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Discussion Andrew Wilson: “There is real hunger to use Generative AI to speed up game development among game developers”

I imagine there is some hunger to release games faster, but generative AI right now is simply not close. The issue with a lot of machine learning companies is that they focused on creating algorithms that can produce something OK looking but generic, but they trained their algorithms on so much data that it's very hard to customize the algorithm to get something that reflects individual art styles or text that an artist would put in. This means generative AI is generally not useful for gaming as generic art or text is not helpful.
 
Given how absurd game budgets are these days, no shit. It's the easiest way out for them right now.

Doesn't mean AI is anywhere close to ready for game development, but devs being hungry for it isn't surprising at all.
 
Why would developers be hungry for something that could replace their jobs? Guessing he means the higher ups, as is usually the case.
 
Does he mean actual developers, or business suits who care only about profit and have no respect for the artistry and creativity that goes into game development?
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I imagine there is some hunger to release games faster, but generative AI right now is simply not close. The issue with a lot of machine learning companies is that they focused on creating algorithms that can produce something OK looking but generic, but they trained their algorithms on so much data that it's very hard to customize the algorithm to get something that reflects individual art styles or text that an artist would put in. This means generative AI is generally not useful for gaming as generic art or text is not helpful.
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Why is this a matter of GenAI being “not close”?

If anything, it’s too far beyond

The reason it looks generic is because it’s literally trained on so many artworks and styles, some good, some bad, some that were already generated by AI itself. This in turn homogenizes the artistry into plasticy goo.

I unironically think AI looks better when it’s trained off of a smaller dataset.
I don’t want it either way but if i’m forced to be objective, this is what i’d say.
 
Actual developers, or management at multinationals that own studios that employ developers? That word is doing a lot of heavy lifting to try and imply that actual developers want this.

It’s like saying ‘developers think endless crunch and layoffs afterwards is fine’ after surveying only upper management suits whose bonuses are tied to the project worked on by staff four layers of management beneath them hitting arbitrary deadlines.
 
This should be read: "use language learning models to fire as many artists, programmers and VFX artists as possible while we shovel ever more cash to the C-suite", right?
 
There are some cases where AI could surely help, for example, take a picture, or draw a charakter and create a 3D Model out of it. Tools like that would speed up dev time.
 
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this isnt really part of the art discussion on AI which i find drastically more valid.

like game dev does need generative AI for tons of busywork asset creation and all that which are some of the primary reasons there's so much crunch in the industry. not the creative aspect, but the raw manhours aspect.

in an ideal world we're probably not getting, this reduces workload on devs and we hear less industry horror stories.
 
isaacmaltes said:
Why is this a matter of GenAI being “not close”?

If anything, it’s too far beyond

The reason it looks generic is because it’s literally trained on so many artworks and styles, some good, some bad, some that were already generated by AI itself. This in turn homogenizes the artistry into plasticy goo.

I unironically think AI looks better when it’s trained off of a smaller dataset.
I don’t want it either way but if i’m forced to be objective, this is what i’d say.
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You need much more technically advanced algorithms with smarter networks that can more easily adjust to individualized training sets given.

Right now, GPT and a lot of the art generators are just "STACK MORE LAYERS, THIS IS GOOD, RIGHT????"
 
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Revolsin said:
this isnt really part of the art discussion on AI which i find drastically more valid.

like game dev does need generative AI for tons of busywork asset creation and all that which are some of the primary reasons there's so much crunch in the industry. not the creative aspect, but the raw manhours aspect.

in an ideal world we're probably not getting, this reduces workload on devs and we hear less industry horror stories.
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Uhh no. The reason there's so much crunch is that publishers demand more in a shorter amount of time, with not enough pay and too few employees. All while at risk of having your studio closed at any moment.

Introducing generative ai only give corporations more reason to continue cutting positions, not to address the actual issues.
 
TheCongressman said:
Uhh no. The reason there's so much crunch is that publishers demand more in a shorter amount of time, with not enough pay and too few employees. All while at risk of having your studio closed at any moment.

