Video game studios are so scared of AI they’re offering $7K bonusus for AI ideas::They’re forcing employees to study machine learning and offering $7,000 bounties for A.I. ideas: ‘Every week, we feel that we are going to be eliminated’
Why? Imagine NPCs that are powered by AI? No longer would they repeat the same story about their knees or stare blankly while you ransack their houses. Imagine AI powered opponents in Stellaris or RTS games.
Funny part is, an MMO has already died because of this premise. EverQuest NEXT was going to use a foundational system called Storybricks that would generate a living story for the world, in real time, using AI for the npcs, quests, zone events. That worked so well that the MMO half of EQN got cancelled and turned into a weird, plot based, EQ styled version of Minecraft that never got to full release.
From the workers perspective, I know a lot of people are scared because tools like mid journey can replace, e.g. concept artists. Not sure why a studio would be scared
Same as procedurally generated world’s. Doomed to be boring and generic because they lack the human touch. I’ve seen AI dialogue games and they’re pretty laughable. “I’m sorry I did not understand that query.” Wow it’s like I’m talking to a real human!
I mean procedurally generated worlds didnt stop minecraft from being one of the top selling games of all time…
If the NPC is so trivial and what they say is so unimportant to the story that it can just be randomly generated, then it sounds like that NPC only exists to waste my time.
Sometimes you need background NPCs to give the illusion of a living, breathing world, in the same way movies have extras in the background to fill a scene.
IMO having AI dialogue is only going to make it generic and possibly inconsistent between characters or with the lore the game is trying to set up.
Maybe not too big a deal for a sandbox-y experimental kind of game, but terrible for a story-driven one. Some stuff is better written.
Are you sure this indicates fear? AI is going to be majorly disruptive, so they’re educating and incentivising their staff to be the disruptors. This is not a bad way to set yourself up for the future.
The only thing to fear from AI is bots like OP clogging up my feed with nonsense. They’re embracing AI, they can make speech more natural, generate zillions of textures for terrain or clothes or particle effects. Maybe they’ll even start to generate sounds so the hack n slash is not the exact same noise. They can even let AI create side quests or random events that don’t feel forced. I use arch btw.
This isn’t fear.
This is them trying to get rid of employees.
I have confidence that any large company will figure out many new ways to use AI to screw over people.
