CES 2025: Razer’s AI Esports Coach Doesn’t Understand Why I Play Video Games
Have you ever streamed Dark Souls before? Trust me, the last thing you want when you’re fighting a boss is for chat to start telling you how to beat him—an annoyance that streamers have started calling “sitting in the background.” Now imagine that chat is an artificial intelligence that can interrupt the audio of your game to tell you what to do. You have a new AVA project from Razer.
Project AVA, an “AI eSports coach,” is essentially a companion that can watch your footage with you and give you tips as you play. This works for both single-player and multiplayer games, as I’ve seen in demos showing AVA working in Black Myth: Wukong and League of Legends .
While you’re playing, AVA can tell you how to defeat a specific boss, or what items would make for a better build, or where your opponents might be. It’s not essentially a scam since AVA can only see your screen and has no information you don’t have, but it’s definitely aimed at increasing your awareness. For example, it can track your mini-map in League to tell you where your opponents are. Or, in single player, it can tell you when the boss is going to attack, how long to dodge, and when to punish. He can also answer questions if you want to give him advice.
It’s just a concept at this point, but from what I’ve seen I’m worried that Razer may have missed the plot here. I play video games to solve the challenges the developer has given me and solve their puzzles (yes, combat can be a puzzle). Figuring out boss clues or finding the most optimal build on your own is part of the fun for me, and having the AI tell me what to do right away is more likely to make me feel spoiled for content than support. Worse, it could make my game worse because I might start relying on his advice instead of learning how to read attack patterns or understand what my equipment does.
AVA is also loud, and while I haven’t held the controller myself, I’m worried that it will be more distracting than helpful, or at least disrupt the soundscape of my game (which sometimes already gives you clues on what to do! ).
It also raises the question of where AVA gets its advice from. For example, if AVA tells me how a boss attacks in Black Myth: Wukong , does it take this data from the manual, from the developers, or from collected footage from many playthroughs? If it’s the former, then credit should probably be given. If the latter, where did this training data come from? If it’s in the middle, I’d rather see the hints the developers have already given me in the form of boss animations.
Of course, I can see the appeal of getting some help when you’re trying to master the game – say, if you’re practicing speedrunning or trying to climb the ladder in the rankings. No player is an island and I look at the guides from time to time. This does lead to perhaps AVA’s most promising features: Razer says it can base some tips on the playstyles of specific esports superstars. The ideal version of AVA is for Faker to look over his shoulder while playing.
But you can easily go the other way. I play a lot of Final Fantasy XIV , and in that game, raids can feel like a choreographed dance. If AVA knew how each raid went ahead of time and then just told me exactly what to do during the game, what would I get out of the experience? Am I addicted to the game or just mashing buttons while AVA gives me all the fun?