Introducing generative ai only give corporations more reason to continue cutting positions, not to address the actual issues.
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i agree on that being the base issue. i also think companies won't be budging on the timeline for devs to release games so making that process faster could help.

like i said, in an ideal world this makes things better. realistically it doesn't.
 
Generative AI to make Dev's jobs easier and speed up the game making process: 'That's good'
Generative AI to cut corners and allow executives to slash jobs and try and make bugged games on the cheap: 'That's bad'
 
Revolsin said:
i agree on that being the base issue. i also think companies won't be budging on the timeline for devs to release games so making that process faster could help.

like i said, in an ideal world this makes things better. realistically it doesn't.
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How do you not hear what you're saying? "Since companies are greedy, we should let them be even greedier, and fire more people." How is that helping?
 
We need to have a grown up conversation about this as there's no stopping it.

No one has ever had a problem with Unreal Engine and SpeedTree using their algorithms to quickly create a generated open world that can then be adjusted by level designers and turned into something that feels handcrafted. But if those companies came out with that system today and called it "generative AI world creation" in order to impress shareholders, I guarantee everyone on here would be against it. But it would be the same exact thing that already exists, and is well-regarded. So we can't just see the word "AI" and get mad. It has to be more nuanced than that.

Video games have always used new tech and middleware to make the process of making games easier. GenAI will be no different. It'll be up to us as consumers to police how it's used by refusing to buy games that take the piss.

For me:
GenAI that speeds up modeling and texturing? For me this is a positive - this is like the biggest time and moneysink in modern game design and digital artists can then tweak the AI output to make sure it's good and appropriate.
GenAI to create narrative scripts or that replaces voice acting? No good. GenAI can't create meaningful stories or express real human emotion.
GenAI that is used on the fly to create NPCs you can talk to for dynamic narrative experiences? That is potentially very cool, if it works.

Your opinion on the above might differ!

But either way, this stuff is here, it's useful, it will be used. We've got to decide what uses we're cool with and where we'll actively protest it.
 
Heron said:
We need to have a grown up conversation about this as there's no stopping it.

No one has ever had a problem with Unreal Engine and SpeedTree using their algorithms to quickly create a generated open world that can then be adjusted by level designers and turned into something that feels handcrafted. But if those companies came out with that system today and called it "generative AI world creation" in order to impress shareholders, I guarantee everyone on here would be against it. But it would be the same exact thing that already exists, and is well-regarded. So we can't just see the word "AI" and get mad. It has to be more nuanced than that.

Video games have always used new tech and middleware to make the process of making games easier. GenAI will be no different. It'll be up to us as consumers to police how it's used by refusing to buy games that take the piss.

For me:
GenAI that speeds up modeling and texturing? For me this is a positive - this is like the biggest time and moneysink in modern game design and digital artists can then tweak the AI output to make sure it's good and appropriate.
GenAI to create narrative scripts or that replaces voice acting? No good. GenAI can't create meaningful stories or express real human emotion.
GenAI that is used on the fly to create NPCs you can talk to for dynamic narrative experiences? That is potentially very cool, if it works.

Your opinion on the above might differ!

But either way, this stuff is here, it's useful, it will be used. We've got to decide what uses we're cool with and where we'll actively protest it.
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What you're saying is true, ai isn't all the same and some is useful, but you're missing a key point.

This massive push for 'ai' recently is fuled by grifters. Companies are being sold on tech that is less capable than they are told, present massive ecological problems, and are comprised of countless amounts of stolen assets. The reason the general public doesn't distinguish between these kind of tools is by design. Lump it all together, make it hard to know what is happening, what's actually useful and what's not. The discourse of if ai is good or not gives a screen of legitimacy to them. Not even the suits in charge know what exactly the tech is, they only see the bottom line.

Just like it happened with nft, they're sold a miracle technology that 'is the future' and one that 'is inevitable'. Luckily people didn't buy into it. So if people are going to be mad at ai in general, so be it. It's better than shitty tech taking over and ruining games and pushing people out of their jobs.
 
