What if voice commands are an in-game control option next gen?

[BadWolf]

EDIT: Just to be clear, the voice commands would work together with the normal controller. Not as a replacement.


The Sony patent thread in regards to voice commands got me thinking, what if it were a legit control option for in-game usage next gen?

Obviously you wouldn't need to use it for stuff like shooting, aiming, attacking, jumping, action etc., those will still be assigned to buttons but think of the stuff that isn't used as much as those actions in games but has a button assigned to it.

Like for example a map, instead of having a button assigned to it you could just say "map" and it would open.

Or the inventory screen. Instead of hitting a button to open the inventory and then going into Items/Equipment etc. you could just say "items" or "equipment" or "upgrades" and that menu would instantly open up.

It could also be interesting for something like weapon switching. Instead of cycling through a bunch of weapons or opening a weapon wheel you could call out a weapon's name or their tag (weapon 1 or handgun or machine gun etc.).

Could also be applied to stuff like healing etc. which often has you reach for a d-pad press or use through a menu.

The functionally could really be applied to a lot of stuff and free up some buttons from basic functionality.

Language could of course be an issue but just from a gameplay standpoint imo it would feel like a pretty good step forward for controls in games in general, would probably also make them a lot more accessible as well.

It would of course be optional.

 

[TheMoon]

Everyone, suddenly: Kinect was a great idea!

 

[BadWolf]

Everyone, suddenly: Kinect was a great idea!

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Please don't start with the fanboy shit.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

I honestly don't see a great benefit in that. Good designers won't make you go through a painful process to use a certain weapon.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Voice commands could work wonderfully as a COMPLEMENTARY control system.

I don't see them ever being a more comfortable solution as the main input method. Your fingers are faster at doing small movements than your voice at articulating them and speaking is way more tiring over time than making small hand movements.

 

[Deleted member 59519]

I feel like I'd barely use them. The effort to push a button is slightly less than to call out what I want

 

[Hieroph]

I just don't see the appeal of voice commands at all. I would just turn them off and not play any game that tried to force them.

 

[Pankratous]

That would be absolutely immersion breaking.

 

[BadWolf]

Voice commands could work wonderfully as a COMPLEMENTARY control system.

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Yes, that's the premise of this thread.

They would work in conjuction with the normal controls. Not as a replacement.

 

[SweetNicole]

Wasn't that the whole point of Xbox's Kinect integration with certain games? We saw how well that went. It was/is an ok "gimmick" feature, but realistically pushing buttons will always be the preferred input.

 

[TheMoon]

Please don't start with the fanboy shit.

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not sure what fanboy shit I'm starting.

 

[Commodore64]

I loved the use of voice commands to control your team in socom and would love to see it become a standard.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Wasn't that the whole point of Xbox's Kinect integration with certain games? We saw how well that went. It was/is an ok "gimmick" feature, but realistically pushing buttons will always be the preferred input.

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Well, so were hand gestures.
The thing is: maturity of a technology can make a HELL of a difference with this sort of application. Kinect was clumsy and relatively expensive for its time. Its equivalent in two years would be a couple of sensors that barely impact the overall cost and are way faster and precise.
The voice recognition we will have in two years will shit all over what we used in the early 2000, etc.

In the same way you wouldn't want to stay anywhere near a self driving car five years ago and ten years in the future people will start to argue that it's crazy dangerous to allow people to drive manually.

 

[Deleted member 18021]

One of the Rainbox Six games tried it for the squad commands (Vegas?), and it worked okay-ish.
I would like to see it explored a bit more, despite the obvious pit-falls.

 

[Damn Silly]

I liked it in Mass Effect 3 with the Kinect, for what it's worth, so I wouldn't mind it becoming an option again, even if it's something I wouldn't use all the time.

 

[Celine]

We would get Hey you Pikachu! 2

More seriously I don't see the advantage to say "menu" to make a menu appear when it's quicker and less demanding just pressing a button.

If you want to prove the validity of voice recognition for gaming you need to create experiences that use it in meaningful way (something that improve the immersion or game experience that cannot be replicated with buttons).

 

[808s & Villainy]

Please don't start with the fanboy shit.

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Well you're basically bringing up what the Kinect could do as some novel idea. People didn't like it then and I doubt it was only because it worked unreliably...

Voice commands aren't really quicker or more intuitive IMO.

I can see it useful in terms of accessibility, but that's about it

 

[Prophet Five]

I remember trying voice commands with Mass Effect 3 and just not being into it. It's more of a novelty than anything.

Plus, Alexa and Siri can't understand what I'm saying sometimes. I'd hate to imagine needing that precision or gaming.

