The AI revolution of blockchain games (4): How is AI actually used in games?

Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, said that AI is one of the few things that has been seriously underestimated after being seriously hyped. This sentence is more appropriate in the game industry. Driven by this wave of AIGC, the game industry is ushering in a new round of AI transformation nodes.

At the Global Game Developers Conference (GDC 2023), which ends in March 2023, the topic of "Application of AI technology in games" has become the focus of most attention, and almost everyone is discussing it. Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, said in a recent interview: "AI is one of the rare things that has been seriously underestimated after being seriously hyped." This sentence is more appropriate in the game industry. It can be said that this round of AIGC technology The rapid development will bear the brunt of the game industry, which will naturally give birth to a wave of change in the entire game industry.

This is a revolution in productivity.

1. AI + Globalization Trend

In fact, the application of AI in the game industry is no longer in the discussion stage—the game industry has always been the main driving force for the development of AI technology. From smart battles to virtual worlds, from smart customer service to AI detection of cheating behavior, AI technology is widely used used in games.

Now, driven by the wave of AIGC, the game industry is ushering in a new round of AI transformation nodes. The main trends can be summed up in four words:

Cost reduction and efficiency increase

Various new tools made with AIGC technology that can reduce game development costs and improve game production and operation have opened a frenzied blowout mode. Let's take a look at what kind of AI black technology there is now!

1.1 AI creates 3 A-level high-quality animations

Epic Game demonstrated their latest Metahuman Animator technology at GDC 2023. This technology allows developers to create high-quality animations in a few minutes. It only needs three frames to generate facial bones, and it also supports animation from video and audio. . Users don't need animation experience, they only need an iPhone to quickly map human facial expressions to MetaHuman avatars to generate highly realistic animations. In the live demonstration, it took only 2 minutes for the demonstrator to reproduce the details of the expressions of the live performance in the digital space.

1.2 Automatically create 3D game scenes based on text descriptions

Opus.ai has developed a new, text-driven approach to 3D world generation that enables users to create animated characters with dynamic lighting, camera controls, terrain, trees and animals, buildings, roads, and humanoid forms through text input . Simply put, the user only needs to type, and AI can create 3D game scenes and various components and dynamic effects in the scenes (such as: leaves swaying slightly in the wind).

The software is still in internal testing. You can register and apply for Early Access on the official website. For the time being, it only supports English—don’t panic if your English is not good. There is also an artifact called ChatGPT, which can help you describe a scene in detail:

1.3 AI NPC creates the "Western World" in the game

GAEA is a technical system that has the ability to build a complete set of NPC ecosystems. At the current stage when everyone is still immersed in exploring how to use AI technology to improve R&D efficiency, GAEA may be the first set of solutions to deeply integrate gameplay and change the game content ecology, and may even inspire the product form of the next generation of games. Not long ago, a domestic hyperparameter technology company used the GAEA technology system to implement a technology demo called "Living Chang'an City". The NPCs in it have no preset scripts and are all controlled by AI. "Memory" will "remember" what you have seen and done and affect subsequent actions. Each AI NPC has its own goals and reasons for action, and together they form a small "society" that is evolving. Wouldn't there be "Western World" "That smell?

Coincidentally, just a while ago, the AI NPC experiment of Stanford Google's new research also caused a sensation-they created 25 AI NPCs and placed them in a simulated town. Participated in complex behavior (including throwing a Valentine's Day party, etc.)

Some social media commented that the performance of these NPCs is considered to look more "real" than real-life role-playing:

I can't help but sigh, maybe a brand new, truly open world game will come soon, maybe one day the guy in the movie "Free Guy" (Free Guy) awakens himself as an AI NPC that exists in the virtual game world. will become a reality!

1.4 AI generated NPC dialogue

As games got bigger and bigger, writers were faced with the challenge of making NPCs personal and realistic. With hundreds of NPCs, how do you keep each interaction with them unique? That's the problem that Ghostwriter, an in-house AI tool developed by La Forge, Ubisoft's R&D arm, solves.

This tool can be used to help game writers generate first-draft lines for NPCs when events are triggered, such as dialogue between NPCs, enemy dialogue during combat, or dialogue triggered when the player enters a certain area. The screenwriter (planner) spent a lot of time designing it. With the Ghostwriter tool, AI can automatically generate samples for selection and modification based on the basic settings of the NPC, which saves a lot of time and allows the screenwriter to focus on other core plot elements.

1.5 AI quickly generates game assets

Scenario is a startup developing a platform for rapidly creating game assets using AI. On this platform, you select a set of visual materials, upload your own training data, such as characters, props, vehicles, weapons, skins, buildings, concept art, pixel art, and sketches, etc. Create your own generative AI engine within , without any additional technical skills. Finally, users can bring ideas to life in just a few words, asset creation has never been easier.

2. The breakthrough of game manufacturers

AIGC’s wave of productivity changes has swept through the civilian field, and as I mentioned at the beginning, the major domestic game companies have already started to move.

2.1 Development phase

In the development stage, almost all major domestic manufacturers have actively explored the introduction of AI into the game production process, such as auxiliary character design, various game asset generation (icons/special effects/maps/models...), etc. According to reports, a large factory even requires employees in specific departments to be proficient in commonly used AI tools as a basis for layoffs.

2.2 Operation stage

In the operation stage of the game, in addition to the official use of AIGC artificial intelligence to produce various materials for dissemination, not limited to images, copywriting, videos, etc., it also lowers the threshold for UGC content creation, making it easier for participating players to produce Players are also more motivated to actively spread high-quality secondary content.

