Vaudeville (Video Game)

Submission 1,578

Part of a series on Artificial Intelligence Voices / AI Voice. [View Related Entries]

About

Vaudeville is an AI driven mystery game and detective simulator in which the player talks to several suspects to determine who is behind the recent killings in the town of Vaudeville. Following its release in late June 2023, the video game made waves in the gaming community for its use of artificial intelligence to understand the player's words and make each individual character respond to them in character, enhancing the gameplay and leading to streamers having clipable moments.

History

On June 30th, 2023, the developer Bumblebee Studios released Vaudeville on Steam with the description that it is an early access title that sees the player talk to chatbots that have been given specific instructions by the developers in an attempt to solve murders. A trailer for the game, teasing its software and showing some of the characters, was uploaded on the official Bumblebee Studios YouTube channel^[1] on February 13th, 2023 (shown below).

Online Presence

On July 16th, 2023, YouTuber Cr1tikal uploaded a video of his first time^[2] playing the game, delighted at the concept and that the game was able to record his voice so it was a simulated conversation taking place orally rather than through typing. His initial playthrough of Vaudeville earned over 2.4 million views in eight days as he tested the AI with different scenarios and tried to break it (shown below).

A week later, on July 24th, 2023, YouTuber VideoGameDunkey uploaded a video in which he talked to the AI characters about upcoming video games that he is excited about, having them claim that upcoming games were soon to release. His breaking of the AI helped bring additional focus to the game, with his video^[3] obtaining over 1.2 million views in one day (shown below).

@peterwebby completely lost the ability to speak 😂 #vaudeville #gaming ♬ original sound – Peter Webby – Gaming Content

@hugecharles Debating AI #gaming #moistcr1tikal #vaudeville ♬ original sound – HugeCharles

@indelacio what shoes? trying to find information about a detective case where a shoe was found at the scene, and this ai is missing hers but she claims they're there just so worn out you can't see them. Suspicious much? #vaudeville #game #gameplay #gamer #twitch #stream #conversationswithai #aiconversations #twitchaffiliate #twitchstream ♬ original sound – Indelacio

@coolkidcrocyt AI Says This World Is Real To Me – Telling AI NPCs They're Not Real in Vaudeville #gaming #ai #npc #vaudeville ♬ original sound – Cool Kid Croc