David Gaider, known for his work on the writing team for BioWare’s Dragon Age franchise, has spoken out about AI-generated dialogue for games, specifically referring to it as “lackluster” and “soulless”.
Responding to an article by The Guardian about a game demo making use of AI-generated dialogue, Gaider says that every time a team he worked with believed that they could make use of AI-generated dialogue for games, it turned out lackluster.
“Each time, the team collectively believed – believed down at their CORE – that this was possible,” says Gaider in a lengthy Tweet thread about the subject. “Just within reach. And each time we discovered that, even when the procedural lines were written by human hands, the end result once they were assembled was… lackluster. Soulless.”
Gaider goes on to talk about how the fault doesn’t lie with the dialogue itself, but rather, the fact that procedural generation of quests for games result in what he describes as “something *shaped* like a quest”. Rather than employing much in the way of storytelling or game design, these quests largely come down to simplistic ones, like asking players to kill X number of Y enemies.
Gaider describes the content generated by AI as superficial content that does little more than cover the bases of being a quest, but doesn’t go any further.
Each time, the team collectively believed – believed down at their CORE – that this was possible. Just within reach. And each time we discovered that, even when the procedural lines were written by human hands, the end result once they were assembled was… lackluster. Soulless.
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) May 29, 2023
