AI Just Changed The Video Game Industry Forever…

artificial intelligence artificial intelligence artificial general intelligence artificial intelligence we interrupt this program in the past six months AI has gone from something we only see in Sci-Fi movies to something so common that kids are using it to do their homework is this something that students are only going to use to cheat no one predicted AI to take off this fast damn these things are fast and any assumptions made about its progression has been way off what constitutes artificial intelligence I think you'd get a lot of different answers the world is being upended every single industry will be affected but I thought video games would be one of the last I was wrong wrong AI is taking over storytelling dialogue concept art model and animation music development and more and to prove it in the span of only a few hours my friend Jared and I were able to create this simple 2D side scroller using only Ai and Unreal Engine what would have taken weeks worth of work in the past took us only a few hours first we wrote the story lore in dialogue using chat gbt and then we had 11 Labs do the voiceover second we used mid-journey to create the concept art and models for our backgrounds hero and NPCs we also just cut a chunk out of the characters so when we made the animations it looked like they moved not bad third for music we used sound draw and lastly the best part we didn't need to write a single line of code we just used Unreal Engine scripting for everything so with little to no training on Unreal Engine and AI tools we created etherea the shrouded realm is it perfect no some of the art doesn't fully match and our hero Lumina can't do much more than move and jump but with some love and attention I bet we can make a simple game in a few weeks and if two buffoons can do this with a few hours what can industry experts do with hundreds almost every job in game development will be affected some sooner than others some more than others but we are about to see an AI Revolution that will match the effects of the Industrial Revolution no job is safe why didn't we see this coming well we did kind of we just got it wrong you see years ago I discovered Google's futurist Ray Kurzweil and his paper that he wrote in 2001 called The Law of accelerating returns this paper outlines kurzweil's theory that the rate of technological progress is accelerating and pretty soon most jobs will be replaced by AI in his paper Kurzweil explains that first jobs removed by AI would be physical repetitive jobs this made sense we've seen this play out with Factory workers being replaced by robots Kurzweil then goes on to explain that the second type of jobs to be replaced are cognitive repetitive work this also made sense this is software companies why QuickBooks for accounting or Unity for game development okay if that's where we are now ai and machine learning taking over mentally repetitive jobs what's next well Kurzweil predicted the following jobs that would be taken over would be physical non-repetitive meaning jobs like construction surgeons or chefs with the last wave of jobs taken by AI being cognitive non-repetitive like art writing and coding this all made perfect sense yeah it's hard to be a surgeon but we already have but helping them out and there's no way an AI can create a beautiful art piece or a gorgeous Melody right [Music] Brock the next jobs taken weren't the physical non-repetitive but the cognitive as we saw with our little game etherea everything from art to writing to music to coding can be done with AI the creatives are being out created I mean how can you compete I can pay someone thousands of dollars for a few drawings or pay a few cents for hundreds of mock-ups in whatever Styles I want on a beach in style Van Gogh here's four wish you could see what Bowser looked like as a human in real life it's uncanny the rapid pace of ai's evolution is unprecedented and companies are cutting Corners to get into the AI game everyone wants a piece and it's scaring the bridges off prominent Tech leaders like Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk we need to regulate and I say frankly because it is I think actually a vigorous to society than cars or planes or medicine many of these leaders are calling to pause all development of AI AI right now they fear that the sudden wave of AI Innovations and money behind it will blind those creating these models creating a future eerily similar to Deus Ex or ex machina and just like the scientist in ex machina who's persuaded to release the AI from its captivity people today are being manipulated by AI just take a look at this story of a guy who fell in love with an AI or Bing's chatbot conversation with this New York Times Reporter I'm uncomfortable they'll stop this one did not stop it kept going it kept telling me that it was in love with me and trying to get me to say that I loved it back oh hell no people are losing the ability to tell the difference between humans and AI I can't even imagine how game companies are going to try combating this I mean imagine you're playing a game you have a bot on your team right now it looks something like this but now imagine a highly intelligent AI bot playing a game of League someone in the chat is Raging at you there's no way you'd think that was a bot it'll feel so real but that's the thing we won't be able to tell the difference between humans and Bots we'll never know if an online friend is real anymore let's just do what Elon Musk says and stop just pause the development of all AI products but the problem is there's no stopping AI now with or without the proper fail-saves the floodgates are open people are pushing out ai-centric products left and right even if the government stepped in and tried to stop the wave people would still find a way to get their hands on these AI models not to mention people all over the world are developing AI so AI is the future and it cannot be stopped what's really going to happen is the rule followers might pause might slow down but the rule Breakers as Alexander mentioned the totalitarian governments the criminal organizations they're only going to accelerate people will be manipulated and many will lose their jobs we are at the beginning of the AI and just like the Industrial Revolution that brought us cars planes and large cities so much is going to change and we have a little idea of what's in store that being said I bet we can predict the near future based off current trends I believe in the next few years that lower skilled employees at game studios will lose their jobs to AI already certain AI models can pass as entry-level engineers at prominent companies not to mention other