Voice games – An overview of an up-and-coming category

[Music] so hey I'm trying to run quickly like we okay quick quick question before I start how many of you have actually played like a what like a voice-controlled game go get you people yeah so I have some audio from some of the games here so I guess can check it out like what do they sound like so I want to go quickly so we have time to go through that this presentation is a partially motivated by the fact that you know I started making this type of games about nine months ago and every time I go anywhere I say hey I'm making voice games and people like what like what are you talking about what is this and so I got tired of explaining individually to a lot of people so I started meeting putting a presentation together so I can explain to more people the same time so there you are so a company we set up again like I mentioned a few months ago with

the understand where our vision is that voice is gonna be the same way touch change the world like ten years ago with the iPhone and everything I think voice gonna do the same thing because it's a very natural way of interaction it's faster than like typing like of course the technology has been bad traditionally so like we everybody who tried it a few years ago like got burned and like it hates it but I think like kids don't care and they're all happy happily using it and I think you know as we all die the next energy is going to be quite happy typing had a good run we typed for like 40 years but that's going to die too in 5-10 years like so voice is like we believe like that's that said like the next way of your interaction that's gaming our background you know we worked in those companies we work on this kind of games just give an idea that we're like you know series developers but not why just crazy people trying to do some crazy things you actually want to make fun games so what a voice games and that's why it's gonna beginning voice activated because when I say again when I say voice games people come up with all sorts of things that all do you mean this thing doing in this thing so I

specifically mean games that you use your voice to control them so that that's what they are it's not necessarily the new thing so there's been those games before there's not like a scientific exploration of everything that happen in the past but you know dreamcast had like a crazy game i was voiced by the leonard des moines like if you like that that fish thing would talk to you using like Leonard Nimoy Spock's voice basically it was like super weird experience only in Japan I wish I wish it was like in the green line meeting for that game but yeah that game came with a thing that you put on your controller and then you can actually talk to the game there's a microphone and the controller they just talked and that's how you play the game every time I say voice games like I would say like maybe roughly 70% of the people said back to me oh you mean an audio game I was like not quite that there's been games there like where audio is a really big thing like this is an example of a game that was made in Japan as well where it was all about audio there's no I mean the graphics are like think of it as like this is like a karaoke thing is

just like showing different images like here's the sky here's like some people talking but it's really no image like the image it was like pointless like all the game was being told to you like what to do but at the time you had to use a controller to select what you were gonna do so it wasn't like voice control it was like you were you're still like it was an audio experience but you are still using like a controller to play and this games exists might be in the App Store there's like games for like visually division people or like where like there's no nothing the screen but it can still tap to tell you what like the interface is still like tapping even though the game is like oh audio it's not quite that not just smart speaker games cuz of you know a lot of people actually say oh I mean Alexa yes I do mean that too but it's not just that right this is a game actually worked on and we're like we had there's like the Kinect version had this thing where you could actually say commands and you know it was like a cool way of doing it except the microphone and the Kinect wasn't that great and then so depending on where you were in the room I don't know how many of you had the experience of like Xbox on Xbox on Xbox haha right

so that's you know partially it was the the microphone I think Alexa like one of the things that the new generation of speakers does that the lower people don't realize it's not just the software it's actually the fact that these things are like 12 microphones around it they can pick it up if you are in the other side of the room there's a lot of like hardware magic - it's not just software and they got better so not to speak speakers but these have actually been driving this genre up so if you think right today people talk about it because of these this things right and why I think one of the reasons is you know these things I mean predicted to be the fastest penetrating thing in people's households ever faster than smartphone fast an internet you know TV etc chatter so there's gonna be I mean they're already in the u.s. they already I think - in every five households sorry in the world - I think it's for TV a 40% deer in the u.s. in the UK it's already one in every 10 so it's already like super fast like this and I started that 9 months ago in the numbers were not like this it's like they were much smaller it's growing like crazy they stall bays I mean yeah we there's a

