Xbox and Inworld AI are partnering to create generative AI tools for game development to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story, and quest design.
With the advent of generative AI, there’s an opportunity to leverage cutting-edge innovations to foster limitless creativity and unparalleled immersion.
The partnership will bring together…
🎮 Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development
🎮 Cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including @Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service
🎮 @Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play
🎮 Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.
Together, the companies will focus on developing the following tools:
An AI design copilot that assists and empowers game designers to explore more creative ideas, turning prompts into detailed scripts, dialogue trees, quests and more.
An AI character runtime engine that can be integrated into the game client, enabling entirely new narratives with dynamically-generated stories, quests, and dialogue for players to experience.
Inworld’s goal is to bring life to characters and virtual worlds in a way that was previously unimaginable – shifting from a scripted player-character dynamic to one that adapts to players’ actions and choices in real-time, providing players with a sense of agency and engagement like never before.
“Together, we aim to deliver an accessible, responsibly designed multi-platform AI toolset to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story, and quest design. As with all creator tools at Xbox, our goal is to deliver state-of-the-art AI for game developers of any size, anywhere in the world, and on every platform where players want to play,” said Haiyan Zhang, General Manager, Gaming AI, Xbox. “We want to help make it easier for developers to realize their visions, try new things, push the boundaries of gaming today, and experiment to improve gameplay, player connection and more.”
This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.
Building an AI co-pilot to enhance game production
During the pre-production phase of game development, designers, developers, and writers work together to define the game world, lore, mechanics, narrative events, and character storylines. These foundational decisions form the backbone of a game and inform the scripts, art direction, and core game loops during production.
What if you could use AI to reduce the time and resource constraints during production to not only ship faster, but to also craft more expansive and immersive worlds and stories. That’s the idea behind the AI copilot that we’re building with Xbox.
As an assistant to game developers, the copilot will take the seeds of these creative ideas and transform them into detailed scripts complete with dialogue trees, quests, and more.
Launching character engine to create games that we have yet to imagine
Gamers know what they like – and more engaging and dynamic NPCs are at the top of their list of things they want to see more of in games.
While 84% of gamers feel that NPCs make a substantial difference to gameplay, the majority are frustrated with current NPCs, citing repetitive dialogue and the inability to adapt to in-game actions as the top complaints. The good news? The Future of NPCs report found that 99% of gamers think that advanced AI NPCs will improve gameplay, with 81% willing to pay more for them.
Inworld’s goal is to bring life to characters and virtual worlds in a way that was previously unimaginable – shifting from a scripted player-character dynamic to one that adapts to players’ actions and choices in real-time and providing players with a sense of agency and engagement like never before. Orchestrating multiple AI models at runtime allows our character engine to power character expressions, gestures, dialogue, and actions that are dynamic and responsive.
Expanding the capabilities of the character engine will be a core focus of the collaboration, with a dual emphasis on expanding both the engine’s AI modalities and optimizing it for performance at runtime. While we’re focused on bringing depth and realism to characters (and rendering them within the logic and fantasy of their worlds), what we’re most excited about is how developers will use this breakthrough technology in ways that we have yet to imagine.
Source of Information: Inworld AI