And now for something completely different; Ubisoft have announced Sam, the company’s first personal gaming assistant, designed to enhance players’ gaming experience by leveraging players’ profile information, game library, friends list, community, and Ubisoft services to deliver all the tailored tips and information they could possibly want.

Sam is part of Ubisoft’s efforts to continue innovating the Ubisoft Club and a way to deliver new benefits to members. When gamers want to know about a release date, watch a trailer, discover Easter Eggs, or chat with Sam about the best Assassin in the series, Sam will direct them to the appropriate page on the Ubisoft website or elsewhere online. By chatting through voice or text input, players can ask Sam anything about Ubisoft games and services through Sam’s chatbot Q&A feature. Sam is directly linked to a player’s Ubisoft account, allowing the bot to analyse their latest matches and provide tailored hints and tips through the Daily Login feature, which is being introduced with Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Sam will analyze why a player is struggling during matches and will proactively send a video tip from the community. As Sam is in beta, additional features are planned in the coming months to enrich the service offered to the Ubisoft players.

Sam leverages Google Cloud’s Dialogflow Enterprise Edition, too; an end-to-end development suite that uses natural language processing to build conversational interfaces. This technology will continue to help the dev team interpret and answer questions from users, as well as highlight the frequently asked questions for faster addition to Sam’s database.

“With Sam, our ambition is to create an innovative and helpful service for players, one that knows them and helps push them get more out of their gaming experience. Sam provides a more personalized experience for our fans and delivers them what they need faster, so they can spend less time searching and more time playing,” said Stephanie Perotti, vice president of online services at Ubisoft. “Incorporating Google Cloud’s Dialogflow Enterprise Edition has helped us work dynamically and iterate faster so we can better service our fans.”

Sam is in open beta and can be accessed now through the free Ubisoft Club mobile app, which is available on the App and Google Play Stores. Currently, Sam is available in English only in Canada, with plans to extend the open beta to more markets in the coming months.