🕹️ From Kasparov to Minecraft: How AI is Changing the Rules of the Game.
If I ask you which industry has driven the most AI research, you might think of medicine, programming, or education. But none of them is the correct answer.
In the history of artificial intelligence, there is an unlikely relationship that has propelled most research efforts: games.
From the popular match between Kasparov and Deep Blue, where for the first time a machine defeated a human.
To IBM's Watson crushing it in the TV game show Jeopardy!.
To the victory of AlphaGo Zero, which defeated the world champion of Go in such an impressive story that it became a Netflix documentary.
More recently, we find the little-known story of the beginnings of OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT). Before becoming the most famous startup in the world, in 2019 OpenAI was experimenting with AI in DOTA2, a highly complex strategy game.
After training its players with the equivalent of 45,000 years of DOTA2 games over a span of 10 months, they managed to win the world championship.
A New Role
Historically, AI has taken on the role of opponent in video games, but today a new horizon is opening.
To understand it, we first need to grasp the economics of the industry.
Making a video game is expensive.
Estimated budget of some well-known games. All in millions of dollars.
Big companies are willing to spend these amounts because it is also a very profitable business. In terms of revenue, the video game industry ($180 billion) is larger than the movie industry ($40 billion) and the music industry ($57 billion) combined.
Here’s the same chart as before but with their revenues.
Beyond the lucrativeness of the business, there is an important point: if you are not a company with a million-dollar budget, it is very difficult to make video games.
The creation of each of these titles involves the coordinated work of large development teams (programmers), art (for creating characters, environments, and music), and narrative (scripts and stories).
Unless you are among the rare exceptions of multifaceted geniuses, like the creators of Limbo, Stardew Valley and Minecraft, capable of handling all aspects of programming, design, and storytelling, it is extremely challenging to venture into video game creation without a million-dollar budget.
Stardew Valley. An indie game created by Eric Barone, where the only goal is to have no goal: move away from the city, grow your farm, and interact with the townspeople. It sounds boring, but it’s quite addictive. And the 12 million copies it has sold and the $130 million it has generated prove it.
If you have been reading this newsletter, you know that I like to use the word democratization. Because that’s exactly what AI is achieving in fields like education, medicine and art.
Now it’s the turn of video games.
Immersive Stories
One of the most important elements of a good game is its narrative. This is why pixelated games like Undertale, made by a single person, sell the same number of copies as God of War, with almost 1/4000 of the budget.
Like a good book, when the story hooks you and the characters feel real, the action no longer matters; you just want to be part of the narrative.
Until now, every line of dialogue or narration has been thought out and written by someone. This sometimes makes them feel predictable or not dynamic.
“Overall, your [insert Pokémon name here] has certainly caught my attention.”
But generative AI opens the door to dynamically generated dialogues. Just provide some background to a character and let the AI do the rest. Like in this example from the trillion-dollar company NVIDIA, where they give a backstory to the cook, and he interacts in real-time with the player (it’s worth watching).
And it’s not just interaction with the main character; these “AI agents” can interact with each other without human intervention, as demonstrated by this study from Stanford. In true Sims style, they created a city with 25 characters, each with a unique personality, and let them live their lives.
Each one woke up, had breakfast, and went to work. They interacted with other characters, held conversations, and walked their dogs. One of them even took the initiative to plan a Valentine’s Day party, which quickly attracted the whole city.
There are always party crashers...
AI will not only make dialogues more interesting, but it will also allow NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) to become more skilled in the games themselves.
These researchers gave reasoning abilities to a character in Minecraft, allowing it to explore the world, develop skills, and discover new tools without human intervention.
On the left, the “inputs” of the world: inventory, environment, health, hunger. On the right, GPT-4's reasoning based on those inputs. “There’s a pig nearby and I’m hungry, so it’s a good idea to hunt it. Generate a new task: hunt the pig.”
With these advances, each game will be unique for each player. You will never see the same dialogue or intervention twice. NPCs will become more unpredictable, like humans, and the stories will be more immersive. All interacting with your voice, without the need to “press X to talk.”
World Creator
If you read my edition on the impact of AI on art, you know that there are many people dedicated to digital art and, in particular, to creating characters and virtual environments for video games.
Almost 20% of a game's budget is allocated to creating visuals and music.
But thanks to generative image tools like Midjourney, anyone can create characters with just a few words.
And it’s not just in 2D; there are also tools to transform a “sketch” into a scene with elements, shadows, and lights.
And music?
There are already several tools that allow you to generate melodies from text, like this one from Google. Listen to the first example, where it asks for “The main soundtrack of an arcade game. It’s fast-paced and upbeat, with a catchy electric guitar riff. The music is repetitive and easy to remember, but with unexpected sounds, like cymbal crashes or drum rolls.”
Procedural Generation
Thanks to the advances in generative AI, today anyone can make a game. ChatGPT can help you with the narrative and the code. Midjourney can help you with the art. MusicLM can help you with the music. Don’t believe me? Check out these examples of users on Twitter who created their games from scratch.
But the most interesting thing happens when the game is not created by users but is created in real-time by the AI. This is called procedural generation and is already a reality.
The game No Man's Sky is also called “The Infinite Game,” as new worlds and species of animals are generated in real-time as the player explores the universe.
Infinite worlds in an infinite universe.
If we mix all the previous ingredients, we will have games with infinite worlds, unique characters with complex and deep backstories, and immersive dialogues that invite you to explore their personalities.
Add to the recipe the new virtual/augmented reality glasses that Apple launched on Monday, and we won’t want to detach ourselves from those virtual worlds.
We Learn by Playing
Over the years, video games have received very bad press.
It’s common to hear that they generate obesity, depression, and aggression. But there is very little evidence showing those results.
On the contrary, a strong correlation has been seen with positive attitudes such as: playing more outside the house, better social interactions and friendships, greater participation in school and better physical condition than average.
But the most notable thing is that video games have been shown to stimulate memory, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills in children. Animals learn by playing, and humans are no exception.
With the costs of creating video games nearing zero, I imagine a future where we learn everything through AI-generated games.
And who are we kidding? We all enjoy playing. In fact, the vast majority of people play video games in one way or another.
65% of adults play video games. And almost half (48%) are women.
So, let’s buckle up and welcome this new reality with open arms.
