AI does a terrible job of illustrating hands. The hands are either six-fingered, four-fingered, or worse, they have just a few wispy edges that blend into the background. AI programs people from different cultures to smile in the style of 1940s Westerns. It has been reshaping and refitting images that we are familiar with according to prompts. AI can have solutions or not depending on the data it is fed.
These AI tools are being sought by video game developers and AI firms to speed up game development. They claim that it can help solve video game crunch, and automate the most tedious parts in game development. At the same time, developers are concerned that new technology could make it harder for people to break into an industry that is notoriously low-paid and difficult to enter.
In a panel that I moderated in March at the Game Developers Conference, I asked Microsoft employees who worked with artificial intelligence if AI would replace quality assurance testers. Activision Blizzard’s quality assurance testers who are on performance improvement plans, for example, are required to find bugs and reach a certain quota. Wouldn’t AI tools be able to find all bugs in a video game? Kate Rayner, from The Coalition, told me Microsoft does not have bug quotas. Games have so many bugs that developers can’t always find them before the game is released.
Rayner, Vice President and Technical Director at The Coalition (the studio responsible for the Gears of War series) said: “If you play a game you might only have had a few hundred individuals involved in its creation.” When it’s released, millions of people will be playing the game. They’ll find all the bugs then, right? We can get more coverage by using tools that simulate this and help us amplify. “It’s where the real power is.”
Ubisoft announced on March 23rd a new AI called Ghostwriter that would allow writers to iterate ten different ways on a single line of dialogue. In the Ubisoft Trailer, a non-playable character says “Listen! Get the fuck out of here!” (Ubisoft refused to give an interview for this article.)
Barks are basic dialogue lines that writers can use to get into the game writing industry. Barks and QA bugs hunting can be drudgery for AI evangelists, or a way to maintain steady employment in an industry that is difficult. Janine Hawkins said that automating this simple task in game development would cost jobs. She was a freelance writer and who first tweeted on March 24th.
Hawkins said, “I am sure that the writers who are currently using the tool to customize it and make it useful for them find it enjoyable or helpful.” “But it only takes an executive to say, ‘Our writers are able to do twice as much barking now. Why do we still need the same amount of writers?'” for it threatens scarce writing jobs.
Hawkins stated that the threat of losing a job could come from Ubisoft, or other developers using similar tools. This is already a devalued part of the games industry, and it’s easy to imagine this devaluation growing as AI tools shift the balance even further in favor of quantity.
reported on April 11th that freelancers in China have complained about the lack of job opportunities for video games.
The risk of entry-level positions has always been high. AI may worsen this situation, but it will not change how precarious these jobs are.
AI will be able to address some of the chronic problems in game development, such as the crunch time just before a deadline. This is according to Joost van Dreunen a lecturer at NYU Stern School of Business on the Business of Games. “Entry level jobs have always had a high degree of risk. AI may worsen this situation, but it will not change how precarious these jobs are. “We do wonder what organic intelligence is lost over time and whether this presents a strategic advantage.”
It is true that the development of a video game can be very challenging and that prototypes for games take a long time. It’s true that many of these basic roles can be repetitive and monotonous.
Konstantina Psoma is the founder and CEO at Kaedim. The company uses machine-learning algorithms to convert 2D images into 3D model. I believe AI-powered software developed to address the problems of game developers will help reduce costs and save time, while still maintaining high-fidelity graphics.
Some of these apps already demonstrate the promise of generative AI. I can currently jump into one of these applications and create an avatar of me in the ideal lighting conditions and desired position.
It used to cost $100-200 to commission an artist and take days. Now, it’s free and takes only seconds. I can also refine and redo my results as many times as I want, provided the service I use can handle the load. The artist won’t get tired of my requests for changes, but some avatars have creepy vacant stares.
It opens a can of worms, because there is no regulation for AI and its use. A current game developer said that there was no copyright on any of the work done by others. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized for media interviews. They were never designed with artists in mind. This was not a custom-made tool. “It bypassed the artists completely.
Regulators have been expressing their thoughts on how they will deal with this new technology. Michael Atleson warned AI-related companies against false advertising in February.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in New York Magazine: “We are playing with something we do not fully understand.” We are doing our part to contribute to the responsible path.
Will AI take away jobs in game development? Microsoft employees on the panel told me that proper controls must be in place.
Daniel Kluttz said that it is important to have people on the panel to “really stress test these systems and identify some of these emerging behaviors that you may be pleasantly surprised by.” You may not be surprised so pleasantly. You don’t even know what you’re missing. “It is important that those different views are brought into play.”
It’s important not to get ahead of ourselves. AI still makes mistakes.
It told me that, in 2021, the game developer Eleventh Hour Games used this technology to write dialogue for its game. In 2021, Eleventh Hour Games, a game developer, used this technology to create the dialogue for its game The Last Epoch. Then, I checked this claim with the studio. Eleventh Hour Games informed me via email that they did not use AI for NPC dialogue generation in last Epoch. I was curious as to how ChatGPT came to this conclusion.
