AI FEVER
Ubisoft is one of the pioneers in applying AI to their game with the new tool GhostWriter. They intend to use this tool to support their game narrative. I don't think it the necessary to make a ton of soulless "bark" by AI and put them into a game. There are so many similar open-world games out there, and how many people care about a single line of whatever NPC says? What players care about is the influence on the game world and the story ending of their decision. Not many people spend their time reading all the texts in the game. I think the game developer could cut off the repetitive tasks by really cutting them off instead generating boring texts with an AI tool.
Unity has a program to launch its new Unity AI. This tool supposes to help the developer generate assets or scenes with a prompt. I feel they choose the wrong direction on their roadmap. I'm waiting for them to improve their C# Job System for easier integration with the current ECS. It might take long time.
The whole world seems to be in love with the effortless job by pushing the hard work on the shoulder of AI. The prompt is the only thing they need to finish their tasks, from generating images to 3D assets or scripts. Everyone can become a boss. The folks love AI because they don't understand it deeply. And because ChatGPT has an impressive launching. Content generation with AI becomes a super easy task, and people think they can create their own game quickly with nearly zero budget. I think they will stop dreaming when they face the prices of the AI platform.
DOES AI HELP SOLO GAME DEVELOPERS?
I think a solo game developer does not need an AI. You can save your budget by purchasing assets from artists and music composers. The only difference is whether you spend money on an AI platform company or an independent human being. Which one is the better option for your budget? I hope some people out there try to make a whole game with AI and give me a comparison. Will AI save development time for a solo developer? We should think about it before any implementation.
The ones who get benefits from using AI are big studios. AI tools could help them to cut costs by taking the jobs of average staff. With AI replacement, studios only need seniors or directors who can decide the direction of art or technology and handle the important tasks. But AI has its own risks.
THE ISSUES OF GENERATIVE CONTENT
The first problem is the stability and consistency of the content generated by the AI platform. Visual elements in a game should have the same art style to make a game appeal. But it's hard to keep the generative content consistent throughout the game because the AI learns from many different sources. AI experts might solve this problem in the next generations of their AI platforms.
The second problem is the repetitive content will make players bored. How can you make your game unique when other teams use the same AI platform and similar prompts to create the content? Even the content in the rogue-like games has the same problems.
Another issue is potential IP violation. This topic got a lot of controversies recently. You might want to hire a real artist to avoid legal trouble when you don't know the data that machine learning algorithm use for training.
CONCLUSION
Every programmer knows about the decoupling concept for reducing the dependency between systems. We should apply that idea to this case. We should not rely totally on AI platforms. Many startups leverage the power of AI platforms to provide us with their services. The rate of failure of those companies is also high. If they failed, your game project would fall too. Don't build the castle on the sand.
How about you? What do you think?