At a time when AI voice assistants are already quite common, have you ever fantasized that humans can really make love to Siri one day?
The Japanese, who have always been brain-opening in this matter, have indeed come to the forefront of this "frontier issue." On January 25, Sony Music Solution, a subsidiary of Sony, officially launched the AI Otome love mobile game "Bound Boyfriend" in the Japanese market. Unlike the average Otome mobile game, this game is embedded with Sony's latest AI technology, and players can no longer only advance the plot in limited tabs like a text adventure game, but instead use "WeChat" with a virtual boyfriend to chat from poetry and songs to life philosophy.
Promote PV
Will talk will also flirt, boyfriend force MAX
Although AI is the main selling point, "Bound Boyfriend" still retains the core gameplay of a standard otome love game. Once in the game, players will first need to choose the character they want to "raid". At present, only two actionable characters are available in the game, namely 29-year-old doctor Akira Shinto and 27-year-old engineer Matsuraishin.
Hands-on demonstration
Similar to many otome games on the market, "Bound Boyfriend" also uses a cat star who is loved by female players as "Moon Elder". In the main plot, the player found a masterless stray cat on the side of the road in the rain, and was about to help when he found the same love explosion "boyfriend", following the "boyfriend" home with the cat, a pure love story also began.
In the story mode, each subsection has a plot illustration carefully drawn by the illustrator, coupled with the Japanese manga style favored by Otome gamers, in terms of 2D art, "Bound Boyfriend" is still above the industry average. However, in terms of 3D modeling, many female players have said that they are "mentally prepared". The implication is that compared with the 3D Otome mobile game that focuses on exquisite modeling, the 3D performance of "Bound Boyfriend" is really rough.
However, this is not a game featuring art after all, after the end of the first main story, the official novice guide is also very clever and quick to lead players to experience a core selling point of this game - AI dialogue.
The AI conversational interface mimics Line, the most commonly used chat software in the Japanese market, so players can also see the sending time and read status of each message as if using Line. GameLook found that such a design also led to two minor flaws.
One is that because the game uses a timeline that is exactly the same as reality, some of the dialogue generated by the development of the plot will become very subtle, such as "boyfriend" will say goodnight to you at 2 pm. The second is that every message you send, the system will instantly display "read", which also makes the player clearly feel that they are talking to the robot.
Fortunately, in terms of chat content, the AI performance of "Bound Boyfriend" is still remarkable, of course, provided that your Japanese level is good enough. If you communicate with him in half-hanging Japanese like this writer, he may only be embarrassed to reply that you are not playing with the terrier, but compared to Siri's "sorry, I don't understand what you are saying", this kind of reply is already very good at "chatting".
And if you ignore him for too long, he will also take the initiative to "pick you up", such as following the good night of the previous day, to ask you what time to get up. According to the wake-up time you reply to, he will send you a good morning message at the corresponding time of the next day, as an AI boyfriend, this performance is quite competent. And like common chat software, you can even see notifications of new messages in your phone's status bar.
According to the official introduction, "Bondage Boyfriend" can even be linked with Google Calendar, weather forecast and other applications to notify you of today's itinerary and weather changes through "boyfriend".
5 messages are CDs, this love affair is a bit expensive
On Google Play, the game is currently downloaded more than 5,000 times, and it seems that there is no official large-scale publicity. What is even more surprising is that although it has only been open for two days, the game's rating has dropped to 2.2 points. Originally, GameLook thought that the lightning point of female players was a 3D model of the game, but on a website in Taiwan, many female players explained the key reason for the bad reviews.
The core issue is paid design. As a core selling point, the AI dialogue with low research and development costs is naturally also officially designed as a payment point. However, for every five conversations, the AI chat function will enter a cooling period (CD) of up to 4 hours, although in addition to paid unlocking, the official also provides the function of watching ads to reduce CDs, but watching an advertisement can only reduce the CD by 10 minutes, which undoubtedly has a greater impact on the game experience of free players.
In addition, AI is not smart enough to become a slot for players. Some players said that they originally thought that the AI response was not timely because the system introduced real timeline states such as "sleep" and "work", but soon found that this is only because the AI itself is not good at responding to long sentences and questions, in contrast, let him take the initiative to "pry" you, with short sentences to reply to AI's questions may be a dialogue with a higher success rate. But overall, this chat experience still makes female players "chat lonely".
Another design that puzzles players a bit is the "pet camera" feature in the game. This feature is designed to allow players to see the real-time status of the "boyfriend" through the stray cat that ends up staying at the "boyfriend's" house in the story, but the feature can only "shoot" 15 seconds of video at a time, and can only shoot three times a day. For Otome players who want to know more about "boyfriends", such shooting restrictions obviously do not meet their needs.
According to the charging standards revealed by netizens, the monthly VIP fee of "Bondage Boyfriend" is as high as 6400 yen (about 354.6 yuan), and the VIP can unlock unlimited chat, weather forecast, de-advertising and pet camera. In terms of the current quality of the game, such a charging price still dissuads many players.
In GameLook's view, the game also has a small flaw in the application level of AI technology - there is no voice level support. Although the game has a full story voice, it is still performed by a live-action voice actor. Perhaps, in Sony's view, the current AI voice technology can not achieve the artistic expression of real people. However, it is worth noting that the industry's exploration of AI voice has already achieved preliminary results.
From idols to partners, technological advances have boosted the diversity of AI applications
Stick reading, which means reading without emotion. The term is also often used to describe the robotic voice of AI assistants. Through a large number of deep learning simulations, today's AI voice assistants have performed quite well in the coherence of expression, so many media have launched AI announcers to achieve 7 * 24 hours of news broadcasting.
Compared with news, scenes that require more emotional investment, including love, have no problem dropping most AI voice engines. Even a simple "ups and downs" is not an easy task for AI. To solve this conundrum, British-based Sonantic has launched "the world's first crying AI" Faith. This is also an AI trained through deep learning, which is based on the emotional expression and line recording of professional voice actors, and provides users with a wealth of preset emotions and very specific detail adjustment options.
South Korea's Supertone has applied this AI voice technology to a more temperate topic - "digital immortality". The company synthesized the voice of the late well-known Singer Kim Kwang-seok in South Korea, and even his family felt no different from a real person. This synthetic voice line can also be used to sing such complex vocal scenes, so that the late idol's voice continues to accompany the fans.
However, Supertone's approach has also attracted ethical controversy, after all, "digital immortality" will also lay the groundwork for the conspiracy theory of "AI dominating mankind" in the eyes of many. Putting aside these arguments, with the solution of the AI voice emotional problem, people have gradually begun to imagine its broader application scenarios, such as "let Her Royal Highness the Princess come alive".
As the world's most well-known virtual idol, Hatsune Mirai is still the number one IP on the list of Japanese fan works to this day. The two-ponytail girl, who is called "Princess Highness" by fans, is based on the voice of the famous Japanese female voice actress Fujita, but limited to the technical level at that time, Hatsune Mirai's voice has always had a strong "mechanical feeling". With the advancement of technology, virtual idols such as Hatsune Mirai will naturally become beneficiaries, and from the perspective of the general trend of major manufacturers entering the game, AI voice may have great potential in this field.
And "Bondage Boyfriend" opens up new ideas in the opposite direction of popular idols - exclusive to personal AI companions. Although the product itself is still in a fairly rudimentary stage, combined with the digital human technology previously reported by GameLook, AI voice technology and the AI dialogue function of the product itself, if some manufacturers can integrate these technologies, it may open up a new track with bright prospects.
····· End ·····
GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material