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“It’s at full speed everywhere” stated Danny Lange, senior vice president of AI and machine learning at Unity. He did so at the front of a packed room of games developers during a roundtable on “The Future of AI” at GDC earlier today.
Sitting next to him was consultant Mark Deloura from Level Up Games, director Peter Wurman from Sony AI America, head of creative Paul Stephanouk from. He, alongside chief technology officer at King Steve Collins, would go on to present their thoughts on the impact AI will (and already has) had on video game development.
They came to a consensus: AI will have a tectonic effect on video game development, altering the nature of day-to-day workings and creativity within the industry. The presentation itself had to be re-worked in the months leading up the the roundtable according to Collins, due to the waves software like Chat GPT was making.
“The tools we’re using today are erupting around up” stated Stephanouk, who stated that time consuming tasks such as writing up job listings and other low-level menial distractions are made far more efficient with Chat GPT.
His peer Lange stated that multiple significant aspects of game development can be handled with AI including text, texture and simple code. He would go on to share an anecdote of a friend with no programming experience creating their first unity game thanks to the assistance of AI programs.
But what’s happening right now, at some of the biggest development studios in the world? Well, during the opening speech at the roundtable, Collins revealed that King was using AI bots as research into how to better optimise Candy Crush levels. Rather than play perfectly, these bots are meant to play as humanly as possible, which potentially could help identify if a level is too easy or hard quicker than current practices.
Collins believes the barrier to implementing AI into current games isn’t technology, a lack in “deep machine learning adoption. For its part, King acquired Peltarion back in 2022, which means there are roughly 50 people at the company dedicated to AI work. King, the company that I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn officially presented the roundtable at GDC, is going all in on AI.
Ultimately a theme appeared to their answers on how AI had changed video game development. It had the potential to make development more accessible and efficient. For those with a desire to make games the tools were widely available to do so, whereas current developers could soon have “another arrow in our quiver” as Deloura put it. A tool to revolutionise the process.
But what of the negatives. Among this group of AI leads several genuine concerns were raised. The first, raised by Stephanouk, being bias in AI. This refers to the tendency of AI to reflect human biases, therefore altering the output data something like Chat GPT could provide. His second concern was ethically sourced art, and emphasised it was important to collect all data ethically.
Wurman brought up an anecdote that troubled him considerably, that being the situation surrounding Clarksworld: a science fiction magazine that halted submissions after people flooded the outlet with text created with chat GPT.
Perhaps the most troubling segment came from Stephanouk who believed that, at least temporarily, AI would “commodify game development”. He would expand his thought by saying: “If you think the App store is full of clones now, just wait! It will be bad, but then it will be good again”. Eventually, he stated that things will work out, pointing to desktop publishing not killing writing and digital cameras not killing photography as a “glimmer of hope from previous turns around the wheel that authenticity will rise to the top”.
What do you think of these thoughts? Let us know your thoughts on AI below!