GenAI is actually a pretty decent support tool for programming. In that sense I think it could be pretty helpful for devs. Now for art/music? Nah.
 
By “developers,” Wilson means “the c-suite is pitching AI as the way out of the problem we created with the ever expanding budgets.”

Wilson isn’t talking to customers or developers. He’s trying to convince investors to not pull the plug on the unsustainable business model the AAA part of the industry created for themselves. The investors are getting antsy due to all the layoffs and lean forecasts and Wilson is trying to spin them into believing the gravy will keep coming in because of AI.
 
TheCongressman said:
What you're saying is true, ai isn't all the same and some is useful, but you're missing a key point.

This massive push for 'ai' recently is fuled by grifters. Companies are being sold on tech that is less capable than they are told, present massive ecological problems, and are comprised of countless amounts of stolen assets. The reason the general public doesn't distinguish between these kind of tools is by design. Lump it all together, make it hard to know what is happening, what's actually useful and what's not. The discourse of if ai is good or not gives a screen of legitimacy to them. Not even the suits in charge know what exactly the tech is, they only see the bottom line.

Just like it happened with nft, they're sold a miracle technology that 'is the future' and one that 'is inevitable'. Luckily people didn't buy into it. So if people are going to be mad at ai in general, so be it. It's better than shitty tech taking over and ruining games and pushing people out of their jobs.
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I can’t like this post enough. “AI” is the new “NFT” buzzword/grift. Generative software is a tool, not a miracle maker.
 
jnWake said:
GenAI is actually a pretty decent support tool for programming. In that sense I think it could be pretty helpful for devs. Now for art/music? Nah.
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Yep. Code generation is integrated into my daily workflow already. Basically every dev I know uses it and both companies I've worked with have GenAI enterprise tools available specifically because developers begged management for it.
 
In a perfect world, this would make it possible to create more games at the same time. More dev teams working on different games at the same time. With lower budgets, publishers can take more risks!
 
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Revolsin said:
this isnt really part of the art discussion on AI which i find drastically more valid.

like game dev does need generative AI for tons of busywork asset creation and all that which are some of the primary reasons there's so much crunch in the industry. not the creative aspect, but the raw manhours aspect.

in an ideal world we're probably not getting, this reduces workload on devs and we hear less industry horror stories.
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Wilson specifically mentions creating "more interesting story lines" (lmao as if), so I'd say it's part of the art discussion with how that sure as hell sounds like he wants to use it in writing and not just busywork.

“The second phase for us, of course, is how do we further expand our games? How do we build bigger worlds with more characters and more interesting story lines?
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I'm a designer and AI can be very useful. Not for large scale generation, but smaller tweaks to thing.

Game development needs all the help it can get atm.
 
Revolsin said:
like game dev does need generative AI for tons of busywork asset creation and all that which are some of the primary reasons there's so much crunch in the industry. not the creative aspect, but the raw manhours aspect.
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It doesn't if game devs weren't so absurdly averse towards asset reuse. FromSoft has been reusing assets since demon souls and they make some of the most critically acclaimed titles out there. Nintendo uses (more or less) the same Mario concept art and models for all their spinoff games.

There's only busywork because AAA gamedev more often than not insists on reinventing the wheel over and over (something which IIRC a CD Projekt Red lead admitted to, but spinning it as something "that makes gamedev fun") rather than actually optimizing their production pipelines properly.
 
Revolsin said:
like game dev does need generative AI for tons of busywork asset creation and all that which are some of the primary reasons there's so much crunch in the industry. not the creative aspect, but the raw manhours aspect.
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*wrong answer buzzer*

fuck generative AI every time

I would always have rather made the decision on design "gruntwork" without fucking question

any use case you can think of for AI in game dev that doesn't fuck over designers, artists, and musicians can be done more effectively and more correctly by creatively coded scripting.

seriously it feels like some of you still don't understand the fucking unreal damage this shit is doing
 
Coming from someone who had a toe in the industry and interact with others within occasionally, GenAI is here and is already fucking up the creative talents. Maybe you won't see it in the cool console games. But that whole other gaming industry featuring cheap, basic mobile games. It's here and the creative talents there have been decimated. I've heard of entire creative departments getting fired and replaced by GenAI.

