While Embark Studios may have sparked controversy when it revealed how generative AI was used in the development of PvPvE extraction shooter ARC Raiders, its success doesn’t mean that more such AI tools will be heavily leveraged going forward. In an interview with PCGamesN, design director Virgil Watkins spoke about how the studio used generative AI in conjunction with paid actors to create the game’s voice acting, and what it plans to do in the future.
As the studio had previously explained, Embark Studios hired voice actors to play in-game characters and then generated more voice lines for them through a text-to-speech generative AI tool. While this revelation had caused some backlash for the developer, it didn’t seem to have much of an impact on sales. When it comes to using generative AI for more aspects of development, Watkins said it all depends on whether the tool can actually be helpful.
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s fallen any way or the other,” he explained. “As with all the tools we build or make use of, [it comes down to]: ‘Does it ultimately let us do something we couldn’t before, or is it an added [bonus] to the game?’ With the TTS stuff, I think it was an unlock for us to be able to do voiced characters when we, at the time, did not have the capacity to do so.”
“And now, do we have different affordances, now that the game is what it is? Probably. And then we can ask ourselves, ‘Did the quality hit the mark?’ And maybe not. So, should we revise how or why we do that? But I don’t think it’s been like, ‘Oh, well, let’s open the floodgates for all types of AI or even AI-adjacent tools.’ So no, I don’t think it’s changed our outlook on that.”
The use of AI-based tools, according to Watkins, came down to the fact that Embark Studios has been exploring emerging technologies and how the new tech is used in conjunction with the studio’s own tools to create new things. While the studio will monitor such in the future, Watkins has noted that criticisms about using generative AI haven’t fallen on deaf ears at the studio.
“It is still very much in the vein of building what we can, the best we can,” he said. “And a lot of it is just that avenue of exploring emerging tech and building our own tools for things, because that’s what enabled us to build a lot of this with the team the size we have. I think it’ll be more of that in the future, and just trying to see what we can do for ourselves, to, like, keep building content at the scale we have. But obviously, we’re not deaf to the concerns that are out there for it.”
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review.
