Game production is especially time-consuming and labor-intensive, but it is especially suitable for automation.
Artificial intelligence "electric shock" game industry
AI is disrupting its "incubator" industries, and every field of entertainment will be impacted by generative AI. The technology can digest text, image, audio or video input to create new output. But venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz) believes that the gaming industry will be the most affected. Due to the interactive nature of the game, a large amount of content needs to be designed, so the production process of the game content is very cumbersome: for example, the well-known western adventure game "Red Dead Redemption 2" contains 30 square miles of landscape and 60 hours of soundtrack. Using artificial intelligence assistants for content creation can greatly reduce production time and budget.
Game "Red Dead Redemption 2"
At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last month, game makers showed off their latest artificial intelligence technology. French game developer Ubisoft (Ubisoft, masterpiece "Assassin's Creed", etc.) launched Ghostwriter, a tool for generating dialogue for game characters. American DIY gaming platform Roblox has launched a tool that extracts materials (such as "stained glass") from text commands, as well as a tool that provides auto-completion help for programmers. A few weeks ago, Straight4 Studios launched a new driving game called "GTR Revival," in which the AI can provide each player with a personalized commentary on the car.
GameGTR Revival
Steve Collins, head of technology at King, maker of the popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga, believes artificial intelligence represents an "explosion of opportunity". King acquired an artificial intelligence company called Peltarion last year to use AI to assess the difficulty of game levels. "It's like you have a million players," Mr Collins said. This year, Electronic Arts, another big game maker, and Google were awarded patents for using artificial intelligence in game testing. Game development engine Unity plans to create a marketplace for developers to exchange artificial intelligence tools. Danny Lange, Unity's AI lead, hopes this will "put all creators on a more equal playing field."
Opportunities and Challenges
There's a remarkable fact that making games has become easier than ever: Nearly 13,000 games were released on the gaming platform Steam last year, almost double the number in 2017. Gaming may soon be similar to the music and video industries, such as Spotify and YouTube, where most of the new content on the platform is generated and uploaded by users. One gaming executive predicts that small companies will be the quickest to figure out new types of games that artificial intelligence will enable. Last month, Intel executive Raja Koduri left the famed chip maker to start an artificial intelligence gaming startup.
Don't overlook the big game developers, though. Josh Chapman, a gaming venture capital specialist at Konvoy, a venture capital firm focused on games, says a world of more choice favors companies with large marketing budgets. And, the gaming giants may come up with better solutions to copyright issues surrounding artificial intelligence. If generative models must be trained on data that developers own the copyright to, those companies with a large body of work will have an advantage over startups.
Of course, there are also many stakeholders who oppose artificial intelligence entering the game production industry. Last month, Trent Kaniuga, an artist who has worked on games such as Fortnite, said some clients had renewed their contracts to prohibit the use of AI-generated art. While the game developer euphemistically refers to the AI assistant as a "co-pilot" rather than a human replacement, employees are reluctant to take the risk. In March, the Writers Guild of America, which includes game writers, said that "plagiarism is a hallmark of AI-generated content."
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Edit: Xiaoyi