bunch of numbers in this F can I post CS like if you if you paid anything in CS there's a lot of voice things and google just announced at that you know their platform is I 1 billion plus mostly because they do have about 100 million Google home devices but Android phone starting from version 5 or 6 like you can use their system natively so you can actually run voice things from your phone if you have an Android phone or if you have an iOS phone with the S is an app on it but again even though a lot of a lot of the talk around this stuff is like Google and Amazon it's actually a global thing in China there's also like two companies fighting it over Samsung is all all in Sony there's a lot of people fighting for this Facebook etc so what kind of games are out there today because it again is that that's probably the question I get the most like what I didn't know you could play it like what are these games like looking at the stores doesn't quite help I figure to the store like the Amazon store is like super simple if you can see here in the left it's like four jars and the last one is the the ones you can

play with this they have this button the physical thing that you can press to give an input to the game so that that's that fourth category Google is like even worse they have like 20 things to me I think the Google one is probably why generated by an algorithm somewhere like it's probably keyword base or something because makes no sense especially compared like the tatata games they actually have so I think the the Google one is actually closer to the truth like it's it's a lot of the games are Trivium type things I'm gonna explain to you like how do they work here so I'll go through the first example so one very popular game is Jeopardy I guess I'm sure all of you are familiar what it's like but let's see what it sounds like when you're playing it ready for the third clue yes the next category is here comes the song title finish the lyrics with the title of a song because maybe you're gonna be the one that saves me and after all you're a mine

this what is wonderful that's correct the next category is track to this jeopardy right sounds pretty similar like in the beginning they're like how Alex Trebek whatever I like that they really make it feel like you're you know contest in jeopardy etc except it's not like so talking to you're not him but another game that came by this like more like a voice company so they're a little bit different it's like less branded but it's you're like you know about popular things that this is called the song quiz I'll give an example like at what it sounds like choose a music decade you can say 60s 70s 80s 90s 2000s or 2010's searching for an opponent yeah it's actually multiplayer supposedly they kind of put you against another person your opponent just fill it from Illinois let's begin question 1 for 10 points

name the song title and artist [Laughter] [Music] taking me by correctly your score is 20 and Philips score is 10 all right so yeah there's a bunch of those like in both stores these are probably like some of the best ones sorry you know didn't you know that there's no way we're stuffed in this year but this is like you can see it's actually playable like a lot of people enjoy these like these are probably some of the most popular type of games there's you know Avengers quiz it's like whatever is the topic you can see there's always like something doing like some sort of you know question it's very also fashion or natural fit voice right because you get an innocent you get an we get a question

then you got to put an answer it's like a very useful very natural use of like voice I think that's one of the reasons why they're so popular another public journal is like adventure type games interactive stories like RPGs etc and that includes our game so does the game we made if you try to do a little bit differently in which we don't have a narrator and you're always talking to the characters so it plays a little bit different cause it feels like you're having a conversation rather than just telling like left-right etcetera but you know play a little bit so you guys can see you looks like I'm going to remain frozen and can't move do not be alarmed by the sounds of fire there is a 53% chance we will successfully extinguish it however we have one problem to solve before we can begin extinguishing the fire or waking you from your sleep my sensors have detected an escalated heart rate are the flames causing you to feel afraid yes I told you not to be alarmed literally five point four eight seconds ago I do not understand why you are

disregarding my instructions hypothesis you distrust my guidance oh let's continue this evaluation I need to understand more about who you are in what you want out of life short as that life may be common answers include money power love excitement happiness and oh god I don't want to die please don't make me answer this what do you want out of life please don't make me answer this question I see unfortunately this will not save you from burning to death it is clear that you're still malfunctioning ah I will now proceed to my next question is your marital status single commander yes I thought so that might be due to your trust issues in any case take comfort in the fact that if you die you will not be leaving anyone behind to grieve for you Oh exactly somebody for my podcast point in our game this is like the I mean it it

doesn't insult you all the time but this is the party game where there's this AI who's like annoyed that has to wake you up but it's a super-intelligent that is doing this stupid thing so it's like annoyed but it's let's our bean and then there's lost like some big games I think probably the most highest be like base profile game that was you know Amazon like supported like this game a lot when it came out it's getting together with the movie last year it has may or may not have actual Chris Pratt on it might be a maybe a sound like which is kind of what they do in these things but then if you play the rock you can it's a parallel story to the movie etc and they will play a little bit so guys can see this is more like a tradition of sorry gaming it tends to be very binary like when you come to places is he's like you want to do this or that for obvious reasons cuz easier to parse that then other things in this record like representing well we've gotta get out

