Inspiration
One of our discoveries when working with voice was that it works especially well when it provides hands-free experience, complimentary to mobile and web app features. We decided to experiment and add another way of interacting with video games.
Strategy games are full of action and they require players to focus on multiple things at once - army, resources, enemies, movements and attacks. When using traditional controls, players need to constantly switch between different areas of the map, to take control of different units and buildings.
But this it not how things work on real battles. The base on communication on real battlefields is voice. The question was - can we bring this experience into gaming?
In the project we decided to focus on one of the most popular strategy games - StarCraft and add voice layer to it. Through voice we're introducing a virtual ally, Capitan Kate Blackwater, who works alongside the players helping them to execute simple commands and acting as information hub for what is going on in the field.
Captain Blackwater helps players to focus on what really matters - strategy and its execution, without any distractions. Moreover, it adds one more dimension to gameplay - social interaction with a virtual ally. You're not alone anymore - your always have Captain by your side.
The personality behind Capitan Blackwater
A huge challenge (and also the most creative part) was to set Capitan Kate Blackwater in game universe. Entire communication around the skill is designed to be army alike - with adequate vocabulary, manner of speaking and… voice!
Captain Kate Blackwater is highly skilled army member providing Marshall (the player) with help from the base. She is professional, focused and intelligent. She knows how to operate in the battlefield and works alongside the player.
During the process of designing persona of Kate Blackwater we focused on making her feel as “real” as possible. There were a few things we used to achieve that: All of the things the Captain says or responds are set in army environment matching the game (e.g. when she doesn’t recognize command she responses “Sorry, that was not included in my training” or when she’s executing a command the response might me “Roger that” We didn’t use default Alexa’s voice but went with voice that sounds exactly how we imagined Captain to be - professional and strict We also made a several ways Capitan can react to certain command so it sounds natural and vary for the player (e.g. confirming hearing the command and executing it might be “Roger that!”, “Working on it!”, “I’m working on it”)
Entire skill is set in the army environment matching the game universe. We focused on creating an extended experience that enables to add voice layer smoothly and naturally.
What it does
The skill enables player to delegate simple battlefield tasks to Capitan Blackwater. It helps the player to focus on strategy and next moves without being distracting by e.g. localizing all workers on the map to evacuate them.
Right now, there are three main cases the Captain can help player in: Creating and sending Marines (soldiers) to a selected spot on the map to attack the enemy Evacuating SCVs (workers) from battlefield once the player in under attack Giving the status of battlefield that include how many idle SCVs are there to manage the work better
All of these actions can be done with more precision and faster by the Captain.
How we built it
1. Concept discovery
For the prototype we focused on most common use cases when players need to perform multiple actions at once. We decided to build voice-enabled actions for situations when the player is focused on the area outside of their base (e.g. attacking the enemy), but may need to perform some actions in his base (creating more troops to support the army, checking status or evacuating workers).
2. Creating personality of Captain Kate Blackwater
As mentioned before, the biggest chunk of creative work went into creating professional and army-strict character of Captain Kate Blackwater. We focused on making robust persona, with characteristic set, adequate voice and communication that matches the game. Answering the questions around the persona of a virtual ally helped us to understand the use-cases better.
3. Creating use cases and communication flow
With ready persona and defined situation when players need help we created commands focused on three cases described above. Majority of the work in this step went into creating great and self-descriptive communication flow and teaching the skill to react to as many variables of a certain command as possible. During the game it’s really important not to waste time on trying to figure out the proper way to ask for help. E.g. to move the workers out from attack field the player can say “evacualte”, “evac”, “back off”, “move out” or “hide my soldiers”. The captain will understand that and perform a proper action.
4. Integration with StarCraft API
StarCraft 2 client exposes a protocol buffers-based API that we connected to.
The application contains of two major components: an AWS lambda functions to translate Alexa input into commands a client application that the player runs alongside StarCraft, that receives commands from the lambda and executes them in game
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge was combining Alexa with the StarCraft universe. We wanted to give it a more “StarCraft” feeling than just a bot/app that performs in-game actions for the player.
That’s how we came up with the idea of a subordinate captain that’s able to execute player’s strategy. This also lets the player to feel like a real marshall, giving orders to lower ranked military.
Another challenge that we faced was making the “captain” smart - to feel like a real captain, it needs to be able to combine simple tasks into more complex, tactical actions.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- We’re really proud of the persona of Kate Blackwater. When showing it to others, we heard a lot of positive feedback on the military feel of the persona
- We managed to combine hands-free experience into a video game in a way that’s helpful for the player
- We built a working prototype within a few hours :)
What we learned
A lot! Our findings can be divided into a few fields:
Voice in gaming Voice is slowly entering mainstream game industry however big players on the market experiment with voice very carefully. We are still in the phase of discovering what voice can do to enrich experience for the players. We learned it’s possible to create a working skill that brings real value to the players.
Personality matters! The most fun part of creating the skill was creating persona of Captain Blackwater. We wanted her to have personality and be someone whom players can really treat as an ally and helper in the game. It turned out to be most crucial part of storytelling in the skill.
Voices are fun It’s really easy to experiment with non-default voice on Alexa and there is a ton of third-party software as well as Amazon’s supported solutions to do that.
What's next for Captain Blackwater
StarCraft universe is very broad and there are many more commands that can be implemented in the game. In the future, Captain Blackwater could be taught to execute more complex strategies and perform even more common tasks.
Captain Blackwater doesn't have to be a standalone person. We would like to add a gallery of allies to choose from so all players can find a captain they can relate to. Much can be done here in terms of voices, personalities and communication phrases.
It would be great to make Captain Blackwater run on other devices as well. We’d like to focus on Google Assistant first.
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