If what people go for are AAA games with hyperdetailed graphics and massive playing spaces, the tendency is for games to grow in size (all those highly detailed textures and masses of data for terrain and object placement really add up) and the only alternatives for trying to deliver some of that using less data, such as No Man’s Sky and their heavy use of generation, end up with results that quickly feel repetitive after some playing and an inferior experience on the adventure side than a carefully crafted gamespace with carefully crafted chracters and encounters.
There are plenty of smaller games from indies which focus mostly on engaging game mechanics and hence are much smaller datawise, but if all you’re going for is something like GTA or Fallout, don’t be surprised when the tens of thousands of highly detailed objects and characters, days worth of voice data and hundreds of square kilometers of gameplay area translate into more than 100GB.
Mind you, the industry uses tons of generation in game making (nobody is going around making, say, the various maps in a chainmail texture by hand) but it’s all vetted and costumized by actual people and the best results end up properly fitted to the models and stored as mainly static stuff in the game data files so big and varied gameplay ares will add up to lots of data even if a lot of it was done with the help of generative tools.
So far and from what I’ve seen, unsupervised AI can’t really deliver good results in a lot of that, so whilst it will probably be a massive leap foward in the area of generative tools for game making, you will still end up with massive game data files containing the output of the AI generation, carefully curated and even customised by actual humans.
the only alternatives for trying to deliver some of that using less data, such as No Man’s Sky and their heavy use of generation, end up with results that quickly feel repetitive
This is an area where generative AI can actually really push the envelope and be completely gamechanging. It’ll require a ton of work for it to get it right 99.9% of the time without outside input, but it’s going to be really cool when game developers do figure it out.
As I pointed out further down in my post, judging by all I’ve seen so far I highly doubt that unsupervised generative AI can produce good enough results, so I expect it to be just another tool in making games rather than games using it directly for most things.
Certainly there are all kinds of considerations that go into the making of game assets that generative AI doesn’ take into account (for example, how you model 3D assets taking into account the needs of animation).
Oh yeah it’s absolutely not a complete solution, but as a tool in the toolbelt of generated game elements it can be incredibly powerful. Really until the right game comes along and truly shows the potential it won’t happen, but there’s a ton of potential there to fill in the gaps that are usually left to limit scope in game development
If what people go for are AAA games with hyperdetailed graphics and massive playing spaces, the tendency is for games to grow in size (all those highly detailed textures and masses of data for terrain and object placement really add up) and the only alternatives for trying to deliver some of that using less data, such as No Man’s Sky and their heavy use of generation, end up with results that quickly feel repetitive after some playing and an inferior experience on the adventure side than a carefully crafted gamespace with carefully crafted chracters and encounters.
There are plenty of smaller games from indies which focus mostly on engaging game mechanics and hence are much smaller datawise, but if all you’re going for is something like GTA or Fallout, don’t be surprised when the tens of thousands of highly detailed objects and characters, days worth of voice data and hundreds of square kilometers of gameplay area translate into more than 100GB.
Mind you, the industry uses tons of generation in game making (nobody is going around making, say, the various maps in a chainmail texture by hand) but it’s all vetted and costumized by actual people and the best results end up properly fitted to the models and stored as mainly static stuff in the game data files so big and varied gameplay ares will add up to lots of data even if a lot of it was done with the help of generative tools.
So far and from what I’ve seen, unsupervised AI can’t really deliver good results in a lot of that, so whilst it will probably be a massive leap foward in the area of generative tools for game making, you will still end up with massive game data files containing the output of the AI generation, carefully curated and even customised by actual humans.
This is an area where generative AI can actually really push the envelope and be completely gamechanging. It’ll require a ton of work for it to get it right 99.9% of the time without outside input, but it’s going to be really cool when game developers do figure it out.
As I pointed out further down in my post, judging by all I’ve seen so far I highly doubt that unsupervised generative AI can produce good enough results, so I expect it to be just another tool in making games rather than games using it directly for most things.
Certainly there are all kinds of considerations that go into the making of game assets that generative AI doesn’ take into account (for example, how you model 3D assets taking into account the needs of animation).
Oh yeah it’s absolutely not a complete solution, but as a tool in the toolbelt of generated game elements it can be incredibly powerful. Really until the right game comes along and truly shows the potential it won’t happen, but there’s a ton of potential there to fill in the gaps that are usually left to limit scope in game development