Can artificial intelligence allow everyone to speak the same language? At least in the world of games, this may happen soon. This was demonstrated by a research project at the Innovation Cube Laboratory at the FGV School of Communication, Media and Information. The study tracked the hashtags of self-declared gamers on the social network X, formerly Twitter, to identify and highlight trends in the topics that these gamers were engaging with.
Between the second half of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, this monitoring work picked up the #qsmp phenomenon. Quackity’s Survival Multiplayer is a multilingual private Minecraft server created by Mexican streamer Quackity in March 2023. It quickly grew to become more popular than more established games such as Fortnite. The platform brings together a group of streamers of multiple nationalities in one place to work collaboratively on broadcasting Minecraft content, and it became the first multilingual multiplayer server with automatic live translation between different languages.
Professor Alessandra Maia, the Innovation Cube Laboratory’s coordinator, says, “It’s fascinating to see how, for over a year, Gen Z and Alpha gamers have been using an AI simultaneous translation plugin within the Minecraft client, allowing them to interact with streamers from all over the world.” She points out that the current QSMP roster has 36 streamers who speak languages such as English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Korean, and there are plans for new participants.
For many people, Maia says, this might seem like something out of science fiction. “It’s as if the ‘Babel Fish’ [a fictional species from Douglas Adams’ book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ that can instantly translate any language] had materialized and allowed everyone to speak a common language on this server,” she says.
Maia predicts that AI-powered communication standardization will soon become widespread as AI models gain popularity in digital social networking environments.
About the study
Monitoring trends among gamers on X, formerly Twitter, is one of the studies that are part of “Consumption and Power in Videogames,” a project run by the FGV Innovation Cube Laboratory. By monitoring hashtags, it is possible to identify and highlight trends in the topics that these gamers are engaging with.
The aim of the study is to provide data that allows us to understand and reflect on digital communication practices in gaming environments, based on social interactions and posts about popular topics, identifying which points gamers are raising and discussing about contemporary social problems in different spheres, such as the economy, politics, consumption, news, disinformation and extremist actions.