So.... fuck executives. If GenAI is allowed to take an even stronger presence in the industry, you can kiss unique, distinct games such as Animal Well goodbye. And say hello to more cooker cutter, mindless clicking games.
 
I think Nikke uses generative AI for all of its characters so I imagine some publishers will try it for their AAA titles as Nikke is wildly profitable, but Nikke is trash made for porn addicts so they’re not too discerning.
 
In a better world this means "we'll use AI to spit out the pointless busywork no one enjoys doing so developers have more time to work on their creative/technical ideas"

However in grifter capitalism land I've no doubt art will be a side casualty of this.
 
ai gen these nuts mr wilson
komicer said:
If GenAI is allowed to take an even stronger presence in the industry, you can kiss unique, distinct games such as Animal Well goodbye. And say hello to more cooker cutter, mindless clicking games.
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would argue that those types of games will continue to exist as counterculture to the ai generated corporate garbage that will flood everything else. and who knows maybe genai will become the high fructose corn syrup and artificial preservatives of entertainment where not using it is a selling point.
 
thoughthaver said:
ai gen these nuts mr wilson

would argue that those types of games will continue to exist as counterculture to the ai generated corporate garbage that will flood everything else. and who knows maybe genai will become the high fructose corn syrup and artificial preservatives of entertainment where not using it is a selling point.
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Yes, that's one way to see it. But this junk will be EVERYWHERE and... I don't have the confidence to say that your average consumer is discerning enough to reward effort. Most indies will get lost in the mass swamp of junk (just think how hard it is for first-time indies to be discovered on the eShop).

Man, as someone whose industry is directly affected, the situation is so depressing that I try not to think too much about it. At least, NFT-bros pay artists.
 
Procedural generation in gaming literally predates graphics. So this is simultaneously meaningless buzzwords and continual pressure to treat artists as expendable.

Isn't Endless Ocean a clear example of how this can go wrong? It seems quite likely that the new game would have been better received if it was more hand-crafted instead of generated.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I think Nikke uses generative AI for all of its characters so I imagine some publishers will try it for their AAA titles as Nikke is wildly profitable, but Nikke is trash made for porn addicts so they’re not too discerning.
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I have that suspicion around a bunch of png gachashit games but I cannot confirm it since I don't play nor care about them.

But looking at the art of some of them, one or another really seem to be using ai...
 
Heron said:
GenAI that is used on the fly to create NPCs you can talk to for dynamic narrative experiences? That is potentially very cool, if it works.
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Adding to this: I think if they record a voice actor's speech, pay them properly and use their voice to train a model so they can have an NPC interact with you using that voice and, further expand that with LLMs to allow for possibly an endless conversation, that could be fine I mean, as long as the VA is getting paid with royalties after if they decide to re-use their voice...

No matter how big the scope of a game is, eventually you will run into the same phrases an NPC has said already.
 
kasparov77 said:
Adding to this: I think if they record a voice actor's speech, pay them properly and use their voice to train a model so they can have an NPC interact with you using that voice and, further expand that with LLMs to allow for possibly an endless conversation, that could be fine I mean, as long as the VA is getting paid with royalties after if they decide to re-use their voice...

No matter how big the scope of a game is, eventually you will run into the same phrases an NPC has said already.
Click to expand...
(I'm not in favor however of replacing the plot writers and writers for core cutscenes/dialog with LLMs)
 
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Suswave said:
*wrong answer buzzer*

fuck generative AI every time

I would always have rather made the decision on design "gruntwork" without fucking question

any use case you can think of for AI in game dev that doesn't fuck over designers, artists, and musicians can be done more effectively and more correctly by creatively coded scripting.

seriously it feels like some of you still don't understand the fucking unreal damage this shit is doing
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Well said. Thank you.

