Prompto's Facebook: How a Buddy-AI Auto-Snapshots Your Adventure in FFXV

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prompto Facebook how buddy AI Auto snapshot your Aventure in Final Fantasy 15 okay so we start very simple questions who in this room have played Final Fantasy 15 great and maybe for those who haven't played yet let me summarize this system a bit so in Final Fantasy 15 an open world game so your friend promto we took a picture for you during your adventure and the picture takes is not an old classic screenshot but a stylish smart photos as seen by him inside the game and with our build-in SNS interface since release of the game last year his photos are overwhelming internet Facebooks and twitters having us promoting our game so today we will talk about this features and maybe we won't go through deep into mathematics and algorithm stuff but we will tell you about the design aspect of these features

and I'm afraid maybe we don't have much time left q but you can always you know just ask me question outside the room or email me well talk about me um my name my real real name is PR PR withan which is I think it's too long so you can call me son just as my friends and my coworker do so my name is son nice to meet you and I came to Japan 12 years ago and I'm well well I'm specialized in emotional AI like to combine arts and AI together to create emotional Feeling by AI characters and I'm now I'm in square enx Tokyo business division 2 you can see on my shirt here is business division to shirts Studio shirts and so now I'm a lead game designer of Final Fantasy 15 and I'm in Char of body system and AI so if you play this game you will know promto gladiolas and this well I'm in short of

them I make them I I create their thoughts their move their action their talks everything including the system relating to them just like camp scene or photo system so okay let's start this panel but let me tell you to turn up your mobile phone and don't forget to reply the evaluation mail at the end of this panel okay we start okay so Final Fantasy 15 is an open RPG where you can experience Contin road trip with your best buddies and when we designed this game what we feel important the most is the ux the user experiences so you can see all system and all designs all features in this game are there to maximize the road trip experience for the player and of course when we talking about road trip we're talking about photos however it's difficult to make player take photo inside of game you know everyone like photos but not all might want to take them

but luckily I was born in Thailand and Thai people are well known for their photogenic characteristics and well I have several camera Geeks friends who went on a trip with me without being asked they just take lots of picture of me for me and that's isn't bad maybe I'm photogenic too so we get a new idea that it would be cool if one of your friend inside your party member can take a picture for you during your road trip and promto is so kind as to help us so that's the beginnings of prompto snapshots okay now we talk about the goals and policy because we need concrete goals to make a game a good game so we have three goals for promto snapshots which are first the photo must serve as an achievement for the experience of players so when you be into a new location you get photos you meet a new character you get photos being there

done that anything you get photos well for a memorable moments with your favorite characters too and also unmemorable moments like when Joker Bo is hating you or when you were sent flying through the air or when you turn to the stone well anything anything but you will recall and you see the picture at the end of the day and you would say hey this is my adventure this is picture of my game play so this is first design policy for us our photos must be able to express the player game is players number two so this is my own policy but I believe good game should tell more stories than what has actually been made on being told just see this picture well you can imagine that he was reading this and we didn't make the scene but you see it and that's a trick so I used it a lot in the camp scene and

in picture so we just make photo of them joining enjoying themselves together and then people see this picture and they imagine what happened before and imagine what happened after that and they will feel that they're having fun and they will feel that this road trip is fun and a good thing about this is that we only make one frame emotions but you see a lot and that's a trick also when you see picture well automatically people will create their own stories and you know everyone stories might difference might be not be the same and that's perfect because you can have a space for you to create your own characters and personalized stuff inside your head and one more good thing is that when we have two characters outside and they posing posing together you can get Illusion of life as if they actually have their own private life and they're shatting or flirting with each other just outside the screen you just don't see it but they're alive they're living so this is our second design policy the photos must

be able to stir and wakes your imaginations and enrich your road trip adventure number three is our gameplay sharing so despite the widespread views of social media I believe the gameplay sharing are still limited to a very small group of players you know because it's take for to watch the clips and the take Force to take a good screenshot however with prompto snapshot you know it's all Auto so well just to share not to share that's the only question you have left and we want this feature to be a new Benchmark for gameplay sharing for the next generation and to do that we must ensure that our photos are unique and fun and of course if you have luck you get unique and fun picture but however we game designer believe that luck can be designed such as we give this kind of picture so normally ignit wear glasses