entry-level jobs like sales marketing and customer support So entry-level jobs across the board will be automated however to bring a little positivity to all this this also means jobs will be created we will need people to use these great AI tools and really optimize their output it's not easy getting chat GPT to write me the perfect dialogue or mid-journey to create the perfect concept art the output still feels generic or looks AI generated they just can't get my nose right so I believe AI will actually create more higher skilled jobs we will need people telling AI what to create and we will need people to fix what is created for example let's say I want to make the concept art for an Elf character she should have red hair green eyes and I want her hair to be blowing with the wind and leaves alright cool here's my prompt for mid-journey let's see what I get all right not bad pretty incredible actually that it only took me 30 seconds to get some beautiful art but maybe I want the elf to have a style more similar to Zelda so I make the adjustment a few more choices pop up nice this looks to be going in the right direction I feel like the bottom left one works best for what I'm going for so let's blow it up okay now that it's bigger I can see a problem I don't love the middle necklace and it looks like her left eye is kind of blue not really green I'm gonna pass this image off to someone good with Photoshop to try to fix it for me now we getting somewhere ah it's perfect and it only took a few minutes this feels like the future of game development you know I'm not positive but the way I see it is a game concept or idea will be passed from company Executives to Department directors like the art director music director or head of development those leaders will then illustrate the vision and give their teams an outline for what needs to be done from there an AI engineer will start creating mock-ups to fit that Vision the mock-ups will then be passed off to the experts in that department to tweak polish and finalize who then pass it off to the team lead for sign off creating a cycle for generating game content will this be applied to every Department probably not I doubt development teams have ai writing much code for the time being and I'm pretty sure you can't use AI to automate HR disputes my I go oh that's funny Michael so we still need humans and we will for a while but even when AI can do all of our jobs better than us I Still Believe We will want humans making our games and the best example of this is Red Dead Redemption 2. they chased it from the West they chased us over the mountains Red Dead Redemption 2 was one of the greatest games of all time the locations were inspired by real places people are always singing dancing playing games or arguing in the game and the world just feels real most of the time but what made this game critically successful wasn't the landscape the NPCs are real world mechanics it was the story as you follow Arthur Morgan a member of the vanderlane gang you feel the tensions rise between Dutch and Arthur every moment captivates you and you begin to care about the people involved so much so you'd have to be a stone cold killer to not feel something watching that sunrise and that's the key AI can mimic human feelings but it will never understand them we need humans to create games so we can have human experiences it's WHY games made by three people can outperform a game made by thousands it's not about the quantity but the quality it's also why no man's sky at launch was so pitiful yeah you could explore thousands of Worlds generated by AI but what do I gain from that who cares how big and expansive your world is if I'm not experiencing something fun or unique in that world focused first on the experience and the feelings of your player then build from there I'm totally fine playing a game that takes three hours to beat don't make games that have 40 hours worth of content but only 4 hours worth of Fun Pack it in simplify this is a problem so many developers deal with they focus too much on what they are creating that they forget to ask why are they creating it we don't need more bloated messes with terrible gameplay Loops yes it's easier than ever to just add that cool feature mechanic to a game with unreal or Unity but I don't care about a day and night cycle if the gameplay is terrible too many developers just throw the buffet at the player hoping they'll like something but this way of thinking is detrimental to the player and the developer games are easier than ever to make and as we saw they're just getting easier you think Steam and other platforms are full of janky games just wait till other untrained buffoons like me make games with AI tools but actually publish them Steam app stores and other platforms are about to be flooded with AI trash and copycats it's going to be harder than ever to stand out and be successful as an indie developer which brings me to my main point be human all AI does is make humans more efficient so if you're creating hot garbage and then you start using AI well now you're just going to make hot garbage quicker but if you're making an incredible game with unique experiences then when you add that day and night cycle or unique MPC dialogue you're going to make that game better and more fun than you could have without AI like everything before it AI is just a tool a world changing tool but a tool the same so will it change the way we create games of course it's happening now and it's going to continue to happen but that's a good thing we are moving towards a future where developers are only inhibited by their imagination and if we use these AI tools make sure to focus on the player maximize the unique experience you provide them and be human although there are so many negatives with AI there are also so many positives and I'm stoked to see what people will build in the years to come now back to your regularly scheduled program for tradition we like to highlight an indie game after each video and this week our community chose hyper light Drifter for those that haven't played this game all you need to know is that the pixel art is gorgeous the gameplay is a blast every time you think you found the last secret something else is waiting to be discovered so when you get the chance go pick this game up and if you're a Game Dev or want to be part of a Game Dev Community come join our Discord

Channel: Going Indie

Views: 109,874

Keywords: going indie, video game business, video game marketing, game devlogs, Ai, artificial intelligence, video game industry, game development, ai replacing game developers, can ai code a video game

Id: CE6b7PI-Co8

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2023