there and cover this you have to be there with me I need your judgment in fact there's already something I'm wrestling with if we just go sneak onto the island we could get in big trouble legal trouble I mean and I can try to get some kind of official permission which is great if they say yes but the risk is if they say no and we're in even bigger trouble if me get caught there we're definitely going no matter what I guess what I'm wrestling with is is it better to ask for permission or forgiveness from uterus yeah you're probably right won't even be the riskiest thing about this trip meanwhile I'll look into flights to Costa Rica hostage America

wrong yeah so you see like in our game is mostly text of speech I dunno if you could even tell but it's like you know the text speech is actually pretty good these days so like you can do but you know that's why in our game they're all robots talking to you so it kind of makes sense but like in this one it's actually actors like doing like you know inflections and stuff like all of these options are kind of ailable in the opinion what you want to do a lot of like popular thing to do is like just like companion to an existing experience so I don't know how many of you guys know the Destiny INGOs thing but it's basically a thing that connects to the game yes I can see it's kind of like a

message of the day thing I mean there's different things you can ask you can ask about like the lore and different things with you know like some of usefulness is just letting you know like stuff that you have to kind of log in and see what you have to do it you can just ask the thing and they actually sold this this thing that did you can talk to it and that's why it's weird because you say hey Alexa ask ghosts to tell me this because it's kind of a bit of a character indirection there but because L X is a character itself that's a little complicated but you know that's what they did the other thing that you know there's a company here in London who's doing these like augmented board games and like some of them are it kind it's kind of like the bank or like

you know the the NGO master if you like you know it's kind of like telling people where to go and sometimes dropping stuff in the game so the audio is from like one of their videos it's a little bit like Shorter's a little clips it's not doesn't sound exactly like you're playing but you know just I guys have some idea what it's like butene do you want an easy food and drinks question for three points or a hearts laying and language question for five points alexa slang in language okay Georgy hit us with a real question I arranged to meet my friend but dilwala they gave me cake what happens in real if someone gives you cake is it a they didn't show up B they brought loads of friends see they were very late or D they brought me an actual cake Alexa it's a he's sue right answer in Rio if someone they'll all gave cake it

means they didn't show up without any explanation stroll annoying oh I've just heard a rumor that there's a button souvenir in Tokyo place it on the board so you don't forget yes I can see it's like a little bit helping you and play the game but also like dropping stuff in the board so you kind of say you know keep the gate movie etc it's another thing you can do there's a lot of kids stuff too as I guess you can imagine so I'm just gonna play a couple of those please brace for like spongebob voice [Music] customers sauntering in whoa take this kuku clinic bidding slide me an order of kill fries nice and greasy ring-a-ding-ding jr. wait do you want to kelp fries or kelp rings what those kelp fries are a real groove David you're a

big leaguer yeah so you see a lot of kid stuff is like Brendon and there's like you know it's kind of simple this is like a memory game it basically like just keeps people comes and order stuff and then you got to remember about the orders and sometimes it's simple sometimes complicated but you know it's kids okay he's a representative Walter I

mean these are kind of branded big production so it's like a nice audience so if there's like some less good stuff here but you know another very popular so on top of that you know it's not like it's a quick presentation we're kinda already getting close to the time so just to give you guys some overview like this is some popular genres and you know there's a lot that hasn't been done and that's kind of why we're excited personally like that's why we got into this and we want to try different things and and you know try to find what's natural and interesting to do it voice it definitely feels a little bit like the frontier right now so if you if you want you know predictable like hey this is what I'm

gonna do we can do a forecast is gonna be amazing we're gonna get our money back it's after I like to stay away but hey if you tried to do something different you know it's not that expensive like there's no graphics I mean there's some of the platforms are graphic so you can we can get a kid space actually if you want to but you know there's ways to experiments which are cheaply and you can kind of try you know different things and hopefully you guys can you know help me and not to be poor doing this like break this market more to maturity thank you [Music] you