 

[Chivalry]

Might be useful in open world games.

 

[Mathieran]

I could see it being fun in certain cases. Like maybe directing a co op npc to do certain actions.

 

[Deleted member 8166]

we already had that on the OG Xbox in Rainbow Six.

I liked it.

But I can go on living without it.

 

[Zomba13]

Wasn't this tried with Kinect? It's a gimmick that isn't as reliable as it needs to be. Even with the advancements in voice recognition, systems still have trouble with various accents. Buttons are still more reliable.

Obviously as an accessibility thing it would be cool if more things used it, but that's the same with all accessibility options.

 

[Pellaidh]

I hope not.

Voice commands simply don't work with my accent, and I'd imagine I'm far from the only one. For reference, here's the supported countries list for Kinect voice commands. Only 10 countries in total have them. Only 2 have Cortana. Even Windows it's only in 13 countries, and there they presumably put in more work into Cortana.

The only thing that would work would be to have this as an option in addition to button controls, but the OP makes it sound like you want certain actions to be voice only, with no options for button access. And even so, if this would actually work (which I'm very doubtful of) it sounds like it could give an advantage to the players that could use it (voice being faster than buttons), so I'd still hate to see it in multiplayer games.

 

[BadWolf]

Well you're basically bringing up what the Kinect could do as some novel idea. People didn't like it then and I doubt it was only because it worked unreliably...

Voice commands aren't really quicker or more intuitive IMO.

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Kinect wasn't the first to use voice commands in games and one of the main reasons the device fell out of favor with users is how unreliable it was in general. The thing just didn't work as advertised.

The only thing that would work would be to have this as an option in addition to button controls, but the OP makes it sound like you want certain actions to be voice only, with no options for button access. And even so, if this would actually work (which I'm very doubtful of) it sounds like it could give an advantage to the players that could use it (voice being faster than buttons), so I'd still hate to see it in multiplayer games.

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Both in the thread title and first post I mention that they would be optional.

 

[Obi]

There's an Alexa skill that lets you change your loadouts in Destiny 2. It's pretty neat to have, I'd like to see more of that kind thing in other games. Commands that save me a bunch of menuing.

 

[Deleted member 32106]

Stadia would be king of this field. Their assistant is fucking good.

 

[TheZynster]

Binary domain was ahead of its time

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

You will need or a sensitive mic and a really good voice recognition like Google has.
I never use the ps4 one because its just easier to use a controller.

 

[Bedameister]

I'd not use them if they're optional. I'd hate it if they were forced.

 

[bawjaws]

I'm fairly sure there was a mod for Skyrim, back in about 2011, that let you trigger shouts by "shouting" (vocalising) them into a mic.

 

[Deleted member 6582]

For games with AI NPCs and such it would be cool. It's also more intuitive in the VR sense for utility functions.

 

[banshee150]

Fuck that

 

[labx]

Please don't. Imagine the clusterfuck with other languages. As a not native english speaker that would be a bummer. Please don't give them ideas, op.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

It's optional, then sure, do whatever. I can't ever see myself using it though.

 

[Agent X]

They would work in conjuction with the normal controls. Not as a replacement.

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I'm in favor of having voice recognition as an option.

We've seen examples of this technology going back to the days of Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, so it's not "new". Voice recognition has improved considerably over the last several years, especially with the proliferation of "digital assistants" in smartphones and smart speakers. I recall Destiny 2 allows you to shout commands at a device using Amazon Alexa, and it would translate into an in-game command.

Many genres could benefit from voice input, such as adventure games and strategy games.

I hope developers will start offering this option in more games. By doing this, developers could gradually improve the reliability of recognition, along with the recognized vocabulary. Artificial intelligence could also come into play. At some point in the future, verbal commands will become commonly accepted, and eventually expected, as an element of gameplay.

 

[GaussianMultivariate]

Fuck that

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Why? It'd be nice to have it as shortcut (i.e. not a replacement but something complementary) for giving orders to a party. Think for example of Dragon Age, where you can use button combinations or wheels to give commands, or also just say "Alistair you lead" or "go defensive", etc. Also nice shortcut complementary to gadget wheels in Batman/Spiderman, it'd make combat more dynamic without the mini pauses.

 

[Deleted member 12317]

F1 games uses that since a few years (even on PC), you can press the Radio button and talk to the pit crew, asking informations about the car, strategy, time between cars, your teammate, ...
You can also do that by navigating menus but when driving it's not easy, so using voice commands is easier and more immersive too.

In some games I like it, when it makes life easier and don't break immersion.

ANNA in Forza Horizon games can be useful too sometimes.

