A gamer poses with Nvidia Corp. at the GamesCon video games trade fair, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023, in Cologne, Germany. Using a chip-enabled computer Gamescon runs through Sunday, August 27. Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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It’s not just human life that will be reshaped by rapid advances in artificial intelligence. NPCs (non-playable characters), the figures that populate the worlds created in video games but often have limited scripts to follow—think the store owner you enter—are used in gaming. is being examined as one of the first fundamental aspects of where AI can Improve gameplay and immersion. The recent partnership between Microsoft Xbox and Inworld AI is a perfect example of this.
Better communication is only the first step. “We’re building a technology that allows NPCs to move beyond predefined roles, adapt to player behavior, learn from interactions, and become a living, breathing creature,” said Kylan Gibbs, chief product officer and co-founder of Inworld AI. Allowing the user to contribute to the game world.” . “AI NPCs aren’t just a technological leap. They’re a paradigm shift for player engagement.”
This is also a big opportunity for gaming companies and game developers. Shifting from scripted dialogue to dynamic player-driven narrative will increase immersion in a way that increases replayability, retention and revenue.
The interaction between powerful chips and gaming has been part of Nvidia’s success story for years, but there’s now a clear sense in the gaming industry that, after some initial uncertainty, it’s just starting to reach a point where AI takes off. will be done. .
“All developers are interested in how artificial intelligence can impact the game development process,” John Spitzer, vice president of developer and performance technology at Nvidia, recently told CNBC, and he made an important point. Cited powering up non-playable characters as a test case.
It has always been true that technological limitations and possibilities greatly determine what developers can create in the gaming world. Gibbs says the technology behind AI NPCs will be a catalyst for a new era of storytelling, creative expression and innovative gameplay. But most of what’s to come will be games we’ve yet to imagine.
Bing Gordon, Inworld consultant and former chief creative officer of Electronic Arts, said the biggest advances in gaming in recent decades have come through improvements in visual fidelity and graphics. Gordon, who is now chief product officer at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and serves on the board of gaming company Tech2 Interactive, believes AI will reshape the worlds of both gamers and game designers.
“AI will enable truly immersive worlds and sophisticated narratives that place players at the heart of the fantasy,” said Gordon. “Furthermore, AI influencing core game mechanics has the potential to increase engagement and draw players deeper into your game.”
The first big opportunity for gen AI may be in gaming production. “That’s where we expect to see a big impact first,” said Anders Kristofferson, a partner in Bain & Company’s media and entertainment practice.
In other professional tasks, such as creating presentations using software like PowerPoint and first drafts of speeches, general AI is already doing days of work in minutes. Christopherson said that the initial storyboard design and NPC dialogue creation are designed for gen AI, and that this will give the developer time to focus on the more immersive and creative parts of making the game.
Creating an Unexpected World
A recent Bain study notes that AI is already performing some tasks, including pre-production and planning outside of game content. Soon it will play a big role in the development of characters, dialogue and environment. Gaming executives, Bain’s research shows, expect AI to manage more than half of game development within five years to a decade. It may not lower production costs — blockbuster games can have a combined development cost of $1 billion — but AI will allow games to be delivered faster and with better quality.
Ultimately, the proliferation of gen AI should allow the games development process to involve the average gamer in content creation. That means more games will offer what Christopherson calls a “creation mode” that can add user-generated content — what Gibbs calls “player-driven narrative.”
The current human talent shortage, a labor problem that exists in the software engineering space, is not something that AI will solve in the short term. But it can free up developers to spend more time on creative tasks and learning how to use new technology while experimenting. A recent CNBC study found that across the workforce, 72% of workers who use AI say it makes them more productive, according to research Microsoft conducted on the impact of its Copilot AI in the workplace. Who is
“GenAI is very nascent in gaming and the emerging landscape of players, services, etc. is very dynamic – changing by the day,” Kristoffersen said. “As with any emerging technology, we expect there will be a lot to learn about GenAI over the next few years.”
Julian Togelis, associate professor of computer science and engineering at New York University, says that given how much gaming is changing, the scale of AI can be difficult to predict at this point. He described the current state of AI implementation as “moderate agreement”.
“In the game development process, generative AI is already in use by many people. Programmers use Copilot and ChatGPT to help write code, concept artists experiment with stable diffusion and midjourney, and so on. ” said Togelis. “There is also great interest in automated game testing and other forms of AI-augmented QA,” he added.
The Microsoft and Inworld partnership will examine two key implications of AI in the video game industry: assisting with design time and narrative development. If a game has thousands of NPCs, AI can save a lot of development time by creating individual backstories for each of them — and having generative AI work while players interact with NPCs in gameplay. can also be improved.
Togelis said the latter would be more difficult to achieve. “I think it’s very difficult to get it right, partly because of LLM’s well-known cheating problems, and partly because the games aren’t designed for it,” he said.
Hallucinations occur when large language models (LLMs) produce responses that depart from context or rational meaning—they talk in a nonsensical but grammatical way about things that make no sense. Or they have nothing to do with the given context. “Video games are built for predictable, hand-drawn NPCs who don’t go off script and start talking about things that don’t exist in the game world,” Togelius said. “
Traditionally, NPCs behave in predictable ways that are hand-written by the designer or design team. Prediction is, in fact, a fundamental tenant of the video game world and its design process. Open-ended games are thrilling because of the sense of limitless possibilities, but require great control and predictability to function reliably. Unpredictability is a new frontier in the gaming world, and may hinder the widespread use of AI. Striking this balance will be key to moving forward with AI.
“I think we’re going to see advanced AI in more and more places in games and game development very soon,” Togelis said. “And we’ll need new designs that work with creative AI’s strengths and weaknesses.”