Best Narrative Award
The First AIGC Exploration and Innovation Competition of LightSpeed Studios, Tencent Games
Personal Contribution
Environment Concept / AI Speech Generating / Story Writing
Special Thanks
Felix Chen - Visual Effects
Weiye Li - 3D Environment Building in Unreal Engine / Demo Video
Alan Liu - AIGC Function Incorporation / Programming / Program Manager
Zhonghua Xin - Character Design & Modeling
Neo Zheng - AIGC Function Incorporation / Programming
Introduction
During late 2022 and early 2023, a controversial technology was rapidly promoted worldwide. Some people's careers have greatly improved efficiency due to this technology, while some people have lost their jobs and dreams as a result. This technology is named AIGC, Artificial Intelligence Generated Content.
The impact of AIGC on the gaming industry is significant, not only in AI-generated art but also in speech / sound synthesis, programmed 3D models, etc. However, as a concept artist, I personally experienced the anti-AI-generated art movement on Artstation some months ago. This movement has also brought a lot of thinking to not only artists but also all practitioners in the game industry. What will AIGC bring to games? New ideas, challenges, or disasters?
Based on the above events and considerations, our team decided to participate in this AIGC competition. We experimentally incorporated AIGC into the gameplay and production process, aiming to explore and understand how AIGC is related to games. This work is a pioneering and proactive practice.
An Playable Science Fiction
"I woke up in a room, I don't remember what happened before. I see a hospital bed in this room, on which lies an old lady. I tried to communicate with the old lady, but she didn't reply. The robot-like voices and electric noise made me feel like trapped in a stranger's room. However, strange things happen one after another..."
When a person is about to die, while their brain function is not completely lost, they can extract brain information as data and connect it to a server equipped with an AI virtual world to achieve the "continuation of life". However, using this service requires paying monthly rent from the real world. The person's data will be forcibly taken offline to save server resources if the rent is not paid on time. Only VIP users with expensive monthly plans can experience normal day and night rotation. Basic users who don't have that much money can only enjoy 2 minutes per day, and after two minutes, they will enter the night. Fortunately, there is also an AI that can accompany and chat, making the long night less lonely. This AI also has the function of monitoring, controlling the appearance of the "world", and providing "care" to users who have excessive behavior.
In fact, The player is playing the old lady herself. The family of the old lady uploaded her brain data to the server to continue her life when she was about to pass away. However, they could only afford the rent for basic users, so the lady, also the player had only 2 minutes of activity time per day. The game takes place five days before the renewal is required, and due to an error on the server, the lady's memory data is retreated. This is why the main character can see the old lady, and can hardly recall why she is here.
During these five days of playing, the player will realize "who I am and where I am" through chatting with AI in the night and free exploring during the day. No matter what happens, five days later, the old lady is forced to go offline because her family can not pay the monthly rent. The player will find the main character in an array of rooms at last and realize that this world is not real but a virtual place.
Lost Signal is an AI game with a story that is against AI.
Environment Concept
Design Mentality
Keywords: Bedroom of an Old Lady, Lonely, Dreamcore
With the effect of the "Backrooms" series, I believe "Dreamcore" is a great way to show a feeling of loneliness and a weird atmosphere. Unlike the Backrooms, I converted the color tones to cool colors to reflect the ruthlessness of AI and future technologies related to the story instead of using the monochrome yellow of the Backrooms. This is in line with the atmosphere we want to bring to players.
The bedroom is set in an attic, which includes basic furniture such as beds and desks. Medical equipment, sofas, and other elements for taking care of the lady will also be added.
Implementation Method
To achieve AIGC-assisted design processes, I chose the AI image generator "Stable Difusion" as the tool to generate the above concepts. Use the above words as the positive and use only general quality prompts for negative prompts.
After extensive generation and selection, the result images below match the atmosphere we want to present to the players and will be delivered to the 3D environment team members for reference in building the scene.
The Origin of the Backrooms
Dreamcore
The Backrooms
AI-Generated Environment Concepts, Study and Experience
Interact with AIGC
This part is collaborated with Alan Liu and Neo Zheng
AI-Driven Gameplay: Talk to the "Game" and Watch Its Reaction
The gameplay of the Lost Signal was created by all team members. At first, we focused more on optimizing the production process with AIGC during the development process, neglecting the fresh interaction brought by AI. With the publishing of ChatGPT's API, our team has begun to critically reflect on previous ideas and reconsider the deep integration of gameplay and AI.
We finally made the AI chat Tool ChatGPT the core of the gameplay. ChatGPT will send the prompts to the AI image generator StableDiffusion for AI image generating based on the player's conversation. Afterward, StableDiffusion generates images related to it. AI-driven interaction arises accordingly, and the storytelling has also been completed.
To better adapt the production content to the theme, we used images of "Dream" and "Death" for training in the StableDiffusion image gallery. By training AI to control the results to prevent them from deviating from the story theme.
Increase the Efficiency with AIGC Tools
During the development process, consider attempting to integrate ChatGPT, StableDiffusion, TTS, and NerF in real-time within the engine. NerF was finally given up because its development cost was higher than expected.
ChatGPT is good at communicating with people, considering that it can engage in text conversations, then it can provide feedback on the game's story background while communicating with players. Therefore, it can become the NPC or background sound of the game with the support of the text-to-speech tools.
Brainstorming Before Start
Demo Vedio
Story End CG
The Paintings will Change Base on the Chat Contents
The arrival of AIGC has brought revolutionary changes to many industries, especially in the field of digital media. The debate over new technologies has never been as intense and mixed as AIGC. Lost Signal is not a perfect work, it is more of a pioneering exploration, exploring one possibility of AIGC interacting with digital media, and embodies our respective understanding of AIGC. As for the future of AIGC and digital media, it is currently difficult to give a definitive conclusion, we will walk and see.
