AI in gaming: Developers worried by generative tech
AI in gaming: Developers worried by generative tech
In a struggling games industry AI has been hailed as a possible saviour. But not everyone's convinced.
I want games to have labels that they use AI generated assets. So I can avoid them.
AI is fine if it's used in the beginning-middle of a process. For example, if a writer has to write some dialogue, they know the basic content of the dialogue, feed that into GPT, that gives them a rough draft. Now many companies want to just make that the end of the process, and that's really despicable. But if then the writer is able to go through and edit and proofread that draft until it's basically all in their own words anyway, then the AI was just a labour saving device to create some basic structure from the outline.
I'm okay with them, if used responsibly. For example, AI generated settings could be very interesting, being able to expand games in ways we haven't seen. However, I would like to see the original artists brought in and compensated for that work.
Having NPCs have real generated dialog could be amazing. But those voice actors should be compensated fairly.
Don't blame the tech itself. The greed that's driving it absolutely, but as a consumer I'll say I'll gladly put my money to games who use it responsibly
I can understand an indie game dev with no budget using a vocaloid type thing to generate some voice lines when they cannot afford voice actors, or mockup some concept art of characters to the base models off of, or generate some random background content in an otherwise hand crafted world, maybe even use it to add some contextual spice to a list of prewritten dialogue text.
There are ways that a small or even medium sized team can use 'AI' tastefully.
But churning out an entire AI generated script with entirely AI gen art to slap together a 'dating sim' is obviously a very crap way to use AI.
And for a larger scale studio, one would think that these kinds of time and cost saving tools would be ultimately pointless or detrimental, as a competent staff should be able to turn out far higher quality content and systems with distinct styles.
Instead they will likely just expect to be able to replace staff and churn out samey looking sounding and feeling garbage because who cares! Saves costs, lowers dev time!
Except they will end up having less staff, being told to use AI, finding its limitations and constantly baby sitting it when it is relied on to do far more than it can actually do.
As a bit on an aside:
What is perhaps most baffling to me as someone who has modded games for a long time is that in this 'AI' revolution... I have yet to see any actual improvements to what game devs typically call AI, you know, the little brain of finite state machines or what not that actually governs what NPCs do.
I have not seen any breakthroughs in say making an RTS or FPS or ARPG type enemy do things that you would typically only expect from a human player, better pathfinding or tactics or strategy.
Only thing I can really think of is motion matching, as it uses a fairly complex algorithm to 'intelligently' blend anim states into each other far more convincingly than just a tree of anims with blends.
I realize this is because 'AI' nowadays refers to 'generative AI', but its just very annoying to me, having used the term AI for decades to mean the situational intelligence and decision making capability of NPCs.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"I'm very aware that I could wake up tomorrow and my job could be gone,” says Jess Hyland.The video game artist says the industry she’s spent almost 15 years working in is on “shaky” ground at the moment.A boom in players and profits during the pandemic sparked a flurry of investments, expansions and acquisitions that, in hindsight, now look short-sighted.Gaming remains profitable, but thousands of workers worldwide have lost their jobs, and successful studios have been shut down over the past two years.More closures and cuts are feared.
There's lots of worry about the future," says Jess.Some bosses are talking up the potential of generative AI - the tech behind tools such as ChatGPT - as a potential saviour.Tech giant Nvidia has shown off impressive development tool prototypes, and gaming industry heavyweights such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft are investing in the tech.It's claimed AI tools can save development time, free workers up to focus on creativity and provide a more personalised user experience.With budgets at the blockbuster end of the industry spiralling as audience expectations rise with them, it sounds like a perfect solution.But not to everyone.
Publicly available AI image generators, for example, can quickly output impressive-looking results from simple text prompts, but are famously poor at rendering hands.
It's a view echoed by Chris Knowles, a former senior engine developer at UK gaming firm Jagex, known for its Runescape title.
Copyright concerns over generative AI - currently the subject of several ongoing legal cases - are one of the biggest barriers to its wider use in gaming right now.Tools are trained on vast quantities of text and pictures scraped from the internet and, like many artists, Jess believes it amounts to "mass copyright infringement".Some studios are exploring systems trained on internal data, and third parties advertising ethical tools that claim to work off authorised sources are springing up.Even then, the fear is that AI will be used to turn out assets such as artwork and 3D models at scale, and the expectation on workers will be to produce more output.
The AI industry is currently trying to reassure governments and regulators over concerns about its future use, as shown by a recent law passed by the EUIt will also have to work hard to win over another group - gamers.Online shooter The Finals received a backlash over its use of synthesised voice lines, and developer Square Enix was criticised for the limited use of generated art in its multiplayer game Foamstars.Jess believes growing talk about AI has made gamers "think about what they love about games and what's special about that - sharing experiences crafted by other humans".
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How come when the robots were taking the factory and other jobs nobody complained, but now suddenly people are complaining? Humans will always have a desire for art made by other humans, there will literally always be a market for human made art.
Whether or nor big corporations want to employ humans or AI is irrelevant, they will always do whatever screws over everything else as long as it prioritizes money. Its a fact you have to accept working for these big corporations. But just like small shops and small factories employ people, so too smaller development studios will hire people.
The word "sabotage" literally comes from French workers throwing their wooden shoes (sabot) into the machines to destroy them, during the industrial revolution.
There were complaints, there were the loom riots as an example.