“It’s full steam ahead everywhere,” said Danny Lange, Unity’s senior vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Done.
Sitting next to him are consultant Mark Deloura from Level Up Games, director Peter Wurman from Sony AI America, and creative director from Paul Stephanouk. He, along with King Steve Collins’ CTO, will continue their thoughts on the impact AI will (and has) had on video game development.
They all agree: AI will have a structural impact on video game development, changing the nature of everyday work and creativity within the industry. According to Collins, the presentation itself had to be redesigned in the months leading up to the roundtable because software like Chat GPT was making waves.
“The tools we use today are exploding,” said Stephanouk, who said that using Chat GPT can make time-consuming tasks like writing to-do lists and other low-level, menial distractions much more efficient.
According to his colleague Lange, several important aspects of game development can be handled with AI, including text, textures and simple code. He’ll go on to share an anecdote about a friend with no programming experience creating their first Unity game with the help of an AI program.
But what’s going on with some of the biggest development studios in the world right now? Well, in his roundtable opening remarks, Collins revealed that King is using AI bots to research how to better optimize Candy Crush levels. Rather than playing the game perfectly, these bots are designed to play the game as humanly as possible, which may help identify whether a level is too easy or too difficult faster than current practice.
According to Collins, the barrier to implementing AI into current games is not technology, but a lack of “deep machine learning adoption.” For its part, King’s acquisition of Peltarion as early as 2022 means that the company has about 50 people working on AI. King, the company that I’m sure you won’t be surprised to formally introduce a roundtable at GDC, is going all-in on artificial intelligence.
Ultimately, a theme emerged from their answers, namely how AI is changing video game development. It has the potential to make development easier and more efficient. These tools are widely available for those who want to make games, and as Deloura puts it, current developers may soon have “another arrow in their quiver.” A tool that revolutionizes processes.
But what are the downsides. Among this group of AI leaders, several real concerns were raised. The first, proposed by Stephanouk, is AI bias. This refers to the tendency of AI to reflect human biases, thus altering the output data that something like Chat GPT can provide. His second focus is ethical sourcing of art, emphasizing the importance of collecting all data ethically.
Wurman brought up an anecdote that really bothered him about the situation around Clarksworld: a sci-fi magazine stopped submitting after people used a lot of text created by chat GPT.
Perhaps the most disturbing part comes from Stephanouk, who argues that AI will “commoditize game development,” at least temporarily. He’ll expand on his idea and say “If you think the app store is full of clones right now, wait a minute! It’s going to be bad, but then it’s going to be good”. Ultimately, he says things will work out, noting that desktop publishing won’t kill writing and digital cameras won’t kill photography, a “silver glimmer from the previous twist that authenticity will rise to the top”.
What do you think about these thoughts? Let us know what you think about AI below!