but sometime we give picture of ignit without being wearing glasses so when when the player get this they feel that they're lucky and they want to share this to other people the same go for you know some rare facial expressions some rare emotions this way we can create luck for the user or we can even do this having players create their own luck by we creating a thing called prompto snapchot skills which you replenish a tech bar inside the battles and promto will take a picture of the monster for you and if you're lucky he will do selfie monsters in this way user can try to set their own you know snapshot environment and they can try and create their own luck and when they get good picture then can well upload it to the internet and also one interesting thing is that you don't need good picture to make people want to share like this well it's very bad picture but it's fun so we shared it and there's nothing bad about it also in this kind of

situations when some jerk ruining all your seven-year shot you know is happened once in a while but yeah when it's having this game it's fun and everyone like to share it and we're happy with that and the most and the best thing that happened is that when prompto is a photographer he can turn all accident into entertainment everyone just laugh and say ha promto you did it again and well that's happy for us because we chose the right person to do the photographer so this is our third design policy our picture should be unique and fun for with pleasure and surprise and encourage social activities these are so three design policies so we get policy so now we have to design the system itself so there are lots of process before we have a picture start from triggering wish well humans have several reasons to take pictures and to simulate it we need several kind of triggering

start from what we call coincident triggers it's based on the concept that if you have cool actors doing cool moves then it should be cool pictures so we have the animator evaluating the animation they have made it in score in term of interesting or not and then I evaluate each character in term of this character interesting or not and we combine together and then every frame in the battles we calculate the score and trying to maximize the score while fitting well as many character into the frame as much as possible and when the frame and the score is high enough we can be sure that that's is cool pictures and we also have even triggers so we snapshot when we sure that we can express the player Avenger when we shot this time like in cinematics or in special well interactive event or when you reach new destinations and three we have thing called whim tickers it's based on the

concept that after all you don't need reason to take picture you f do you well I do too when I have camera in my hand I just take care of my friend no reason is needed and usually you get good picture because your friend is good-look and he has nice hair so that's a technique well after it's whim but although we say whim there's pattern behind this so actually we take wiim trickers only when there are no other trickling events around so this way whim tricker can help us to control the distribution of the picture during the day so we is ensure us that we can get a picture in the night or in the evening where the sunset is beautiful and also when there are no interesting events around we can create one even the you know boring C could be fun if the character look fun and that's a and also we have manual trickers so like souvenir photos or the skill snapshot in battle that I just described

you so you can see that these four actually match really well with the tree design policy we had well because we designed that way but you know what I like to say is that no trigger is perfect but combined together it can answer the requirements we had before and it can simulate reason for people to take photos now we go to next step of theme selections now we have the decided when to take pictures now we have to decide what and how to take pictures and that is a theme each theme has its own styles on subject choices and framing algorithm so there are up to 20 themes inside this gamee but to make it simple let's say we have three big category we call this joyful category wonderful and exciting category the joyful category focus on well snapshotting characters like portray or open two shot together driver

or selfie anything that will make the character looks appearing and while the theme well while the category wonderful focuses on the world itself and using Y angle like when you're running or riding chob b or in the car and this category exciting will focus on the most meere of the combat like oneon-one or well Battlefield itself and it usually use strong tilt to well simulate the situations we also have pret theme because you know in cinematic we can't just show everything that happened behind cinematics you know the artist will just angry at me and sometime we do it to when we feel that it's worth sacrifice sacrificing the uniqueness for the sake of perfect background like to fit this waterfall inside the pictures so that's finished the same selections now we do details enhancement

we have to do this because sometime reality can be boring nothing happens but you need variety and life into the pictures so the key is that we separate rendering in the F the world and rendering in the game World apart and then we can secretly change things inside folder world without having the player realizing what happens inside the gameplay world and we can do things like this having knock this facing us and small sheet and it's really amazing that just making making the character sheet really improve the believability of the photo you get it seem that know humans are eye contacts after all I guess and then we can do posing exaggerations or we can add things our bodies to do interactions and of course we can do this adding Gana photo boming well she is a mysterious woman who appears time to time in the photos when actually she wasn't there

