- Written by Jane Wakefield
- Technology reporter
Image source, Promethean Developers
Andrew Maximoff has been in the computer games industry for 12 years, but despite all that experience he still marvels at the amount of money spent on building the biggest games.
“I used to work at PlayStation and the last game I worked on, production alone cost us $220 [£176m]”Then double that for marketing, and you’re getting half a billion dollars for every game you put out there, which is pretty unsustainable for most companies.”
He believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will play a crucial role in lowering high game production costs, saving video game designers vital time by automating repetitive tasks.
His company Promethean AI offers developers a suite of tools to craft their virtual worlds. Maximov hopes to change the way games are currently produced.
“What we’re trying to do is replace that with a system that can learn directly from artists, so that artists can be the authors of their own automation.”
Humans will still play a major role in the production process. AI will work alongside humans and enable them to be more creative.
“We can create a vision for the game and then the artist can click a button and have the AI give them feedback. Then they will get examples from their library of concept art and digital ideas that are relevant to their project,” Mr Maximov says.
Sometimes AI comes up with amazing ideas.
“I remember one time we were trying to build a police station and we asked the AI to fill it, and it came back with a donut on every desk.
“Another time, we were building an apartment and he kept putting a sock under the coffee table. We wondered if that was a mistake but it turns out we described it as a bachelor’s apartment, so I guess that made some sense,” he says.
Image source, Getty Images
California software company Inworld also uses artificial intelligence to build computer game elements.
It has created an engine that allows developers to add realism to game worlds and emotional depth to characters. The company is also working on what it calls a narrative graph, developed in partnership with Xbox, which will use artificial intelligence to help create stories.
CEO Kellan Gibbs told the BBC that he believes AI will allow developers to “dream bigger than ever before.”
“The engine allows developers to add AI agents that can see, sense, and perceive the world around them, while also interacting with players and taking in-game actions. When you can imbue virtual characters with advanced cognitive abilities, it opens up a whole new world of storytelling and gameplay,” he says. “.
Nick Walton is the CEO of gaming company Latitude.io, and believes that AI has the power to personalize the gaming experience.
“We’re just getting started with AI and as it progresses we’ll see very dynamic, adaptive worlds with characters that feel alive, with story arcs where you as the hero do unique things and have a very unique impact on the world.
“You can play a game where you find a city that no one else cares about and no other player has spent time in, and you can really invest in it and develop relationships with all the characters in it,” he told the BBC. .
Image source, Getty Images
His company developed AI Dungeon, a game that allows players to choose from a variety of worlds and create their own stories within them.
“It’s a bit like those old text adventures where you write an action and then the game determines what happens next.
“But the key difference is that instead of a developer pre-imagining everything they might do, the AI can dynamically decide what will happen next. So any action is possible.”
He said that he was surprised by the success of the Dungeon game, the first version of which was launched in 2019.
“It started as a side project that I just put online and within a week 100,000 people played it,” he says.
“I think there’s a lot of replayability because the story is different every time and you can take it in any direction. And there’s this ability for real choice that’s always been a goal of a lot of games.”
Greater reliance on AI could have a knock-on effect on humans working in industry.
The CEO of PC gaming giant EA, Andrew Wilson, recently told delegates at a conference that about 60% of game publishers’ development processes could be influenced by AI tools. The company was recently laid off 5% of its employees, about 670 jobs.
Maximov doesn’t necessarily see AI replacing humans, but rather allowing humans more “creative dignity,” something that’s been lost at some big game publishers where developers are given very repetitive tasks to do.
“There are a lot of developers who watched Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings and were inspired to do something great but now spend their days putting rocks outside the castle for a year,” he said.
“There’s a lot to be said for restoring the true purpose and value of these jobs, and giving every artist the opportunity to say ‘I can now make my own game.’
Mr. Gibb agrees. “We’ve heard from narrative designers and developers that our platform adds greater interactivity and engagement to games, but requires deep, thoughtful input from humans. To create the illusion of intelligence, Inworld characters need to be given rich backstories, memories, knowledge, and artifacts. And objectives — all designed by the writer, It’s about increasing human creativity.
