Windows 10 is no more (though you may still use the old OS for a bit longer with a free year of security updates). Microsoft’s Copilot AI is growing like a weed on the old operating system’s grave, infecting all of Windows 11 and beyond. While Microsoft is trying to get users talking to AI chatbots on their PCs, the tech wants you to do the same while you’re gaming. The end result is a bot that’s so good at stating the obvious it could actually make the gaming experience worse.
In multiple demos, Microsoft showcased its AI guiding a player in the direction of their objective in Final Fantasy XVI from 2023. “Looks like the quest is right down the stairs, literally right in front of you,” the AI stated in one such demonstration with the obtuse confidence of a child pointing to a toy in a shop window. The player asked, “Hey, how do I get to the blacksmith?” as they looked at their world map and ignored the store icon blaring on the map screen.
In other words: Copilot seems to think gamers are dense dupes who can’t follow instructions and don’t actually want to play their games.
Gaming Copilot will confidently lie to you (in a British accent)
I tried the Gaming Copilot (still labeled “beta”) on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X. The AI is built directly into the new Xbox Game Bar as part of the so-called full-screen experience. You can set Copilot to use multiple voice types, though “wise” comes out more lethargic and bored than it does philosophical, and “heroic” is literally just a British accent. If you hold down the Armoury Crate button (that toggle at the top left of the device), you can bring up options to either speak to or use the on-screen keyboard to type questions at the chatbot.
In Hades II, I asked Copilot how I could get the “Kudos” resources you can use to upgrade your camp’s aesthetics. It told me I needed to complete more runs to get them. That’s true, and it deserves a single Kudos for knowing the name of the resource, but it also ignored the fact that players can sell loose items to the Wretched Broker to obtain the material.
Discovery is one of those intrinsic features in games that doesn’t exist in any other artistic medium. Sacrificing it for the sake of expedience could effectively ruin some games. It’s the job of game designers to make navigating their worlds feel organic. Players need to feel like they’re making choices without that belittling sense of hand-holding when they are being shepherded toward their goal like the lost sheep they are. A great example of this is in Naughty Dog’s 2017 action-adventure game Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. On one level, players race after a convoy in a truck while being hunted by an armored vehicle with a machine gun. The player can take multiple paths as long as they keep heading downhill. Every player will eventually end up in the same place at the bottom, but the fun is in the creativity.
Now, imagine if I paused the action for a second to ask an AI, “How do I get to the bottom?” Not only does doing so break the flow of the game, but it also ignores the work the developers put into their design.
Using Copilot on an acclaimed title like Hades is one thing, but a tool like this applied to poorly designed games also risk becoming something more problematic: a band-aid over legitimate issues. But it also may not even be a great bandage, considering how often it gets things wrong.
Copilot may offer bad advice to new players
As is constantly the case with AI, Gaming Copilot is great at confidently lying to you, and that’s made all the worse when it’s done with an authoritative British accent.
I asked the Copilot how I could swap or unequip weapons in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and it told me to use an “item wheel” when I hit the bumper button. That’s just incorrect. The game uses the d-pad to swap weapons. Copilot also told me I need to “nudge the thumbstick” to lean around corners, but you actually need to click to the left or right to lean.
Gaming Copilot also cannot change your settings for you, at least not yet. I had a lengthy conversation with the AI about what I needed to tweak to achieve the best balance of frame rate and graphics quality in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on the Xbox handheld. Its end advice was simply to turn the graphics to medium and move the TDP to its “Turbo” setting. It also suggested I bump the resolution down to 720p, which seemed odd since I could nail around 40 fps at 1080p on the $1,000 handheld. That’s just bad advice.
On the bright side, this program is still described as a “beta.” There’s a chance it could eventually grow into something useful. Microsoft has already kicked off its beta test of a Copilot Actions app that can complete tasks on the PC on your behalf. If Microsoft wants to make PC gaming as console-like as possible, having an AI that can actually change device settings to enable the best possible performance would be a nice change of pace. That’s what I really want an AI for: Not to do my gaming for me, but to alleviate the tedious parts of getting into a game on PC in the first place. Before it can do that, though, it needs to learn what the d-pad is.