On PC many Elite Dangerous players use Voice Attack to "talk" with the ship's computer, asking to do things or just ask for ship/system statuses with EDDI.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

I fucking love screaming objection in Ace Attorney and all I want is scream hadouken or kamehameha to activate said moves, so yes pls

 

[RedSeim]

Honestly, I can't imagine a single situation ib which a voice command would be faster and more confortable than pressing one, two or three buttons on the gamepad.
I could stand it as a "complementary" input system, yeah, but nothing more :/

 

[KKRT]

Honestly, I can't imagine a single situation ib which a voice command would be faster and more confortable than pressing one, two or three buttons on the gamepad.
I could stand it as a "complementary" input system, yeah, but nothing more :/

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As mentioned before space sim games actually have mods that are using voice controls.
When you have a lot of controls its actually faster to use voice commands than use keyboard&mouse/gamepad to activate some of them.

 

[Mr Moot]

Didn't Xbox try it at the beginning of the One ? FH3 has it for example.

I'm not that fan of the idea tbh. I'd rather see them putting effort in VR

 

[Agent X]

Have you ever played a text adventure on a computer? These were popular in the early days of personal computers in the 1970s and 1980s. A company called Infocom (later acquired by Activision) produced many of their popular adventure games for virtually every major computer (and even some minor ones) at the time. Infocom's interpreter was sophisticated enough that it could understand complete, fully-formed English sentences, with a vocabulary of hundreds of words.

Now, imagine that the text adventure could see a resurgence in audio format. Similar to how you have books on audio, text adventures could make the same transition. These would not be "video games", but rather "audio games", that could be fully enjoyed even by a blind or visually impaired player. A narrator would describe the scene, and you'd perform an action by speaking. The game would then respond with the outcome of your actions. This type of game could be played "hands free" on a smart phone, smart speaker, or video game console...or you could choose to go "old school" and play it on your computer with text input and output.

 

[Allforce]

Have you ever played a text adventure on a computer? These were popular in the early days of personal computers in the 1970s and 1980s. A company called Infocom (later acquired by Activision) produced many of their popular adventure games for virtually every major computer (and even some minor ones) at the time. Infocom's interpreter was sophisticated enough that it could understand complete, fully-formed English sentences, with a vocabulary of hundreds of words.

Now, imagine that the text adventure could see a resurgence in audio format. Similar to how you have books on audio, text adventures could make the same transition. These would not be "video games", but rather "audio games", that could be fully enjoyed even by a blind or visually impaired player. A narrator would describe the scene, and you'd perform an action by speaking. The game would then respond with the outcome of your actions. This type of game could be played "hands free" on a smart phone, smart speaker, or video game console...or you could choose to go "old school" and play it on your computer with text input and output.

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They kind of have these on Echo devices. A few short narrative "games" where you choose what to do as the story unfolds.

I'd be fine with some voice control in games for shit like "Open the map/Open my inventory" or "Switch to my shotgun/rifle" or whatever. I already have Echoes all over the place here so it's not that foreign a concept around here to be talking to a robot.

 

[EloKa]

I think that would only work if you have a game that you can control by only using your voice. If you already need to use the controller to play a game, then why would you say something like "Open the map" when you could also simply press the button on the controller that you're already holding in your hands.
People are lazy and saying a sentence is more "exhausting" than pressing the button next to the one you've already pressed.

Could be an interesting concept for games that have no predetermined pacing like most Puzzle or Point&Click games. Otherwise: naaah.

 

[Deleted member 46948]

Didn't Xbox try it at the beginning of the One ? FH3 has it for example.

I'm not that fan of the idea tbh. I'd rather see them putting effort in VR

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Ryse has it as well.
It's a terrible idea.

 

[Dekuman]

Didn't kinect try this already?

I see multiple problems here. People playing in sub-optimal conditions, and imperfect voice recognition. The thing with controllers is, it's in the player's hands and requires much less overhead to figure out intentions.

It can work, I actually think voice activated devices is not necessarily a bad thing, but probably not as a general way to control games. There are certainly uses for it, in terms of accessability for people who can't use controllers, etc.

 

[monketron]

It won't take off because game devs will always go for the lowest common denominator when it comes to inputs. If every console allowed voice commands it might take off, but not with just Sony going with it. Same reason few games used the built in speaker / touchpad. Even though they are really cool when used properly in games.

 

[EVA UNIT 01]

They suck ass but if they're optional sure why not.

 

[DaciaJC]

I believe EndWar, a strategy game from Ubisoft last generation, allowed for the use of voice commands.

 

[xania]

I think it could be cool from an accessibility point of view, but as someone with an accent that technology struggles with... I'll pass.