On Integrating Voice Commands Into Videogames

Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing ways future videogames can use the player's voice more creatively. The writer notes of Rainbow Six 3 on Xbox: "It's the headset that really roped me into this one. While it's often easier to key in your commands from the controller, that's just a lot less fun", and goes on to suggest: "I'd like to be able to have my own macros of my own entry patterns. Heck, it might be cool if they laughed at a joke I cracked. I want a game where I can get in a shouting match with a character in the game - real Gene Hackman or Al Pacino business is what I'm talking about here." How would you like to see voice control in videogames evolve, going forward?

Comments

Being too complicated?

[CashCarSTAR]

Myself, if a game is complicated enough control wise to require this sort of voice-control, at least for basic commands, then the game might very well be TOO complicated.

In this case, they should start thinking hard at putting a bit more focus into their game.

However, voice is very cool for games, mainly for multiplayer games communicating with your teammates. The Half-Life engine was built with this in mind. It works for the more team based games. I've been playing a lot of Day of Defeat/Natural Selection, and people in those games rely on the voice communication. It works a lot faster than typing things in.

Then again, in Subspace/Continnuum, Chat Macros are easy enough that voice never took off. Sooo..whatever.

Of Accents and Multiplayer

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Alright, the first thing which came to my mind was "what if a person has an accent?" What happens when the game can't understand what you're saying or, worse, misinterprets one verbal command for another? Theoretically, a stuffed up nose could turn "attack the house" into "a tank the how's," leaving the units in a strategy game to stand around looking for a tank when they should be advancing.

Joking aside, there could be (and have been) problems with voice-recognition/speech-interpretation software. Probably the only device which has the capability to correctly interpret languages through accents, slurs, and illness is the human brain... and even that fails, sometimes.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see some voice control for NPCs in computer and video games. I'm just not daydreaming of A.I. which can engage in arguments and intelligent debates, or a piece of software which can translate any accent correctly, even the accents of non-native language speakers (like Americans speaking Japanese or vice-versa).

So, in my opinion, there's a long way to go before we should make speech an integral and necessary part of controling actions in a game. And, to answer the question posed, that's an area where I'd like to see voice control progress. The other area is to simply include it in any relatively complicated game which has a multiplayer component.

Take, for example, Halo PC; it has no voice control built in, but the fast-paced nature of the game prohibits typing out instructions, observations, etc. If I take time to type out "watch left!" while driving across a bridge in a Warthog, I and my passenger(s) will be smoked or the warning will be made useless by the fact that we'll be across the bridge before they can read and react to it.

After we reach these two aspects of voice recognition/control in games, we can talk about where and how it should be implimented, and why. In the mean time, I'll go back to shaking my fist at my broken PC.

~UP

(P.S. My apologies for the grumpy tone of this message. I didn't get enough sleep, last night.)