Now that Blizzard is part of Microsoft, I wonder if they could make it possible to use AI in one of their games. In an area that is universal and independent of individual titles or even platforms: our game chats.
Example of how it works:
Group of three players
I write something in portugese: “Meus queridos amigos”
Your client gets the message but AI translation catches it before displaying
AI translates it into your client language which happens to be italian
Your chat window shows “ Miei cari amici”
The third one is american and reads: “ My dear friends”
Automatic translation can be disabled. Clicking on the flag icon displays the original.
Why this is good for every player:
This feature may seem not that interesting for native english speakers at first, since the chat tends to be mostly in english. But be noted that the language barrier affects everything that requires at least some organisation, from providing information to trading to team play. Not because of spelling errors, but because players just dont communicate at all if they feel not confident in their english skills.
Btw this post is assisted by DeepL Write and I am not portugese nor is english my native language. Cool!
Imagine playing Overwatch and your teammates are unable to tell you where the enemies are or have trouble translating area names. It is a massive handicap.
Learning another language is no easy task and English is no exception. It also depends a lot on a persons influences. Of course, the language barrier is more of a problem in regions that serve many nations. If you ask me, then I tell you that although I am somewhat comfortable with writing English, it does get tiring after a while.
Why this is good for Blizzards wallet:
In case that wasn’t clear: Players who are in an environment where its easier to make connections become more attached to the place where they made them. And active players can draw many others to the game.
Blizzard games are focused on multiplayer experiences. Each of their games benefits (greatly) from player communication and I expect all upcoming games will most likely have chat functionality as well. Battlenet chat already links each games individual chat together, so it would make a lot of sense to have some sort of translation tool.
Standard in the near future
I found out that the developers of Roblox have trained a translation AI, that does exactly what I have described in this post and more. It was introduced in February this year and they also plan to add automatic voice translation at some point in the future. Good luck with that!
If you want to get some impressions I recommend the developer blog posts here:
It’s just a matter of time when games will get to this point.
However, in my current job, we could use AI to translate things but we don’t. We have to rely on an actual translator for LEGAL reasons.
So besides the technology consideration, there might be some legal ramifications that need to be considered. I don’t know if there’s also ethical issues.
My thoughts exactly. It’s coming, but Blizzard won’t be the first to implement it. I can easily see Square doing this in one of their MMORPGs. We’ve already seen the workings of it in FFXI and FFXIV to an extent. Key words you can use in both games that are auto translated to the other party.
Now it’s not exactly the same as what the OP is talking about, but you can communicate using this method decently enough. Soon as the technology becomes more widespread though, I have no doubt it’ll be a staple in most online games.
Which also means it’ll take until Diablo 8 or WoW expansion #19 for us to see it in a Blizzard game.
Good suggestion (but a super long shot)… & DeepL is very good. I doubt Bing’s translation tools are as good, but I wouldn’t know. And I guess if we help spawn ASI, we might as well be playing games doing it.
Microsoft is not a small company. They have Azure and Teams, knowledge with ChatGPT exists. There seems to be a lot of development going on at the moment anyway, as the audience to be reached is quite large.
I assume that getting it to work in games is mainly a matter of training the AI.
This seems like a well thought out idea OP. Makes sense to me. Good luck getting your idea up to the people who listen! That sounds snarky but I actually meant it in a positive way.
That’s the one the Romulans used for their warp cores, isn’t it? Wonder if it could handle an extra stash tab.
Example of how it works:
