sure someone is trying it. Who knows, we'll see in a few years!

Guest19023892 6y ago

I don't think this makes sense for a number of reasons. 1. As you said, the costs involved. You'd probably need to charge people something like $10 per interaction with a voice actor, plus $2 per minute. This makes for a very limited market. 2. Actors need to be waiting for a request on a wide range of characters since there would not be enough demand for them to consistently play the same character all the time. So, when a player triggers an interaction, there's going to be a delay as the actor is brought up to speed on their role, the person they're interacting with, the world they're in, etc. 3. When players return to a NPC, they'll likely be assigned a different actor since the previous one is either in another call or not working. This kind of ruins the premium interactions since the player remembers the voice and small details of the last conversation, but now the NPC has suddenly changed. 4. You're in the business of matching up adult voice actors with children playing games. You'll need a record of every single conversation because it's only a matter of time before you get reports of inappropriate conversations unfolding. 5. This isn't a long term business. Technology gets better each day at speaking and understanding human voice. It will replace the voice actors and it also solves all of the above issues.

ahelwer 6y ago
Oh yeah, these are all great points for sure. (2) could probably be solved with game design (like how Mass Effect hides loading screens behind elevator rides and such). Actors are quite good at improv, but regardless they can restrict their availability to a certain number of characters they've learned. (3) is definitely an issue, could probably only be solved by having actors write notes after each interaction for the next ones to read. We have to remember that there are a lot of very, very talented actors out there and they can deal with all sorts of curveballs like that - benefits of having smart humans in the loop! Voices could possibly be postprocessed to all sound similar for a particular NPC. For (4) given the price I think the target market is mostly adults, but yes of course this would be a concern. For (5) I agree this enterprise is to some extent a bearish take on the near-term possibilities of AI.
Impossible 6y ago
None of this is a problem for immersive theater experiences. I think in this case you build a product that doesn't scale. This way you don't have to think about children playing games because you can enforce 18+. The cost per sessions doesn't matter if you find product market fit with your experiences. I know that SV startup types see games as disposable time wasters to sell microtransactions to whales, but if you think of it at ondemand high quality TTRPG sessions or scalable immersive theater I think there is a profitable business with a good sized market. Matching actors don't matter because you can do short form content and sessions, etc. The last point #5 puts the business in an even better position. If you can eventually automate the product you can scale parts of it much better. Also remember players aren't paying for voice actors to read lines, they're paying for someone that can react and be improvisational. If you play AI Dungeon (which is state of the art), you'll see that AI is still a ways off from this.
lobotryas 6y ago
A lot of these issues can be solved with ML ala “deepfakes” Purchase a license to use an actor’s voice/likeness. Have them complete a training set. Now you have their digital doppleganger who can act almost any role required of them.
- 6y ago

Impossible 6y ago

I've seen working demos of this in early stage stealth format. I'm a pretty strong believer that it will happen. It requires some cultural shifts and won't be a big market instantly. We'll probably see a few players try and fail at first