A year ago, I poked around Steam to see how many game developers were disclosing usage of Generative AI . It was around 1,000, which seemed like a lot to me at the time. If memory serves, that was about 1.1% of the entire Steam library, which has since seen 20,000+ more titles appear. I've been fol
I read a story recently about how a graphic designer realized they couldn’t compete anymore unless they used generative AI, because everybody else was. What they described wasn’t generating an image and then using that directly. They said that they used it during the time when they’re mocking up their idea.
They used to go out and take photographs to use as a basis for their sketches, especially for backgrounds. So it would be a real thing that they either found or set up, then take pictures. Then, the pictures would be used as a template for the art.
But with generative AI, all of that preliminary work can be done in seconds by feeding it a prompt.
When you think about it in these terms, it’s unlikely that many non-indie games going forward will be made without the use of any generative AI.
Similarly, it’s likely that it will be used extensively for quality checking text.
When you add in the crazy pressure that game developers are under, it’s likely that they’ll use generative AI much more extensively, even if their company forbids it. But the companies just want to make money. They’ll use it as much as they think they can get away with, because it’s cheaper.
What I dread is a game lengthening dialog using AI. Some folks mistake quantity for quality, and make their games unbeatingly tedious. Just like games that lean heavily on procedurally generated content.
My personal issue with the idea of “infinite NPC dialogue” is that it defeats the purpose of minor NPCs. They’re just there to give you a nudge in the right direction or give flavor text (“Bandit activity sure has been picking up!” or “The king? He’s probably in his castle to the west.”). Turning them into a chatbot just means a player potentially spending all their time there with nothing to gain that they couldn’t get from Character.AI instead of playing the game.
I’m also curious about the implementation. AI API use isn’t free so you’d likely be requiring players to pay if they don’t meet the hardware requirements to host locally.
Yeah, already things were getting harder to follow as people went to address the “strangely sparse cities” problem by flooding the environment with way more stuff aiming for more plausible, but it’s more than you can ever consume and it’s generally hard to know when you are actually supposed to pay attention or not. Finding interesting side quests among the flavor text used to be a thing, but now the flavor text is just overwhelmingly too much for that.
Of course, there’s recognition of that and games start putting indications of “THIS RANDOM NPC HAS SOMETHING TO SAY” bright over anyone vaguely important. So I suppose in that context NPC flavor text vomit might as well be AI since it’s been clearly indicated as stuff to ignore as background noise. Still disappointed in the decline of “is this important or not” determination being organic.
Funnily enough, I’m excited for new dialog in video games using generative AI. It would be nice for random NPCs to not have the same 3 recorded voicelines, but to actually change what they say based on what’s happening around them.
But that’s obviously a limited use for AI. It should definitely not be used to lengthen the game and clutter up storylines as you’re kinda describing.
For background NPC, sure nothing lost, at least nothing lost that isn’t already being lost in the “put big exclamations/question marks over NPCs with something actually important to say”. Once upon a time there was a nice experience of evaluating NPC text to determine if there’s an interesting side quest or at least an interesting side story playing out in the dialog. But with the push for more credible ambient NPC instead of big cities with like 25 people living in them that has been significantly lost anyway.
I read a story recently about how a graphic designer realized they couldn’t compete anymore unless they used generative AI, because everybody else was. What they described wasn’t generating an image and then using that directly. They said that they used it during the time when they’re mocking up their idea.
They used to go out and take photographs to use as a basis for their sketches, especially for backgrounds. So it would be a real thing that they either found or set up, then take pictures. Then, the pictures would be used as a template for the art.
But with generative AI, all of that preliminary work can be done in seconds by feeding it a prompt.
When you think about it in these terms, it’s unlikely that many non-indie games going forward will be made without the use of any generative AI.
Similarly, it’s likely that it will be used extensively for quality checking text.
When you add in the crazy pressure that game developers are under, it’s likely that they’ll use generative AI much more extensively, even if their company forbids it. But the companies just want to make money. They’ll use it as much as they think they can get away with, because it’s cheaper.
What I dread is a game lengthening dialog using AI. Some folks mistake quantity for quality, and make their games unbeatingly tedious. Just like games that lean heavily on procedurally generated content.
Yep, not excited for Starfield generated planets type of deal when it comes to dialogues and such.
My personal issue with the idea of “infinite NPC dialogue” is that it defeats the purpose of minor NPCs. They’re just there to give you a nudge in the right direction or give flavor text (“Bandit activity sure has been picking up!” or “The king? He’s probably in his castle to the west.”). Turning them into a chatbot just means a player potentially spending all their time there with nothing to gain that they couldn’t get from Character.AI instead of playing the game.
I’m also curious about the implementation. AI API use isn’t free so you’d likely be requiring players to pay if they don’t meet the hardware requirements to host locally.
Yeah, already things were getting harder to follow as people went to address the “strangely sparse cities” problem by flooding the environment with way more stuff aiming for more plausible, but it’s more than you can ever consume and it’s generally hard to know when you are actually supposed to pay attention or not. Finding interesting side quests among the flavor text used to be a thing, but now the flavor text is just overwhelmingly too much for that.
Of course, there’s recognition of that and games start putting indications of “THIS RANDOM NPC HAS SOMETHING TO SAY” bright over anyone vaguely important. So I suppose in that context NPC flavor text vomit might as well be AI since it’s been clearly indicated as stuff to ignore as background noise. Still disappointed in the decline of “is this important or not” determination being organic.
Funnily enough, I’m excited for new dialog in video games using generative AI. It would be nice for random NPCs to not have the same 3 recorded voicelines, but to actually change what they say based on what’s happening around them.
But that’s obviously a limited use for AI. It should definitely not be used to lengthen the game and clutter up storylines as you’re kinda describing.
For background NPC, sure nothing lost, at least nothing lost that isn’t already being lost in the “put big exclamations/question marks over NPCs with something actually important to say”. Once upon a time there was a nice experience of evaluating NPC text to determine if there’s an interesting side quest or at least an interesting side story playing out in the dialog. But with the push for more credible ambient NPC instead of big cities with like 25 people living in them that has been significantly lost anyway.