Ubisoft has announced “Teammates”, an “AI experiment to change the game” and “deepen the player experience”.
The developer/publisher said the project is “more than just talk” and will add “depth to gameplay by going beyond AI chatbots and turning NPCs into real teammates” as you play a first-person shooter.
The reveal comes after Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told investors yesterday that generative AI has been integrated across the entire company, calling it a “revolution” for video games as big as the shift from 2D to 3D.
“First and foremost, Teammates is an experimental research project, albeit a playable one,” Ubisoft explained. “Built around the mechanics of a first-person shooter, players take on the role of a member of the resistance in a dystopian future, tasked with moving through an enemy base to locate five missing members of their team.
“In the short playable level, players must recover the final memories of those who were sent in previously to discover their fates, while fending off squads of enemies along their path. Besides the AI voice assistant – Jaspar – the player is accompanied by two NPC squad members – Pablo and Sofia – also featuring the new advanced capabilities.”
AI assistant Jaspar can highlight enemies or objects, provide story and lore details, alter game settings “on the fly”, or even pause the game, all through simple and natural vocal instructions.
“But more than this, he is a dynamic and responsive character within the story,” the company added. “The underlying systems can process the information available within the Teammates experiment’s environment, and contextual cues, interpreting and adapting to the player’s vocal input and actions.”
You can also directly command – or “chat with” – your NPC teammates, Sofia and Pablo.
“Our early experiments showed players were quickly connecting with the AI-driven NPCs and the voice assistant concept,” director of gameplay GenAI Xavier Manzanares added.
“Jaspar was helping players when they got lost or weren’t sure what to do, he could access menus and settings, tell players more about the world and the story. We really started to like Jaspar and saw how a system like this could be interesting for many different kinds of games.”
“This technology opens doors to new, personalised experiences,” added data & AI director Rémi Labory. “Player input shapes character reactions in real time, something traditional development can’t achieve. We’re also delivering a full pipeline, with the experience taking players from onboarding to debrief, which is a first.”
The team said it was “aware of the criticisms around AI in games”, but insisted the goal “is not to replace creatives, but rather to find ways to enhance it by combining the strengths of the technology and the human creativity and ingenuity that are crucial to making games”.
“At first, I had the same concerns as many others,” explained narrative director Virginie Mosser. “But I discovered that it’s the exact opposite of removing the human from the process. I still write the story and character personalities, but instead of fixed lines, we create these kinds of fences that let NPCs improvise within the world but stay within the boundaries of the lore and motivations we have given them. They can improvise, but we still set the rules and direct the story and characters.”
Ubisoft finished by saying that “Teammates” has already been shared with a few hundred players in a closed playtest. It will continue to test and develop the technology, “building the tools and gathering vital reactions and suggestions from real players and creative teams within Ubisoft to refine and expand the systems they have built, all with a philosophy of human creativity, ingenuity, and curiosity at the heart of their work”.
This news follows the cessation of trading for Ubisoft, which sent the entire industry into mass speculation. Ubisoft later confirmed that this was due to an issue with new auditors, despite broad speculation of a grander acquisition.
