S2 Episode 37: lending an ear to The Finals' AI voices

Explicit content warning

11/02/23 • 69 min

While Rishi Sunak bundles nerds into Bletchley Park, we at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast are investigating the real danger of AI: somewhat rubbish text-to-speech voicelines making The Finals less fun. We discuss the arrival of AI voices in big-name games, the disappointingly businessy thinking behind it, and whether we can think up some uses for AI-generated material that we can actually get behind. All sparked by voice actor Gianni Matragrano’s video compilation of the lines in question, which you should probably watch before listening to this episode, or there’ll be a bit where Nate appears to bellow "THE KING FISH" for no reason. Well, maybe not no reason. It’s still Nate.

Plus! We talk about what we’ve been playing this week, which coincidentally for me was The Finals, while Nate’s been digging deeper into the Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor demo. I also recount the teeth-based controversy surrounding Cities: Skyline 2, in turn begging the question: what are they going to do with all those teeth?

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Previous Episode

S2 Episode 36: the Frasier Fantasy video game, and other cool fanworks

This week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast, Alice and James use the Frasier-inspired browser RPG as a springboard to talk about The Simpsons a lot. And also fan-made video games, like a weird SpongeBob SquarePants fever dream that James experienced while full of milk and chili, and the Waterworld arcade game (as imagined in The Simpsons). Plus, we talk about games we've been playing recently, which includes Alan Wake 2. Alice does an unhinged rant while unaware she is once again ravaged by Covid.

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Next Episode

The Electronic Wireless Show podcast S2 Episode 38: The risky business of free-to-play

In this episode of the Electronic Wireless Show podcast, Nate and I put on some ill-fitting industry analyst hats to consider the current state of the free-to-play games market: a peculiar arena, one that that enriches some almost as often as it dooms others. It’s all proven just too dangerous for Alan Wake 2 devs Remedy Entertainment, who’ve rebooted their upcoming F2P shooter Vanguard as a more traditional paid game. We later return to our core competences, in press release-speak, to talk about the Steam Deck OLED and the games we’ve been playing this week.

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