NC AI, the artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary of NCSOFT, said on the 12th that it announced the winners of the second game production contest using "Barco Voice." Barco Voice is NC AI's proprietary AI speech synthesis technology that generates voices suited to a character's personality and situation based on text or voice data.
About 80 teams and more than 260 applicants took part in the competition. Participants used various functions of Barco Voice to create original character voices optimized for their own game universes.
The grand prize went to team "Gaebalbadak" for "ISR Operator." The game uses Barco Voice to convey battlefield situations by voice, and lets players command surveillance assets and allied forces through voice commands in an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance asset operation simulation. It was highly rated for delivering a play experience where players can change the course of the battlefield using only information interpretation and voice command.
The top excellence award went to team "Visca" for "Clearly, carrying my girlfriend on my back while crossing buildings is wrong," which was praised for offering an innovative play experience using AI voice. The excellence awards went to team "Gooogeupjin Team" for "MEOWMENT" and team "Lucky Rabbit's Foot" for "Last Requiem."
The total prize pool was 5 million won, with the grand prize (one team) receiving 3 million won, the top excellence award (one team) 1 million won, and the excellence awards (two teams) 500,000 won each.
An NC AI official said, "This contest is meaningful in that it goes beyond a simple technology demo to show that small and mid-sized developers and aspiring creators can implement high-quality character voices without the high-cost voice actor recording process."