Nvidia's AI tools to let developers create unique gameplay for every player

At GDC 2024, French video game publisher Ubisoft showcased AI-powered "Non Player Characters" (NPCs), offering unique interaction with every player

At its Game Developers Conference (GDC) earlier this week, Nvidia showcased its artificial intelligence-powered digital human suite of technology for video game developers. Nvidia is offering various AI tools such as NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for speech and animation, NVIDIA NeMo for language, and NVIDIA RTX for ray-traced rendering. These technologies are aimed at improving in-game experience with more realistic interactions, which are real time and unique, with video game characters. According to the company, these tools enable developers to build “digital humans” capable of natural language interactions.

Collaborating with an US-based AI startup called Inworld, Nvidia showcased a demo called Covert Protocol that displayed how video game developers have started utilising its “digital human” technology to generate scenarios, dialogues and more in-real time for offering unique gaming experience to each player. Nvidia said that this level of AI-driven interactivity will require video game players to adapt their strategies in real-time based on the scenarios that they create themselves.

In one of the demos, the player acts as a private detective who completes objectives based on the outcome of conversations with characters in the scene. This suggests that the players will have the ability to create their own narratives within the game based on how they interact with various video game elements.

Ubisoft, the French video game publisher, is leveraging these AI tools to explore new types of interactive gameplay with dynamic Non Player Characters (NPCs). Ubisoft showcased its “NEO NPCs” which are characters within the game, designed to interact with players, their environment and other characters dynamically. Ubisoft has created two NEO NPCs, Bloom and Iron, who have their own background story, knowledge base, and conversational styles. These features make in-game interaction with these NPCs dynamic and spontaneous.