Here are a few examples:

In the latest update, Nishuihan end game realizes the UGC content generation of AI-generated poems for the occasion when taking screenshots of the game, and the effect is quite amazing. The project team has set up AI lyric check-in points for more than 40 popular classics in the game. Given a keyword, it can generate Song lyrics that fit the scenery, neatly rhetoric, and reflect the theme of the keyword, with the player's signature! One-click sharing Moments, doesn't this bring countless likes?

<Haragami>

Using stablediffusion+LORA to produce high-quality coser photos that are difficult to distinguish between real and fake, which coser can beat the efficiency and quality of using AI technology? Adhering to the principle of joining if you can't beat it, some cosplayers directly choose to train their own LORA models. With the help of ControlNET, they use their own faces to quickly generate high-quality pictures of various characters and actions.

Not to mention the beautiful pictures of the two-dimensional characters:

<A certain overseas company>

Using ChatGPT for translation to achieve multilingual versions is fast and authentic, and it is many times cheaper than finding a specialized translation company before. Using Midjourney to quickly generate 100 sets of operation and delivery material diagrams, coupled with the (English) copywriting designed with Chatgpt, overseas operating costs have been greatly increased. What’s even more outrageous is that it used to cost tens of thousands of budgets to ask someone to compose, write, and sing old-fashioned fan songs. Now there are AI tools, and with a little training, you can generate an 80-point saliva song, including singing and accompaniment... …

In general, the capabilities of AIGC's current tools have allowed many major manufacturers to change the workflow of game production, and they have penetrated deeper and deeper into various links such as game production, operation, and launch of major manufacturers. Naturally, the budget for outsourcing has been slashed, and the efficiency of internal processes has also been greatly improved. I vaguely remember that when <Red Dead Redemption 2> was released, the total cost reached an astonishing 5.6 billion RMB, and the development time was as high as 8.5 years. The main money was spent on labor costs—in order to make the whole open world more real, it cost It takes unimaginable manpower to write settings, stories, and lines for each NPC... If it is now, how long can it be shortened to develop a <Red Dead Redemption 2> quality open world game? How much cost can be reduced?

3. What AI** means for a small team**

For large companies, AIGC tools are more about "efficiency enhancement", while for small teams, they are "cost reduction" - lowering the threshold of production and greatly reducing the required start-up capital.

3.1 Lowering the threshold for game development

Quickly generate game materials, as shown in the figure below, independent game developers have used stable diffusion + controlnet to generate game character animations with AI scripts - in the past, such 2D game character animations required manual drawing of each frame of images, now Using AI can greatly improve efficiency. In the past, you either had to be able to draw, or if you couldn’t, you had to find someone who could or outsource it. Now it doesn’t matter if you can’t, as long as you have aesthetics, you can leave the drawing of characters to AI.

3.2 Reducing content costs: AI quickly outputs 2D/2.5D content materials

At present, the materials that can be stably implemented with AI and used in the game are mainly 2D/2.5D materials, including background textures for 2D level-breaking games, vertical graphics for two-dimensional games, 2.5D game models, and 3D models. stickers etc.

3.3 Use AI technology to create unique and creative game works

Domestic game AI company City From Naught and Web3 creator community Magipop DAO have jointly developed a detective RPG game based on LLM and generative AI, code-named "DetectiveGPT", players can interact with AI NPC Free and in-depth interaction to explore the truth layer by layer, is expected to be released on Steam in April this year. The 3D model textures in this game are all completed by the 3D texture automatic generation tool developed by Nowhere City Studio. In traditional decryption games, NPCs have preset dialogues. Players can obtain clues by choosing question options. In this decryption game made by AI tools, players can freely ask witnesses through voice or text. NPC, witnesses will answer the player's questions accordingly, immersive crime solving experience, sense of substitution ++ Do you have any!

There is a foreign game developer called DevBanana, who used various AI tools such as New Bing and ChatGPT to make a Whack-a-Mole World! The AI is complete, and you can find DevBanana on YouTube to watch him make the game.

The development of AIGC technology has indeed brought endless possibilities to independent game developers - no code? ChatGPT can help you; can't draw? Midjourney, SD for you to choose; Can't write copywriting? Let CharGPT generate it. UI, game dubbing, and sound effect AI can also be competent. All you need is creativity and the ability to describe what you want to AI

(Speak quietly, when you have no ideas, you can also ask ChatGPT for inspiration!)

With the increasingly mature industrialization of games, the cost of making games is getting higher and higher, and the "big factories" with abundant cash flow, talents and standard production processes have almost monopolized the entire game market. And now, I see a new possibility—perhaps in the near future, we are expected to see more creative small game teams or even individuals, which will surprise us.

4► Written at the end

When the AIGC revolution was just emerging, many people were questioning and watching, and resisted learning new methods because they were afraid of substitution and did not want to leave the familiar comfort zone. However, the wheels of technology are relentlessly rolling forward——

At that time, someone said: AI painters are not good. Not long after, midjourney V5 was released, and there was no problem with drawing hands.

At that time, someone said: The Asian women drawn by AI are too ugly to look at. Not long after, Lora, who has trained many Japanese and Korean beauties, came and easily generated all kinds of beautiful internet celebrities

At that time, some people said: AI drawing can only be used to provide inspiration, and it cannot control the movement of characters, so it is not easy to use. Not long after, stablediffusion has a plug-in Control Net, and the motion of the picture generated by AI can also be controlled

At that time, many people said: the icons and logos drawn by AI are not vector graphics, which are not easy to use. Not long after, VectorizerAI came out, converting JPG, PNG and other bitmaps into vector SVG format with one click

At that time, someone said: AI can't generate the specified text, just look at AI with garbled text! Now, the new version of SD supports posting text

……

AIGC is developing too fast. Today, a month later, how far will AI develop? I dare not think about it... But anyway, I know that it is time to let go of those prejudices and actively embrace AI technology with an open mind.

This article is over.

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