AI Game Chat Moderation

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duane

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/16/23460869/ubisoft-riot-games-toxic-chat-zero-harm-in-comms

My first thought was, "Ugh, more censorship." Then I thought, "Does anyone besides me actually use a keyboard to chat in games anymore?" However, if these companies succeed, I think they'll have pushed the boundaries of artificial intelligence to a whole new level. It's hard for me to picture software smart enough to understand and moderate a discussion -- not just block anyone who uses objectionable words.

DaveTheCoder

duane It's hard for me to picture software smart enough to understand and moderate a discussion -- not just block anyone who uses objectionable words.

It's hard for me to picture that too. Doing that successfully is beyond the capability of most people.

fire7side

The only multiplayer game I play, and I haven't played that since my tablet died, is scrabble. It was perfect because even though they had a chat nobody used it. Somehow, it's more fun to play scrabble against a real person. I also wouldn't mind playing a co-op game with some friends that I already knew and communed with. But just getting matched up with who knows what, no thanks. There is a percentage of people that are anti-social.

Lethn

I think it's worth pointing out that the people who push this tech a grossly exaggerating the capabilities of it. This is not 'AI' as we all know it, it's a glorified keyword algorithm, as I understand it Overwatch 2 uses a similar system where they scan voice chat and transcript it to their serves then they will ban people based on what keywords the transcript will poop out. So it could be that somebody has a very thick accent maybe or something like that and then they end up accidentally triggering a keyword when they were saying something else then they get banned for it. This is going to end in disaster lol because it's not like they're going to offer refunds over false bans. The Battlefield 4 admins did this with their servers and despite the playerbase being a ghost town to this day they still seem to insist on it so no one is really playing anymore, of course the fake player counts didn't help much either.

I've studied this quite a bit myself I don't know about anyone else and it's something I've been thinking about a lot and I also got into argument with somebody and just stopped talking to them because they refused to get it and were getting pissy at me for explaining it to them as if I was the bad guy. There are two routes that games developers are going to go down now because the legal liability of even having a chat in game just isn't worth it. They'll either turn off the chats entirely, or they'll go for the heavy moderation route. I suspect once these corporations realise they can't moderate their games the way they're planning to or their userbase drops like a rock over this they'll switch to some kind of paid heavily moderated chat for players to 'communicate' with each other on before finally giving up altogether and pulling the plug.

I'm sure you guys will get this being programmers, but a lot of people don't, in an extreme example all it takes these days to make the life of somebody hosting content or software of any kind a living hell is for one child porn link to get posted up or some weirdo to go psycho over the chat and kill someone RL and that's an instant visit from the feds. People think you can just magic this stuff away but because just about everybody knows how to use the internet these days it isn't worth it as a game dev to put these features in anymore.

Don't kid yourselves guys, communications online now are heavily monitored by the authorities whether you're a guilty party or not and it's only going to get worse, we're in a full on surveillance state. I'm not trying to scare anyone by the way, I'm just pointing out the legal realities you might face when it comes to anything to do with multiplayer these days. Oh, it's also worth pointing out that Riot Games are scumbags who ended up with an extremely shady psychologist or someone who decided to perform psychological experiments on their own playerbase so there is no way this is going to end well.

DaveTheCoder

Lethn Riot Games are scumbags

~~scumbags~~ bastages

Tomcat

Lethn So it could be that somebody has a very thick accent maybe or something like that and then they end up accidentally triggering a keyword when they were saying something else then they get banned for it.

Tomcat

Lethn Don't kid yourselves guys, communications online now are heavily monitored by the authorities whether you're a guilty party or not and it's only going to get worse, we're in a full on surveillance state.

The authorities aren't the worst of it. After all, there is opposition, mass media, public organizations… but surveillance by totally opaque and uncontrolled corporations (Google, M$, etc.) is much worse.

I played World of Tanks for a long time and even enjoyed it. Despite the fact that the Russian community is the most toxic in the world.

cybereality

I stopped playing multiplayer cause the players are so toxic and abusive. It's not fun anymore.

Lethn

I'll only ever play solo mode now, the matchmaking is always unbearable otherwise, oddly enough despite the hate fornite sometimes gets I've found myself pretty happy just hopping on for some solo zero-build play because I just want to go and shoot some people without having to constantly deal with team-based nonsense. Too many multiplayer games now are trying to become the next 'e-sports' title which I think is why they're not fun anymore.

Standard normie game genres are usually:

. 'Team-based' e-sports multiplayer of some variety

. Open world action games that behave more like interactive movies when you play through the storyline

. Party style game

Neither of these interest me in the slightest, sometimes a bit of fall guys or whatever is kind of fun which I can understand enjoying but the map rotations on that is pretty stale.

cybereality

Plus, even when your teammates aren't 12 year old racists, they don't even do the mission. It sucks unless you play on a private server with your friends.

duane

I know several people who've sworn off multiplayer. I'm starting to think that the companies would be better off dumping money into making AI opponents that are indistinguishable from (nice) human opponents rather than chat moderation.

cybereality

That's a good point. Shooter AI peaked with F.E.A.R. and never got better, actually the bots got worse. They should use the AI to make decent computer enemies.