Ubisoft, a new game prototype with voice-controlled AI teammates that understand visual context and natural language. This “Teamates” project is based on the Neo NPCs that Ubisoft introduced with Nvidia in 2024 to show that the game’s AI can react naturally to players. A key difference this time around, aside from the complexity of the interactions supported by the prototype, is that teammates are already playable in a limited test with “a few hundred players,” Ubisoft says.
Although Ubisoft describes it as a playable “experimental research project,” Teammates still uses the basics of a first-person shooter. The prototype puts players in the role of a “member of the resistance in a dystopian future, tasked with traveling to an enemy base to find five missing members of their team”, with guidance from the game’s AI characters as the key to success. Ubisoft has developed three AI NPCs for the project: ‘Jaspar’, an AI assistant who knows the game’s history and can directly adjust the game’s settings, and ‘Pablo’ and ‘Sofia’, robotic characters who are physically present in the game and can respond to commands.
According to images shared with Engadget, Ubisoft’s AI characters not only understand voice commands, but also have a visual awareness of what the player is seeing. The instruction to “stand behind a barrel” made Sofia think about where the player was looking and position herself accordingly. In the version of Teammates available for closed play testing, Ubisoft is also using Jaspar to engage players and teach them the basics of the game. For the most part, the AI characters seemed overly chatty and versatile, but Ubisoft is experimenting with letting players choose different personalities for Sofia and Pablo, including an oddly named “Bad Cat and Good Boy” option that can change how each character expresses themselves.
“This technology opens the door to new personalized experiences,” said Rémi Labory, Chief Data and AI Officer at Ubisoft, in the Teammates announcement. “Player feedback shapes character responses in real-time, which is impossible with traditional development. We also offer a complete experience pipeline to guide players from introduction to reporting, which is a first.”
Ubisoft has already explored the application of generative AI to other parts of the development process. The company’s ghostwriter tool, which will launch in 2023, uses artificial intelligence to create the first drafts of in-game dialogue. Ubisoft also recently approved for publication Year 117: Pax Romana without removing AI generated loading screens.
Over time, the technology behind Teamsmates may appear in other Ubisoft projects in the future. The company collects feedback from its playtests to use in future research. However, Ubisoft suggests that middleware developed for Teamsmates already works with the Snowdrop and Anvil engines, allowing future teams to use the tool in their games.