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Game Tech Academy collaborates with Swedish speech technology company
Game Tech Academy has joined a collaboration with the Swedish speech technology company ReadSpeaker. The Uppsala-based company develops text-to-speech solutions that, among other things, are used to provide technology to games. During the second half of 2024, master’s students at the University of Skövde have used ReadSpeaker’s technology in game projects. The collaboration will continue to explore how speech technology can be used for creative game development while also increasing the accessibility of games.
ReadSpeaker: from tech to game tech
ReadSpeaker was founded in Uppsala in 1999 with a focus on making text content on the web accessible to people with limited reading ability. Since then, the company has expanded its operations into several different areas, one of which is gaming. Today, 43 people work at its office in central Uppsala.
ReadSpeaker provides text-to-speech (TTS) engines for both Unity and Unreal, offering on-device real-time voice generation with support for all major hardware platforms. This means, among other things, that they can be used to convert text chats between players, making them accessible to people with visual impairments. Since 2019, U.S. accessibility legislation (CVAA) requires that games with chat functionality should be accessible. Similar European legislation is currently being employed (EAA).
ReadSpeaker has delivered such solutions to both large and small game companies. They also provide custom voices for game characters and support localization into a wide range of languages. Examples of games using ReadSpeaker’s solutions include The Last of Us Part II, Acolyte, and FREEDOM WARS Remastered.
Previous research on TTS for games
The University of Skövde began exploring TTS for games in 2014 as part of an inclusive game design research project. TTS enabled rapid prototyping and playtesting of games that aimed to include blind players through universal design. Tools developed within the research projects have since been used in game design courses at the university.
A collaboration between University of Skövde and ReadSpeaker was initiated in October 2024 at the Swedish Game Conference. ReadSpeaker’s technology was integrated in the design tools used in courses at master’s programmes at the university. Experiences from this pilot study have been evaluated through, among other methods, student interviews. The positive results have led to the continuation of the collaboration, with plans for a more extensive study in the autumn of 2025.
New angles for Game Tech Academy
Game Tech Academy aims to expand the use of game technology and develop students’ skills in utilizing game technology while exploring new possibilities for its application. We are exploring the intersection of game technology and purposes beyond entertainment. ReadSpeaker has approached this intersection from the opposite direction, adapting technology originally developed for practical purposes for use in entertainment. The collaboration has the potential to provide valuable insights into how differences in purpose influence technology usage. TTS for games is particularly interesting because it serves a wide range of functions. In games, TTS can be used as an accessibility tool, a prototyping aid, but also as an integrated part of the gaming experience.
Our collaboration with ReadSpeaker offers GTA’s network yet another possibility to better understand how different purposes influence the ways in which tech companies structure their operations. For ReadSpeaker, collaboration with game education programs and researchers has the potential to provide insights into how TTS can be used and adapted in new creative ways. For students, the partnership will grant access to cutting-edge game technology while also highlighting the importance of making games accessible.
Further reading:
https://www.readspeaker.com/sectors/gaming/
Engström, H. and Östblad, P.A., 2018. Using text-to-speech to prototype game dialog. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 16(4), pp.1-16.
The Deig Level Editor, https://deig.se
Contact
With questions about Game Tech Academy, please contact Luisa Geitmann-Mügge at luisa.geitmann-mugge@aalborg.dk.
