Back in January, Microsoft issued jaw-dropping news that it was buying Activision Blizzard in an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion.
Activision – one of world’s most prominent interactive entertainment developers, publishers and distributors – is behind hit gaming franchises like Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty and Candy Crush.
As noted by Microsoft in January, the deal for Activision, which employs nearly 10,000 employees worldwide, would see Microsoft launched into the position of the world’s third-largest gaming firm by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.
The buyout has attracted global scrutiny however, from regulators in the US, as well as the UK, and the European Union.
Meanwhile, as Microsoft and Activision await news of the games giant’s fate from these competition watchdogs, the firm appears to have been working on technology that could have wide-reaching implications for certain sectors of the music business.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Activision has been experimenting with tech that creates AI-generated personalized music for players within a video game.
That’s according to a US patent filed by Activision Publishing in March for an invention titled, “Systems and Methods for Dynamically Generating and Modulating Music Based on Gaming Events, Player Profiles and/or Player Reactions”.
Activision explains in its filing that “Multiplayer online gaming has seen explosive proliferation across the globe with access to a wide range of age groups” and “while many features of video games have become highly customizable, musical elements tend to be standardized across all players”.
Therefore, argues Activision, “there is [a] need for systems and methods that generate and modulate music unique to individual players”.
“By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), an infinite combination of music and audio can be automatically generated to avoid having to manually create music/audio which then needs to be tagged for play based on different situational queues.”
Activision patent filing
The filing explains that, “By automating the process of what kind of music is being played and to what intensity based on the situation, player experience, etc., music and audio can create more immersive and enjoyable gameplay experiences”.
It adds: “By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), an infinite combination of music and audio can be automatically generated to avoid having to manually create music/audio which then needs to be tagged for play based on different situational queues.”
In other words, brand-new music, generated by AI, cutting out the need for pre-recorded compositions and sounds created specifically for a game, or music written by established songwriters and recorded by artists, and then synced for use within a game.
One question this filing will throw up is, what will the use of such AI music tech for soundtracking games mean for the future relationship between the $180 billion video games business, composers, publishers, soundtrack companies, and the wider sync sector?
Activision’s filing explains that its personalized music could be specifically tailored based on a number of factors.
Some of those factors include “a level of the player’s skill and/or experience, and based on one or more of gaming event(s) that a player encounters”, as well as “the player’s reaction(s), the player’s response(s), the player’s input(s) and/or the player’s movement(s) during the gaming events”.
“By automating the process of what kind of music is being played and how the music is modulated, the video game may become more immersive, become more enjoyable and provide players with a wide variety of customizable features in order to enhance the overall user experience.”
Activision patent filing
The filing continues: “There is also a need for systems and methods that correlate generated and modulated music to the player’s success or failure during gameplay and that use the correlation to improve the player’s performance in future gameplay.
“By automating the process of what kind of music is being played and how the music is modulated, the video game may become more immersive, become more enjoyable and provide players with a wide variety of customizable features in order to enhance the overall user experience.”
MBW has long covered the rise of AI-generated music and the implications it might have on the music business.
One of the most recent high-profile stories came from South Korea, where HYBE, the company behind K-pop stars BTS, acquired AI voice startup Supertone for over $32 million.
Founded in 2020, Supertone claims to be able to create “a hyper-realistic and expressive voice that [is not] distinguishable from real humans”.
The company used this tech to “resurrect” the voice of South Korean folk superstar Kim Kwang-seok, with the subsequent AI-generated voice debuted on Korean television show Competition of the Century: AI vs Human.
HYBE CEO Jiwon Park told the company’s shareholders on Monday (October 17) that Supertone’s tech will “serve as a key piece of the technology sphere we aim to create” as the company diversifies its business for when its flagship act BTS take a break to do compulorsy military service.
Jiwon Park added that “HYBE plans to unveil new content and services to our fans by combining our content-creation capabilities with Supertone’s AI-based speaking and singing vocal synthesis technology.”
Elsewhere in the video games business, last year, a company called Reactional Music unveiled its own patented technology that allows real-time personalization of soundtracks and music during gameplay, and claimed to want to completely “re-write [the] rules for music and video games”.
Reactional Music, whose President David Knox spent 26 years in senior global management positions at EA, says that it enables any commercial or production music to become interactive around the gamer within a game.
Reactional Music was formerly a subsidiary of Sweden-based music-tech firm Gestrument, but the two firms recently merged into a single company under the name Reactional Music Group AB.
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