AI in Gaming: What does the future hold?

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I'm leaving this as a more open post for discussion from the community since I'm legitimately curious about what folks here think about the use of AI in the gaming space. (And yes... it'll be funny to see the bot comments roll through here, given the context.) I put similar disclaimers on the majority of my "open discussion" posts, and it's more or less common sense, but remember: this is meant to be supporting conversation and civil debate, not bickering or arguments. Don't be rude or troll-y, we're all here to celebrate free keys and new tech advances, so let's keep the fun rolling.

AI isn't a new concept, however, we are at the forefront of brand new legal and philosophical/ethical conversations forming in industries that AI has entered, as the waters are still murky with this burgeoning tech. Many elements of the gaming industry are up for AI grabs, as we're seeing gaming companies use AI to create concept art, generate code, write stories, and entertain/interact with people (such as Vtuber streamers). While AI as a whole is still a long way from being perfect and still has some wrinkles to iron out (take this recent Vtuber controversy here), it doesn't appear like AI is going to go away any time soon. Some people (like Hideo Kojima) are embracing AI as the absolute future, with the aforementioned gaming icon saying he'll likely forego death and become an AI to continue collaborating and creating in the gaming space. (It's a joke now, but wait a few decades and it could be closer to reality than we think.) Others are worried about very legitimate issues like human job security, intellectual property rights, biased training sets, etc., and have a harsher disposition regarding how AI should be utilized in the industry. 

So, I want to ask: What are your thoughts on AI, in general, and in gaming? Is it going to be a boon to the industry, or will it create more discord and issues than it's worth? Another question: would you play a game made by AI? What if there was a game, hypothetically, made with 100% AI-generated material? Assets, code, QA testing, and all the bells and whistles took care of by various machine learning. Would it even hold up compared to a "human" game? While AI-generated games have been made (and have not been well received for, well, several technical reasons) the reality of them catching up and becoming more viable will likely be here sooner than we think.

It's impressive to think about, but at least for me, it generates many deeper philosophical questions about art and the human experience. Sure, not all games are art-- sometimes, I just want to sit back after a long day at work and play a mindless shooter to blow off steam. Many games can be straightforward enough, but some games, even games that aren't meant to be particularly beautiful, have a compelling human element to them that feels impossible to mimic from a machine. Personally speaking? I'm suspicious and unimpressed by nature, so I am inclined toward being dubious of this newfangled software being used to generate things like art, music, and stories (that match a human caliber). (Cue the David Lynch meme format here.) There's not a great black-and-white definition for what to do about this new technology, and I don't expect "easy" answers. Still, this is a brand-new frontier of human technology, so it is worth asking yourself how you feel about it and its presence in industries you care about. We'll need to learn how to regulate and co-exist with AI at some point, and let's all hope we do a better job than the Quarians!

Let me know your thoughts below! I even generated the images attached to this write-up using an AI generator, just to interact with it more and get a sense of how it operates. (For those curious, I used 'gaming ai' as my prompt for the card, which is admittedly pretty basic but allows for a decent amount of extrapolation on the machine's behalf to interpret it as it would.)

Replies • 21




Interstellar
2yr

Games and art produced by humans is preferable than a soulless, emotionless, and non-creative machine.  Kudos to my fellow artists for posting the no AI graphic across social media.  We are not all here to support new technology for companies who want the benefits from, but who do not want to pay for the work of artists, coders, writers, and performers.  Foolish companies will buy this latest snake oil product as the quick fix cure for all their staffing ailments and then wonder why no one wants to buy their Frankenstein modern art, buggy code, broken sentence retarded script, and non-performing product.  


I taste like crunchy toejam sauteed in vinegar.
2yr

Whenever someone brings up the topic of an AI creating content, I think of monkeys writing a novel.

 



Interstellar
2yr

A comedian fed a computer over 1,000 hours of Batman movies and TV Shows and programmed it to write a Batman script.

Page one of AI's brilliance:

BATMAN
<in a traditional batcave>
BATMAN stands next to his batmobile and uses his batcomputer. he's sometimes Bruce Wayne and sometimes batman. alltimes orphan.

BATMAN
“this is now a safe city. I have punched a penguin into prison.”

ALFRED, batman's loyal batler, carries a tray of goth ham.

ALFRED
“eat a dinner, mattress Wayne.”
an explosion explodes. THE JOKER and TWO-FACE enter the cave. joker is a clown but insane. two-face is a man but attorney.

BATMAN
“no! it is two-face and one-face. they hate me for being a bat.”
batman throws Alfred at two-face. two-face flips Alfred like a coin. Alfred lands heads up which means two-face goes home.

BATMAN (CON'T)
“It is just you and I, the joker. bat vs clown. moral enemies.”

THE JOKER
“I am such a freak. society is bad. you drink water, I drink anarchy.”

BATMAN
“I drink bats just like a bat would!”
batman looks around for his parents, but they are still dead. this makes him have anger. he fires a batrocket. the joker deflects it with his sick sense of humor. a clownly power.

THE JOKER
“I have never followed a rule. That is my rule. do you follow? i don't.”

BATMAN
“Alfred, give birth to robin.”
Alfred begins the process since it is his job. the joker now has a present in his hand. he juggles it over to batman.

THE JOKER
“happy batday, birthman.”
batman opens the present since he's a good guy. It contains a coupon for new parents, but it is expired. this is a joker joke.


Interstellar
2yr

It's still so early with AI that it's hard to imagine it can go so far as to make a game or a movie. It is easier to think that the assets could be AI generated, and in that case it still requires human curation, which the AI game in the linked article sounds like.

I have a simple mindset: if the game is good, I don't really care who or what made it--even as I acknowledge this stance is naive in regards to the impact it has on the industry.


Interstellar
2yr

What I've observed is that AI is good at filling in the patterns. It takes whatever existing data you feed it, and tries its best to give you results that match the prompter.
It’d most likely still remain a tool to assist artists rather than truly replace them for decades to come.

What it doesn't seem to do well is nuances. Turn to any animation that uses AI to fill in the blanks. It’ll gladly interpolate an image for you, but you’ll find more often than not a person has to come back and touch up things that do not work.

It’s like a student that is trying to mimic someone’s else’s work, but doesn’t understand why certain things work. They might find patterns and elements that score better, but don’t know why it works. Have you ever watched a movie, or played a game that feels awfully familiar in tone and pacing but just missing its own identity, and just feels like a cash grab at the end? It feels like the difference between inspiration and just straight up copying something else.

That isn’t to say humans aren’t doing the same “mimicry” as you could see with any shovelware games out there. What’s slightly more infuriating with artists (or with what’s in the zeitgeist at the moment) is how easily anyone can just steal their content and feed it to the AI to generate iterations of their works with no credit nor monetary gains from it. But discussing what is a derivative work or not within copyrights has always been a gray area, which can be left for another topic thread.

Lastly, the idea of losing the link and credit to source material does not necessarily mean the generated content is necessarily bad. It might be their first experience comes from a derivative or iteration of an existing work. Who is to say someone can’t enjoy the movie Psycho (1998) without knowing it is filmed scene-by-scene the same way as the original Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).


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