Hi there.
I’m Ben Ackland and I’ve embarked upon an adventure, an experiment -
can I prototype an immersive audio game using voice and natural lanugage understanding
that other people want to play?
It’s about 20 years in the future - the 2040s. You are Emerson, a restaurant owner in Hammersmith, London. Your eyesight is deteriorating - you avoid the hectic kitchen these days, spending more of your time in your study. But those eyes - your eyes - hold unique information that simply can’t be lost, and you know it.
Spaceships shuttle to and from the Moon regularly. Your contact is based in the Luna city of Idyia - you only know her as Jayne. You have to reach her before someone else does, but you can’t attempt that journey yourself. So you’re counting on Freddy - your friend’s son - and Alvin - a pocket supercomputer - to make it happen.
What is an Audio Adventure Game?
It’s a cross between an audiobook - a story that you listen to, in a world that you paint in your mind - and a traditional adventure game - a story that you can play, exploring locations, solving puzzles, interacting with characters to fulfil your destiny.
Your voice and thoughts are all that you need.
Why did I start it?
Most importantly: I wanted to do something creative and unique using cutting-edge technology.
- I’m a software developer by background, but I’ve been a manager and director for many years; it's been great to get back into coding as well as driving this project forwards
- I loved adventure games when I grew up and I'm often revisiting that world, but don't want to spend more time in front of a screen; voice and audio is an attractive alternative
- I've a creative, storytelling side to me and I'm excited by the idea of writing my own adventure and sharing it with others
- I enjoy a good challenge, particularly when I can see a path to overcome it, and I thrive on constant learning and improvement.
What is voice in gaming?
Modern voice technology allows computers to ‘understand’ what we say / speak (e.g speech recognition and interpretation) and respond with artificial speech that we can understand (e.g. AI voices). Popular examples include: Siri, Alexa, and Google virtual assistants. But this technology - voice as a Human-Computer Interface - has a variety of applications in gaming too.
What am I currently working on?
In order of priority:
- Completing the first interactive location - “Spaceport London Heathrow” (LHRX) - which has one key objective, a couple of puzzles, and one interactive conversation
- Adding an audio introduction - to set the scene, introduce the characters and controls (i.e. mechanics of voice interaction)
- The game currently runs in a local development environment (i.e. on my Mac). To make it possible for others to play test it, addition of a web-audio interface
- The speech API I'm using is proprietary and generalised - I'd like to replace it with an Open Source, domain-specific alternative.
If you can help me with this then I'd welcome your contribution! Learn how to get involved.
My vision
This project is a testbed for merging cutting-edge voice technologies into the gaming world - initially, story-led adventure games. I see a future where these technologies are an integral part of mainstream games and our interactive worlds.