{"id":641308,"date":"2023-04-25T10:06:14","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T15:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/25\/square-enixs-free-ai-game-isnt-selling-me-on-the-techs-power\/"},"modified":"2023-04-25T10:06:14","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T15:06:14","slug":"square-enixs-free-ai-game-isnt-selling-me-on-the-techs-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/25\/square-enixs-free-ai-game-isnt-selling-me-on-the-techs-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Square Enix\u2019s free AI game isn\u2019t selling me on the tech\u2019s power"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\tSquare Enix\u2019s free AI game isn\u2019t selling me on the tech\u2019s power\t<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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At this year\u2019s Game Developers Conference<\/a>, AI made headlines. Several talks revolved around the evolving tech, with developers discussing how it could be integrated into games. That was a controversial topic during the show, but one presentation seemed to wow attendees. Square Enix hosted a 30-minute live demo of an AI mystery game that showed how the tech could be a force for good, giving players more control over what they say and having NPCs that respond to prompts accordingly.<\/p>\n

One month later, Square released that demo to the public for free. If you go to Steam right now, you can download The Portopia Serial Murder Case<\/em><\/a> and try it for yourself. In fact, a lot of PC players already have \u2026 and the response hasn\u2019t been too kind. As of the time of writing, the tech demo has a \u201cVery Negative\u201d rating with over 250 user reviews. While some of those could be reactionary review bombs from detractors of the tech, many appear to be legitimate criticisms calling out an incredibly limited experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere might be some exciting tech behind the curtain but to end-users, it really just feels like a language engine from the late 90s,\u201d one review reads. \u201cIt only responds to hyper-specific queries and doesn\u2019t seem even half as flexible as they\u2019re pretending it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not wrong. The educational project isn\u2019t exactly a strong first look for the potential marriage of gaming and AI. The Portopia Serial Murder Case<\/a><\/em>\u00a0is an odd tech demo that seems to make the problems it aims to solve much worse. Despite that, I\u2019m not ready to write off Square Enix\u2019s efforts entirely based on the experiment, as I can see some areas where the tech could be useful in the long run.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Unnatural language processing<\/h2>\n

The Portopia Serial Murder Case<\/em> acts as a modern remake of an old Japanese visual novel first released in 1983. The intent here seems clear: show how far video game tech has come by contrasting a restrictive, old adventure game with a new version supported by AI. In a manual bundled with the download<\/a>, Square Enix gives some context as to what the project is trying to show off.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time of the game\u2019s original release, most adventure games were played using a \u2018command input\u2019 system, where the player was asked to type in text to decide the actions of their character,\u201d it reads. \u201cFree text input systems like these allowed players to feel a great deal of freedom. However, they did come with one common source of frustration: players knowing what action they wanted to perform but being unable to do so because they could not find the right wording.\u201d<\/p>\n

The introduction goes on to explain that those restrictions came down to the title\u2019s Natural Language Processing (NLP), which was limited at the time. The new project acts as a showcase of how much that\u2019s changed in 40 years as Square Enix shows off the improved NLP it\u2019s currently working with. Unfortunately, the tech demo doesn\u2019t currently impress in the way it\u2019s meant to.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/figure>\n

When I open the game, I\u2019m thrown into a basic visual novel. I\u2019m a detective investigating various locations across Japan trying to solve a murder by finding clues and interrogating suspects. My assumption going into it was that I\u2019d be able to type just about anything into the text box and get some kind of relevant response. I immediately learned that wasn\u2019t the case. Rather than functioning like ChatGPT<\/a>, it feels like I\u2019m trying to hold a conversation with Siri. Anything the game deems random gets me some boilerplate line to the tune of \u201cLet\u2019s not talk about that right now.\u201d Instead, I need to figure out a pretty specific set of commands to make anything happen. If I want to ask strangers on a busy street for information, I need to write \u201cask around.\u201d If I try to go off script, I won\u2019t get the desired response. I experience a similar issue in interrogations, where forgetting to include a \u201cthe\u201d in a command can leave the game confused.<\/p>\n

After 30 minutes, I\u2019d barely gotten anywhere. Nothing I was typing ended in an answer and I mostly found myself repeating the same few phrases over and over to move the story along. I\u2019d begin to progress the more I picked up on recognized phrase templates like \u201clook at \u2026\u201d but I became skeptical that Square Enix has actually solved the problem it set out to fix. My investigation felt every bit as unnatural and frustrating as classic text adventure games.<\/p>\n

Part of the confusion I experienced seemingly comes down to a big tech omission. Square Enix noted that it had to remove the demo\u2019s Natural Language Generation tool for now, citing the current risk of \u201cunethical replies.\u201d That aspect is what made the demo such an impressive showcase at GDC, so its absence here is a little confusing. What exactly are users seeing here that wasn\u2019t already shown in games like AI Dungeon years ago?<\/p>\n

<\/a>Speech-to-text<\/h2>\n

Things would get a little more interesting when I\u2019d enable voice commands in the main menu. With the tap of a button, I could speak prompts into my microphone and see them instantly translated into text and responded to accordingly. The mystery began to move a little more naturally at that point, as I hopped around town picking up shining clues and calling phone numbers by reading them out loud. It\u2019s undoubtedly impressive to see spoken words clearly recognized in the game, going further than Dead Island 2<\/em>\u2019s recent Alexa integration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Still, that part of the demo is frustrating in its own right. Certain names would get mangled by the text-to-speech tool when I tried to speak them, forcing me to say them again and again until the computer wrote them outright. It flashed me back to the days of playing Brain Age<\/em> on my Nintendo DS and struggling to get the word \u201cblue\u201d to register.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s positioned as an educational tool and a piece of software training, I\u2019m not exactly sure what I\u2019m supposed to take away from The Portopia Serial Murder Case<\/em>. Simplistic language commands and repetitive, canned responses from NPCs don\u2019t really make a case for how Square Enix\u2019s Natural Language Processing or Understanding models can be used to improve a game like this. It\u2019s not even clear how AI is being leveraged here \u2014 that much is clear from the Steam user reviews confused about how to interact with the game successfully.<\/p>\n

Even so, it\u2019s nice to see Square Enix being so transparent with its tech experiments and giving anyone the ability to play with its work-in-progress tools. This implementation is far from impressive, but I\u2019m curious about what the publisher is attempting to solve. I\u2019d love to play a mystery game where I can say anything I want into a microphone and have NPCs not only understand it, but respond in a relevant way (so long as scripted lines are left to human writers). That\u2019s clearly not what anyone\u2019s experiencing here, but hopefully, this is a necessary first step toward achieving that dream.<\/p>\n

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\n\tEditors’ Recommendations<\/h4>\n