I won’t lie, i’m a little shocked (and spooked) by some of the replies here.
I really expected a place like Fami would be more receptive to the kind of harm this stuff is doing to pretty much the entire entertainment sector and especially artists of every kind.
 
isaacmaltes said:
Well said. Thank you.

I won’t lie, i’m a little shocked (and spooked) by some of the replies here.
I really expected a place like Fami would be more receptive to the kind of harm this stuff is doing to pretty much the entire entertainment sector and especially artists of every kind.
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Why would a computer replace artists though? A generative AI is much more powerful in the hands of a capable artist. The AI stuff will reach a limit somewhere, especially when training data mostly also is AI generated. Human creativity is still key here and a generative program can create basic stuff that works as templates and can make artists much more efficient.
 
k samedi said:
Why would a computer replace artists though? A generative AI is much more powerful in the hands of a capable artist. The AI stuff will reach a limit somewhere, especially when training data mostly also is AI generated. Human creativity is still key here and a generative program can create basic stuff that works as templates and can make artists much more efficient.
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Contrary to what you seem to believe, GenAI is not a “tool” for artists. It’s a complete replacement. It doesn’t fill in for any sort of single step, it replaces most of the entire hustle.

What you’re describing here is effectively the elimination of concept artists. And I find that very worrying on paper.
 
isaacmaltes said:
Contrary to what you seem to believe, GenAI is not a “tool” for artists. It’s a complete replacement. It doesn’t fill in for any sort of single step, it replaces most of the entire hustle.

What you’re describing here is effectively the elimination of concept artists. And I find that very worrying on paper.
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I don't believe that for a second. It makes things more efficient for artists and yeah some things will cost a lot less effort but ultimately I think if companies can release games more faster, like instead of having a new GTA every 12 years you get one every 3 years, those artists will not lose their jobs. It will grow the market.
 
k samedi said:
I don't believe that for a second. It makes things more efficient for artists and yeah some things will cost a lot less effort but ultimately I think if companies can release games more faster, like instead of having a new GTA every 12 years you get one every 3 years, those artists will not lose their jobs. It will grow the market.
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🤦
 
isaacmaltes said:
Contrary to what you seem to believe, GenAI is not a “tool” for artists. It’s a complete replacement. It doesn’t fill in for any sort of single step, it replaces most of the entire hustle.

What you’re describing here is effectively the elimination of concept artists. And I find that very worrying on paper.
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This is not true in all cases. There have been papers by Pixar for instance on how they used Neural Style Transfer to help achieve the look they wanted for the movie, Elemental or the use of GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) to help with upscaling movies to 4K for Blu-ray release.

Machine Learning is a wide field and it's honestly very disappointing that many are using it to try to replace artists or in some case the entire creative process instead of as a tool which it is.

However, it will almost certainly lead to smaller teams across the board and I'm worried that not enough jobs will be created to replace the lost jobs.
 
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k samedi said:
I don't believe that for a second. It makes things more efficient for artists and yeah some things will cost a lot less effort but ultimately I think if companies can release games more faster, like instead of having a new GTA every 12 years you get one every 3 years, those artists will not lose their jobs. It will grow the market.
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Ehh, a few points

1. Useful generative AI is still like 5-15 years away for gaming. OpenAI did a stupid shortcut method of just endlessly stacking layers instead of building something good and customizable and so did Stable Diffusion like generators.

2. When more tools for making something more easily are released, there's always the choice between using the tools to do work faster or to... increase the scope even further. In gaming, it's almost always the later. I would expect games that use generative AI in a few decades to take even more time than current games, just having massively more unique lines of text, animations, assets etc.

3. Gaming is a winner take all market and the bigger GTA etc grow, the less time consumers will have for smaller games. This will cause the big and successful games to become even more successful, but will even further kill off slightly less successful games, leading to smaller studios becoming even less viable and layoffs there.

