Intro
The increased sophistication of AI in recent times will disrupt many industries. An industry that it might disrupt the most is Video Games. Video games are arguably the most complex form of entertainment, consisting of various artistic techniques. As a result of this complexity, video games are very difficult to develop, however with ongoing developments of AI, the process could be changed forever. The expanding category of generative AI could potentially change the future of video game development for the foreseeable future. There seems to be a debate from many in the industry that advanced AI will not deliver these promises. I’ll explore both sides of the argument in this blog.
What is Generative AI?
As the name suggests, generative AI is a category of machine learning that uses algorithms to generate entirely new creative content. Developers use models to create an AI that can learn through patterns in data, thus creating something entirely brand new. We have seen this type of machine learning grow in popularity recently with Chat GPT and DALL-E. Chat GPT is one of the most advanced forms of this technology we’ve seen so far. This type of technology is touted as having the possibility to change the creative content world. While there are many issues with the current AI, money and research are pouring in as public opinion is becoming more and more positive. Large investors like Sequoia believe trillions of dollars can be generated from the field of generative AI and over 150 start-ups have emerged in the last few years. This surge in popularity may boost the scale of these models creating better AI in time.
Generative AI and Video Games
While AI has existed in gaming since the very beginning, there has been an increased push for AI to help develop games. As it stands now video games take lots of resources to produce due to the vast amount of working pieces. Developers must animate each frame individually as well as dialogue, music, and sound effects. The main argument for the use of this AI is developers would no longer have to animate each frame by hand but instead have them generated by an AI. This would drastically decrease the time and money needed to create large games. The quality of the games could also skyrocket. Imagine a game where the environments can be instantaneously generated using AI. While this type of technology is still quite far away, it could completely disrupt how the video game industry operates.
Industry Against AI
Many within the video game industry are calling generative AI a hype machine. Patrick Mills, a video game developer, says that many of the AI models are “designed to create specific outcomes,” and that many people believe this technology to be a “general intelligence.” This lack of understanding has seemingly led to lots of frustration within the community. Another reason many industry insiders believe this hype to be fraudulent is the existing technologies used. Procedural generation already exists and has been used in many large games to create massive worlds. Games like No Man’s Sky have used this to create large space environments. This technology still takes lots of human intervention and seems to create undetailed areas. Developers believe that generative AI would have a similar effect and not be as groundbreaking as the hype has created. Developers believe there would need to be very large improvements very fast for this technology to be implemented in an impactful way.
Conclusion
This argument seems to be a contentious one that I don’t fully understand. It is interesting to see the pushback of technology from the video game industry, especially since AI would partly automate their jobs. AI is definitely in the hype phase of its life cycle and I’m curious to see how long before this technology could feasibly be used in video game development. The ethics of this decision also begs to be looked at, as it seems creative careers are being pushed aside.
Hey Nick, I really enjoyed reading this post. Since this generative AI is in the Hype phase, I wonder if as the technology gets more advanced instead of creating the entire game, it can be used as an outline for developers to modify. That way more people are able to keep their jobs and companies will be able to produce more games faster. As someone who enjoys playing videogames this was a very interesting read and am very excited to see what this looks like 20 years from now.
Hey Nick, as someone who enjoys gaming in his free time, I really liked your post! Personally, I would love to see the use of AI in creating video games. I’ve heard about how time-consuming and difficult the creation of these games is, and it seems to only make sense to have the help of emerging technology. It looks like it would be beneficial to everyone. I did like how you talked about both sides of the argument.
With all the new technological advancements these days, I’m looking forward to seeing where the gaming industry is heading!
Hey Nick, this is a very interesting read as I’m probably the best 2k or fifa player in the class. I just find it interesting how AI can be incorporated in different parts of the game. In fifa, they made the hardest difficulty a little bit harder by adding an AI type difficulty that replicates the top players in the world and adapts to make itself better. I wonder what else they could do in fifa, which is such a hard game to master.
Hi Nick, this was a great post! I’ve always thought about what happens behind closed doors when it comes to developing these highly interactive and creative video games. This post was interesting because I definitely felt like the video game industry would have been 100% behind the idea of using AI to develop these games instead of having to create the project frame by frame and graphic by graphic. It does make sense how I confused the use of AI in video game development for “general intelligence”, and I know understand AI definitely could not take all the burden of making a good video game on its own without consistent human intervention. I do believe it could decrease costs and time to develop good games in the long run though once AI furthers in its advancement.