and we add her in because I think it's fun and you know when people get Gana they feel they are lucky and they want to share this photo too and then we do framing calculations we do it by using well the bone informations and the Collision environment to create a good frame for each pictures well each themes has your own frames and we won't go through them here though but please know that we try to use promos position as much as possible possible for the sake of believability and then we do knowledge presentation it's mean we try to embed as much information as possible into the picture what who when why how into the picture and then we use the information TX for the further operations such as post filing well I like Instagram and there are a lot of filter here and prompto also use filters to the photos too but the problem is there some filter that

doesn't not match well with some photos like this you know you you don't want monochrome selfie right it doesn't look good or in this case how do we call this I think is Japanese photo boost blooming is for a beauty purpose not battle purpose so we we don't want this to happen a lot in the game so we use information tags to screen this properity out but after all it's preference so you can Jun that inside the setting menu and then we do auto albing at the end of the day promto will show you what happens during the day with his pictures and we don't want the user to spend too many time looking at this so we trying to reduce number of picture from 8 to 12 pictures per day but do you know that we actually took more than TW 20 pictures per day and we have to to delete some picture away and to delete the right picture and to keep the right picture there to well to express one day is a tricky things

considering this we have five picture here and you want to choose only four and delete one which one should we delete 10 seconds TI Tok Tik Tok well there might be no one answer but for us we use information TXS and we feel that we should keep some information tag that is interesting and unique like chable like sunet like night or like battles why we should delete some that are redundant like running or Broad View so the answer we trying to delete this picture yes yes you're right okay but thing get triggered when we have lots of picture around so we need a proper algorithm so we make our own algorithm regarding redundancy score and uniqueness score which can earn is own panel but okay we won't explain them here but okay we do some trick to to get a big Bic for you guys and then we do things like this

when we show you the pictures why is your face so fat I'm not fat selfies make it look that way yes we play conversations stylish as always come now it's nothing special and we try to make this conversation as much as teenager conversation as possible Picture Perfect God damn it so the key is that to make the player few that there are actually inside the campfire and look in the picture with the budes not looking through UI this all for you know road trip experience and this concludes our well process for prompto snapshots then what do we get so I believe what we get from this is the most powerful storytelling tool one of the most powerful story telling too in Final Fantasy 15 you know there are some guys who say things like this RPG is his

story well gladiola didn't say that though but lot of people say this and for me I think is half correct the other half is RPG is storytelling you know story and storytelling is come together and you see when I was a child I play Final Fantasy 7 and when okay spoiler alert when AR die whenever die I cried a lot and since then I wanted to be game to make a game that make people cry because I believe crying during entertainment is one of the greatest happiness mankind could have and so now I'm here and making game making Final Fantasy so the problem is can we really rely on storytelling by cinematics and linear level script as we used to do before when Final Fantasy 15 is a story about bones and brotherhoods and we are open world game so how can we possibly persist on doing the storytelling with cinematics

linear level script when players spend more than 90% 99% of the time running or fighting monster inside a world map with the friends so if you want to do storytelling of brotherhoods and bones inside open world map do it in the game play and that's by Ai and that's by using photos that's my answer and photos has their own power their own magic that can create emotional PS so picture all the information the picture just come sudden to you and strong enough to create some power inside your heart especially in the very last part of this game when we want to do a storytelling of the loss of friendships the loss of Brotherhood well we can't tell you much because we don't really want to spoil you but it's difficult to do storytelling of loss because you know it take time to accommodate but you need some tricker to release it and to make people feel lost is easy but it's difficult because people can't remind

can't recall what exactly has been lost they didn't see the picture and that's when the photo came in I believe photos are time machines it can bring us back to the very moment the picture were taken and it stirs our memory and make it recall the old day and it tells us that that good old day will never ever come again and that strong punch the strong emotion p is strong enough to make the player who are really into our game cry if we're lucky and I think we're lucky and so well we come to the last part so I want to share with you the lesson I got from making these features because promto snapshot is a very challenging and very new too new so we have our own lots of problems that I think I could share the first thing I like to share is that you need to sacrifice something you can do everything especially when you trying to make a new feature a new

things that no one actually know how far we could or could not go no one know the Scopes then there will be lots of Temptations coming in from the outside from the inside and if you don't have a very concrete goal you will go as stray and then you spending time doing thing that you don't really want so try to hang on to your goals make it clear for example for prom to snapshot Temptation one why don't we have prom to improve his foto skill which sound good and of course costly so we Revis our design goals again which is Express game play well maybe not St imagination maybe not encourage SNS maybe yes depends on the skills so we know that we should engage into this feature but not too much just enough to answer our goal will be enough so our solution is that prompto will not improve his framing algorithm because no one will understand rather than we give them new filters and giving selfie

