Microsoft allows game developers to sit down at their computers, launch CoPilot, an artificial intelligence-powered design tool, and type in short prompts to create everything from scripts and dialogue to questlines and NPC sounds. I imagine a world that can be created quickly.
But big questions remain. What problems are these AI tools trying to solve? For some developers, that’s not the case. AI is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, one writer with 10 years of experience in the video game industry told Polygon. (The reporter was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.) And can AI actually create interesting content when all it can do is reread the data it has actually scraped? Video game executives seem to think so. In a survey of 25 game company executives, Found Bain & Company Its executives believe that “within the next five to 10 years, more than half of the video game development process will be supported by generative AI.” Even the people who actually make the games don’t really understand.
on monday Microsoft announces partnership with Inworldis an AI game development company that develops AI tools, including an “AI Character Runtime Engine” that essentially gives endless dialogue and quests to NPCs in real time. Microsoft says these tools are supportive and a way to “empower” developers in the game design process. inworld said According to their respective posts on the subject, these tools could “reduce time and resource constraints” and ship games with “larger, more immersive worlds and stories” more quickly. That’s what it means. (Representatives for both Microsoft and Inworld declined to be interviewed for this article.)
Video game studios large and small are beginning to experiment with generative AI tools like those proposed by Microsoft and Inworld. Ubisoft announced his Ghostwriter tool in March. This tool is used to generate “first draft barks” like when a character yells “Grenade!” or “Put fire in the hole!” For example, in the multiplayer He Shooter. best of life Developer: Squanch Games AI art for set decoration And the voice acting. cd project red Using AI to recreate the voice of a voice actor after his death, with permission from the family.And more buy-in can only be expected, as companies hope riot games and nexon america We’re considering hiring an AI specialist to build our own internal tools.
The concept of AI cannot be clearly defined. For most people you ask, it means something different. But it’s safe to say that a game developer has used AI before, for example to create dynamic reactions of NPCs during combat. But generative AI is something entirely different and has different applications. “AI in general has been used by game developers since the early days of the medium, typically in terms of enemy behavior or procedural generation,” says narrative designer Anna Webster. told Polygon, adding that generative AI is doing the same thing that writers are hired to do—that writer enjoy and have been trained to perform it expertly.
“What they’re selling here is generative AI, which is something that they think can provide content that supports people who are creative, which is what humans really enjoy doing,” she said. told Polygon. “I don’t know why myself or anyone involved would want to delegate that part of their job to a machine.”
Several game developers told Polygon that the only people interested in making large-scale video games on shorter timelines are those in leadership roles.
“AAA and AAA-plus have become much more expensive because of more assets, more content, and a bigger world,” said the writer with 10 years of experience. “And those worlds need to be filled in. Who’s going to do that? It takes an army of designers and an army of writers. Somehow we’re going to take this part of the time, the effort, and the human burden of being paid for it. If you can reduce it, you can distribute and save a lot of money.”
Tools like Inward AI’s Copilot create more content – quests, lore, dialogue, and other things that studios were already planning to create – but New York University associate professor Julian Togerius said Polygon As he said, it’s about creating things “cheaper and faster.” But Microsoft’s runtime AI does something completely different and entirely new. Add generation capabilities to the video game itself, creating an “eternal game” with endless content possibilities. It could “redefine” how games are made, he said. “This is very interesting and could open up entirely new types of games,” he said.
The Eternal Game captures the player’s attention and keeps it occupied for as long as possible. AI brings that dream closer to reality, freeing executives from the need for human effort. Not to mention, the AI can respond to player feedback in real time. For some developers Polygon spoke to, the idea of AI characters is interesting, but these tools leave more questions than answers. Do we really need an eternal game? Can we actually create great experiences? This is where generative AI comes into play. very Simply put, it learns from a pool of text data and uses predictive text to generate responses to queries and prompts. It can only reinterpret ideas that already exist. That’s what I draw from without any human inspiration.
“You need a small pool of information to draw your creativity from. You start to feel the same, the same gray sludge over and over again,” said the author, who has 10 years of experience in the industry. This is bad for the writers who create video game stories, but it can ultimately be bad for the players as well.
How generative AI learns using such vast datasets is also an unanswered question. Like other industries, developers are questioning whether creators whose copyrighted works have been scraped by AI can claim that they are the work of AI. “This is not obvious, but I think the problem can be solved with new models trained on licensed and Creative Commons works,” Togelius said. Webster described the work, trained on copyrighted works and the work of non-consensual artists and writers, as “the absolute worst kind of chicken nugget”: a mix of questionable pieces. It was described as a created work. “[And it’s] Chicken Nuggets may violate intellectual property and copyright laws. ”
Togelius told Polygon that generative AI will be used to create dynamic NPCs. I don’t It’s actually faster or cheaper, but it has the potential to inspire a whole new type of video game. “If you want to do something like [large language model]-Initiated NPC, which requires designing from scratch. This is a much more difficult way to use AI, but I would argue it is more interesting. ” There are other applications of generative AI other than content generation. He pointed out how programmers can use it to generate code and learn to code.
Matthew Sage Barnes ElizaA visual novel about an AI treatment program, it experiments with a variety of tools and is open to the possibility of generative AI helping in the future. He’s not against it, but right now game developers are wondering what problem it’s trying to solve beyond executives trying to make bigger games cheaper. “I’m just thinking about it,” he said.
“I played with them quite a bit,” Burns said. “We’re interested in that, right? For example, if someone says, ‘Here’s a tool that will make your work easier, more fun, eliminates the monotony, and allows you to focus on being creative,’ that’s great.” Don’t you think so? But we’ve tried all these tools and haven’t seen the amazing benefits that the hype promises. ”
These questions are not that different from questions asked in other areas of the industry, such as video game performance. Video game performers, including voice actors and motion-capture artists, are currently working with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) to negotiate with a group of video game companies to secure AI regulations and more. Is going. Sara Secora is a voice actress and actor. Genshin and fallout 76told Polygon that voice actors are considering whether they can consent to AI being used to replicate their voices.
“What’s scary is people stealing our voices without our consent,” she said. She said: “We have a full, permanent acquisition deal on all the work we have done in video games and animation. [companies] Full rights to your content means you own it. They can feed it into a machine and do whatever they want with it. ”
Some parties signed up to these rights years before generative AI was used in this way. “I didn’t know something like this would happen,” Secora said. “Now we have a new language. [National Association of Voice Actors] rider and other things that help protect us. ” And this is in addition to the AI protections that SAG-AFTRA is seeking to secure for voice actors. (Television and film actors just ended a 118-day strike by reaching an agreement with Hollywood production companies.)
This is a fight that the Writers Guild of America took up earlier this year, after going on a 148-day strike for a new minimum basic agreement that would guarantee regulations on the use of AI, and set regulations and rules in precise terms. Documented. The new agreement does not restrict the use of AI, but instead focuses on how the AI is trained and how authors are credited and compensated. This is a guideline that video game screenwriters may refer to when outlining what regulations can be placed on the use of generative AI in the video game industry, but the industry has There is no industry-wide union like that of screenwriters.
So far, the game developers Polygon spoke to have far more questions than answers. However, he has one answer that game developers think is obvious. It’s about investing in existing developers and bringing in new voices.
“Game developers are already some of the most creative people on the planet,” Burns says. “The problem is not coming up with new ideas. Every game designer has millions of ideas, many of which may be correct. To say that AI will allow game developers to be more creative is to , which is strange to me. If management really wants to do more creative work with games, they should invest in the game developers themselves: new voices and human perspectives we haven’t seen before.”
read more