I would expect Rockstar etc to add jobs when they bring tons of generative machine learning to GTA... I just expect that to cause GTA8 to be so massive in scope that it kills off a lot of smaller devs as people don't have time to play their games.
 
kasparov77 said:
Adding to this: I think if they record a voice actor's speech, pay them properly and use their voice to train a model so they can have an NPC interact with you using that voice and, further expand that with LLMs to allow for possibly an endless conversation, that could be fine I mean, as long as the VA is getting paid with royalties after if they decide to re-use their voice...

No matter how big the scope of a game is, eventually you will run into the same phrases an NPC has said already.
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I have so damn little interest in "endless conversation" with NPCs. I want actual, meaningful dialogue with real human intent behind it, and not just in the main story; there's been a long history of memorable side NPCs in video games, why should that end?

"Eventually you will run into the same phrases an NPC has said already" is not a bad thing. If anything, I'm more likely to interact with NPCs knowing they have finite things of meaning to say rather than an endless spout of drivel intended to serve as conversation filler and nothing more.
 
Harpoon said:
I have so damn little interest in "endless conversation" with NPCs. I want actual, meaningful dialogue with real human intent behind it, and not just in the main story; there's been a long history of memorable side NPCs in video games, why should that end?

"Eventually you will run into the same phrases an NPC has said already" is not a bad thing. If anything, I'm more likely to interact with NPCs knowing they have finite things of meaning to say rather than an endless spout of drivel intended to serve as conversation filler and nothing more.
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I get exactly where you're coming from as examples like that one dunkey video where he showcases games using this tech are very egregious

context for the unaware:


I agree with 90% of what you've said, but after being somewhat impressed by a friend trying out a skyrim mod with ai-generated dialog for NPCs it hit me:

In order to properly utilize this tech without major repercussions to the jobs of writers, VAs and game developers the way I see it being implemented correctly is:

  • have actual (well paid) human writers and VAs for cutscene dialogs and main dialogs of npcs
  • once npcs lay out their main dialog to the player and run out of additional information to give you, trigger the generative ai to allow the npc to keep conversation but add several restrictions to it
  • obviously the first kind of restrictions would be to prevent the ai from using racist/homophobic/xenophobic and whatnot language as well as foul language in general (unless it's part of the character's personality to use GENERAL, COMMON and non-prejudiced slurs)
  • the other type of restriction would be to prevent the npc from doing/trying to: derailing the conversation, answering inane questions (eg: asking a medieval era NPC what are their thoughts on the latest iPhone), generating insane babble like the string "2007 HONDA CIVIC" multiple times

For that I believe you'd implement a feedback loop where after generating a phrase, they'd run it through the AI once again to evaluate if that generated phrase is passable.
I can totally see however, the player not cooperating by trying to ask inane questions context-wise to NPCs but the general idea would be to make the NPC reply with confused or uninterested responses and ignore the player if they insisted enough.


OF COURSE, THIS IS ALL OPTIONAL

I don't think every game should use this kind of tech, even if they do it the right way like I specified.
I get the point that NPCs not having infinite dialog is totally fine for some people (myself included) but I also believe that there's multiple people who are into immersion (again, myself included) who would enjoy this kind of tech IF it's used properly.

"WE SHOULDN'T BE USING AI AT ALL, THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY"

Like @Heron said in their post, it is inevitable. Companies WILL use this kind of tech. I believe even voting with our wallets isn't enough (I mean, just look at how successful games with predatory monetization like mobile gachas are popular despite thousands of people complaining about them.

I believe stores and publishing/development companies should be more transparent with what technologies they used to make their games and how. So the conscious gamer can make a decision on whether or not to support the company.

And more important than voting with your wallets, I believe VOTING irl to be WAY more important. If yall haven't started, you might as well now look for candidates with proposals related to outright banning ai or limiting their use from companies whose intent is replacing human labour with AI.
 
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