Hi Nick, this was a very intriguing post to read. I was suprised to hear that the video game industry is skeptical of AI and its impact on development. I want to think that AI is going to be a huge disrupter in almost every industry, however, I am no expert on AI nor video game development. I like how you brought to light some of the questions and concerns with AI in creative spaces. I think humans are so creative it will take a long time for AI to compete with that. However, I question if developers themselves are hesitant to push those limits knowing it is their jobs that could be replaced.
Hey Nick. Just as the others have said, this is a fantastic post especially as someone who play video games. My biggest question is if the inclusion of AI would help Rockstar release GTA VI any sooner? In all seriousness, the idea of AI taking on tasks such as animation fascinating and it would reduce development time and cost. I’m not entirely sure if it would improve the quality of the game. I believe that would be dependent on the development studio. You mentioned there is currently push back from the industry with the developers claiming the technology isn’t ready and the hype is overblown. However, I think this is how they’ll react with any sort of thing as developers. It will be interesting to see how the industry adopts this technology and how things will develop in the near future. We’ve already seen game sizes increase over the years. 10 years ago, the full game would be 10gb and today just a small update with some tweaks and additions will be 8 gb. I believe the most important piece is that we don’t lose that human touch to the video game. This is definitely a topic I’ll keep an eye on.
Very interesting post, Nick! I too enjoy my fair share of video games, particularly the new COD: Modern Warfare 2. I am intrigued by the way Generative AI models are trained. These models are fed data about images which are used as a reference to create original media. I can see this being applied to video game design as a framework and reducing the time it takes to make the foundation of the game. It would then be up to the game developers to add to the framework in order to complete the game. I am very skeptical to see how AI will do at creating the actual content, mission, and objectives within the game. Because it was trained on similar data from other media, I am concerned that it may create a game that is too similar to something else. The mission design is a part of game development that I do not think would be readily substituted with AI.
Hi Nick! Great post. I don’t know why, but I have not given much thought on how AI can affect the video game industry until now. Your post was very informative. As you stated, video games take a lot of time, money, and resources to create and AI could help reduce all of that. However, at what cost? A decrease in the detail-ness of games? Very general gameplay and environments instead of exciting, new games? It’s going to be interesting to see how much AI will disrupt this industry or if humans will remain in charge of it (at least for a while)!
Great post Nick! After reading your post, I wonder if the technology for gaming players (consumers) will have to change drastically to keep up if the games start to become programmed with AI? Your post was very thought-provoking and I think it is interesting that a whole game could be automated by AI. Would humans still have to program the objective or overall summary of the game- or would the AI take over that aspect too? Very interesting subject that I am interested to learn more about!
Hi Nick, I really enjoyed reading your post! I think that there should be a balance between using AI and still allowing the creative developers to create video games. As you mentioned, creating video games can be very time-consuming and costly, however many people believe that important aspects of video games will be missing if there is not the “human touch” involved. It will be interesting to see how the mix of AI and video games plays out, but I think that there should be a way to allow developers to incorporate AI into the creation of video games in the future (instead of eliminating either the creative developers or AI entirely). Overall, great post!
Great stuff Nick. As a passionate video game player I think AI generation for games would be the downfall of games. At least from a creative standpoint. If you have ever played GTA we can all agree there are a lot of missions with what on the outside looks like a new amazing mission, but falls into the same pattern of go get this drug, put it somewhere, and get the cold hard digital cash. While this is great that there are a ton of missions, the creative perspective of the gamers and developers I feel like will be missing from these games. I think in the context of building game structure and code, possibly graphics would be cool and reduce the time needed to publish these games and keep gamers happy.
Hey Nick, I thought the post was interesting as a gamer I love open-world video games. Whether that’s Minecraft, GTA, or Red Dead Redemption. The opportunities are endless and being able to generate worlds and the most important aspect that makes people love the game is the attention to detail. When there is a random side quest in the middle of the woods, that is something people appreciate and they understand the time it takes to create that.
NIce post. I already think AI is embedded in video games, but whether data-driven ML is the question. I think it will only help games get more interesting, complex, and cost effective. Honestly, I find most of the games on both platforms to be fairly repetitive and uninteresting at this point, but I’ve been playing for about 20 years, so maybe that’s it.