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Video game development has long been plagued by fear of the “crunch”—essentially, being forced to work overtime on a game to meet a deadline. In the early days of video games, the crunch was often viewed as a rite of passage: In the last days before release, an obsessed group of scrappy developers would work late into the night to perfect their dream game.
However, nowadays the crunch is less likely to be glamorized than to be seen as a form of exploitation that risks causing mental illness and burnout. Part of the issue is that crunch time used to be just before a game launched, but now whole game development periods are “crunchy.” With games getting more expensive, companies are incentivized to make even more short-term profits by squeezing developers.
But what if AI could help to alleviate game-development hell? It may already be happening. According to a recent poll by a16z, 87% of studios are using generative AI tools like Midjourney to create in-game environments. Others are using it for game testing or looking for bugs, while Ubisoft is experimenting with using AI to create different basic dialogue options.
And even more help is coming. A tool developed by the team at Roblox aims to allow developers to make 3D environments and scenes in an instant with nothing but text prompts. Typically, creating an environment may take a week for a small game or much longer for a studio project, depending on how complex the designs are. But Roblox aims to let developers almost instantly bring their personal vision to life.
For example, let’s say you wanted your game to be set in a spaceship with the interior design of a Buddhist temple. You’d just put that into a prompt—“Create a spaceship …”—and BAM! Your one-of-a-kind environment would be generated immediately.
The technology behind this can be used for any 3D environment, not just Roblox. My article here goes into more depth, but essentially, if ChatGPT’s tokens are words, the Roblox system’s tokens are 3D cubes that form a larger scene, allowing the 3D generation equivalent of what ChatGPT can do for text. This means the model could potentially be used to generate a whole city in the Grand Theft Auto universe. That said, the demo I saw from Roblox was far smaller, generating only a racetrack. So more realistically, I imagine it would be used to build one aspect of a city in Grand Theft Auto, like a stadium—at least for now.
Roblox claims you’re also able to modify a scene with prompts. So let’s say you get bored of the Buddhist temple aesthetic. You can prompt the model again—“Make the spaceship interior a forest”—and within an instant, all the Buddhist statues will turn to trees.
A lot of these types of things can already be done manually, of course, but it can take a lot of time. Ideally, this kind of technology will allow 3D artists to offload some of the tedium of their job to an AI. (Though some of them may argue that building the environment is creatively fulfilling—maybe even one of their favorite parts of their job. Having an AI spawn an environment in an instant may take away some of the joy of slowly discovering an environment as you build it.)
Personally, I’m fairly skeptical of AI in video games. As a former developer myself, I cringe a little bit when I hear about AI being used to write dialogue for characters. I worry about terribly stilted results and the possibility that writers will lose their jobs. In the same vein, I worry about putting 3D artists out of work and ending up with 3D environments that look off, or obviously generated by AI without care or thought.
It’s clear that the big AI wave is crashing upon us. And whether it leads to better work-life balance for game developers is going to be determined by how these systems are implemented. Will developers have a tool to reduce tedium and eliminate repetitive tasks, or will they have fewer colleagues, and new colleagues who insist on using words like “delves” and “showcasing” in every other sentence?
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Deeper learning
AI is already being used in games for eliminating inappropriate language
This new Roblox development comes after the company introduced AI to analyze in-game voice chat in real time last fall. Other games, like Call of Duty, have implemented similar systems. If the AI determines that a player is using foul language, it will issue a warning, and then a ban if restricted words keep coming.
Why this matters: As we’ve written previously, content moderation with AI has proved to be tricky. It seems like an obvious way to make good use of the technology’s ability to look at masses of information and make quick assessments, but AI still has a hard time with nuance and cultural contexts. That hasn’t stopped it from being implemented in video games, which have been and will continue to be one of the testing grounds for the latest innovations in AI. My colleague Niall explains in his recent piece how it could make virtual worlds more immersive and flexible.
Bits and bytes
What this futuristic Olympics video says about the state of generative AI
Filmmaker Josh Kahn used AI to create a short video that imagines what an Olympics in LA might look like in the year 3028, which he shared exclusively with MIT Technology Review. The short demonstrates AI’s immense power for video creation, but it also highlights some of the issues with using the technology for that purpose.
(MIT Technology Review)
A Dutch regulator has slapped Clearview AI with a $33 million fine
Years ago, Clearview AI scraped images of people from the internet without their permission. Now Dutch authorities are suing the company, claiming that Clearview’s database is illegal because it violates individuals’ right to privacy. Clearview hasn’t paid past fines and doesn’t plan to pay this one, claiming that Dutch authorities have no jurisdiction over the company since it doesn’t have a business in the Netherlands. The Dutch are considering holding the directors of Clearview personally financially liable.
(The Verge)
How OpenAI is changing
OpenAI continues to evolve; recent moves include adding the former director of the US National Security Agency to its board and considering plans to restructure the company to be more attractive for investors. Additionally, there are talks over a new investment into OpenAI that would value it at over $100 billion. It sure feels like a long time since OpenAI could credibly claim to just be a research lab.
(The New York Times)
NaNoWriMo says condemning AI Is “classist and ableist”
The organizers of the “write a book in a month” challenge have got themselves into hot water recently, with a big backlash against their decision to support the use of AI for writers. They’ve countered the haters by claiming that opposing the use of AI in writing is both classist and ableist, as some people require extra assistance and accommodation from AI tools.
(404 media)