Ubisoft has unveiled Teammates, a short playable experience powered by generative AI. It was developed by the team behind 2024’s Neo NPC demo, which was recently honored under the France 2030 program for advancing French innovation.
In the initial prototype from 2024, Neo NPCs demonstrated novel cognitive and natural language abilities, but they were still confined to a static environment. In Teammates, Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) are placed in a traditional first-person shooter setting and are equipped with advanced AI features. This allows them to respond dynamically to real-time voice commands, adapt their behaviour to each situation, and reveal their distinct personalities.
From mission briefings to battlefield commands, they react naturally, adapting to players’ strategies, moods, and even personal slang. Ubisoft states that NPCs can interpret player intent and tone, as well as environmental cues, generating fluid, context-aware reactions that enhance immersion and player agency.
Virginie Mosser, Narrative Director on the project at Ubisoft, said in a statement:
It’s really about experimenting with entirely new ways of creating interactive stories. Our role is to give AI meaning, to narrativise it, ensuring logic doesn’t replace soul. We designed Teammates to leave space for player creativity, finding that balance between emotion and unpredictability.
Ubisoft also showed a new in-game companion called Jaspar, a personal assistant designed to support players throughout their missions. Jaspar recognises players by name, assists with onboarding and understands the game’s lore. He can also highlight threats or key objects in the environment, remind players of their mission objectives, suggest next steps, and act as a tactical guide when they are unsure what to do. The companion even has the ability to manage HUD elements, open menus, and adjust settings.
The Teammates experiment serves both as a playable prototype and a testbed for the underlying technology. Xavier Manzanares, Director of Gameplay GenAI at Ubisoft, explained:
Games of tomorrow will listen, understand and react to players far more than today, and our research gives a glimpse of what adaptive, generative play could add on top of proven game systems. It’s the first time we’ve shared an experiment this early with players, but our goal is to pave the way with a strong technology layer so our creators can start imagining the value it could bring to their project and players.
The team has also built an API that abstracts the complexity of generative systems, embeds necessary guardrails, including hallucinations, bias, toxicity, among others, and helps control its power to put it at the service of human creativity and play.
In the press releases accompanying Teammates, Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot stated that creativity will remain ‘deeply human’, with AI tools only helping to bring creative visions to life in new ways.
But in the quarterly earnings call, Guillemot added:
We are making great strides in applying GenAI to high-value use cases, delivering tangible benefits to our players and teams. It’s as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D, and we have everything to lead on this front.
It’s probably going to be a while before we see this technology applied to actual games. However, Teammates has already been shared with a few hundred players in a closed playtest. The team behind the experience will continue to test, build tools, and gather feedback and suggestions from real players and creative teams within Ubisoft to refine and expand these systems. An explainer video is also coming soon for those who’d like to see it in action.