unlocked or self shot unlocked and this was way much happier for the user they can use it to post in the internet and we can get our goal and we can sacrifice only one thing Temptation two why don't we allow player to freely instruct promto what and when to snapshot which sounds very great and there are this kind of Temptation come to me a lot from outside when we are developing it so we revise our goals again oh it's costly because you know we don't have interface you have to be able for the user to tell what and when and we don't have any buttons left in the controllers and also when you point the camera to someone normally people do the V sign or maybe do no no don't take me anything and that's very costly and then we revise our goals and well since user take it it's my experence game play it doesn't stir imagination but well it's Unique so it's good so we feel we need to do this so the solution is that we

make prompto snapshot skill in battles because in battles we already have interface for telling the bodes to do what and when and the monster do not do V size so it's very cheap I I something I that we cannot have promto take picture by our instructions outside the battles but we get something and we reach our goal and that's that's is enough well temp three why don't we have the Buddies playing posting animation in an actual game play we sell Goods too and very costly and then we review our goal no no no no no so the key is you must be very clear about what you really want because when you know what you really want you will know what you don't really want and if you can sacrifice what you don't really want to get what you really want then just do it number two be a researcher but be a

producer so I am a AI researcher too and we AI researcher well let's say making AI is fun and we have ego to try to answer all the problem with AI and we try to do this too with prompto snapshot we try to challenge 100% AI Framing and one big task we have is to put the landmark into the frame to create sense of locations we try you know right direction calculating try to fit the moon trying to fit the mountain and the lake into the frame but well it didn't go well and well so we turn I turn myself from researcher into producer and I say well we might not be able to finish this before the shipping of the game and so we give up and find a new way like you know using semit pret camera so the location the character is preset and the directions of the photo is preset but then you calculate AI

framing from that point what you get is that you get variety of pictures but all the picture has the location Landmark location inside the frame so as a producer we are successful but as an AI researcher did we are we defeated are we failed maybe not because you know with all these picture in user wouldn't know or maybe wouldn't care which picture AI calculated or said no no one cares it's just fun you know so that's one good answer I have and also the last thing I like to share with you is that when you are doing a new thing it's really hard to share the final Visions with other people so don't give up and time will tell because now in this day when everything is finished people come to me and say well prompt of snapshot is great they say to me and I'm I'm happy but during the time of developing many many people just say that this feature doesn't worth it you know it doesn't

help a game to be fun or anything at all and it's my job to try to convincing them every day every day but it's difficult because prompto snapshot is not about making photos about making photo experiences and we can't share experiences unless we finish making it so what I like to say to you guys is that if you guys are Challengers and you're trying to make new things that no one knows before be prepared for not being understood be prepared for critics and nice but if you're believing you're do the right thing the good thing then just walk tall and struggle and never ever give up so to put in simple be a researcher be a producer you can sacrifice something but never give up and that's a key to making something new I guess at last before I show you the last picture let me say that well at the very the last that's my email you can email me to talk with me with anything things I like to discuss and our studio email

uh business division too we are looking for the Challenger too so if you have you know you can email us and well this is our last picture of my team snapshot Team without this guy this feature couldn't ever come true so thank you very much can I have just one questions and then we do other Q&A outside I have a question um so I used the feature a bunch in the game and I noticed that um prompto would take lots of pictures of um you know the main character um mounting a chobo so I get butt shots of of uh my character mounting a chocobo and I liked the picture I I saved it so after that it kept showing me pictures of my butt mounting the chobo over and over again I was wondering is there part of your algorithm that is it my fault like is it because I saved that picture and

because I like the picture of seeing uh my character's butt that it keep showing me and did did prompto keep taking pictures of that because it thought that's what I liked well it's not purposly but there reason so we try to keep promto locations as much as possible so it mean you ran too fast and prompto couldn't run in front of you and that's the reason so maybe you could run slower yeah I usually am in a rush to jump on the that could be my fault that way but I was I was wondering if there was any code that you you wrote no no I I don't like B okay thank you okay so I think we ran out of time but I'm I'm I'm happy to discuss with you guys maybe outside the room or maybe here so see you then and enjoy the rest of the panel and enjoy our game too