Despite being worth approximately $250 billion annually, the video game industry has endured a tumultuous year. Studios, including Tango Gameworks and Alpha Dog Games, have been closed down for good, while companies, including Activision Blizzard and its parent company, Microsoft, have made thousands of employees redundant. Worse still for the creative minds behind some of the biggest titles is the increased use of generative AI to create the artwork, music, and other creative elements being used in games, which is likely to lead to further layoffs in the future. Despite this, the video game industry is largely ununionized, which means developers don’t even have the same protection that TV and movie writers have enjoyed in the past couple of years. It isn’t the first time jobs have been threatened by automation, and it likely won’t be the last, but it could have a significant impact on the games we play and certainly on the people who make them. Could AI be the downfall of the video gaming industry? Let’s find out by examining how it is used.
Emerging Technologies
New technologies are constantly emerging. The past few years have seen the rise of cryptocurrency. As well as being a payment method used to pay for goods and services online, crypto has given rise to crypto gaming, which rewards users with popular cryptocurrency coins when they play or level up. It has also been implemented in top of the line Bitcoin casinos and is becoming a popular investment opportunity.
In addition to crypto gambling and investment, artificial intelligence is another emerging technology that has come to the fore in recent years. Companies including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have all launched tools or integrated artificial intelligence into their available tools.
Proponents claim it can help us solve everyday problems while tackling major issues like climate change and illnesses like cancer. Opponents warn of the impending end of the world brought about by AI machines. It is even a regular feature in games like Nier Automata.
AI For Bad
However, as well as potentially exaggerated and fantastical views of AI, there is the very real problem of its being used to replace humans, especially in creative roles. In 2023, Hollywood writers went on strike to protest the use of AI. The strike ended when an agreement on the future use of AI was reached.
The use of AI was not fully outlawed or prohibited, but new rules ensure that it remains a tool to be used by humans and not to replace them. The video games industry, although now substantially larger than the Hollywood and TV industries, doesn’t have the same kind of union representation. And that is causing a problem for writers, artists, and even coders.
The Game Developers Conference surveyed 3,000 workers in the industry, and a worrying 49% said that AI was being used in their workplace. 80% said they were worried about the ethical impact that its use could have on the industry in the future. Activision announced that it had gotten access to GPT-3.5 at around the same time the company, now owned by Microsoft, was laying off workers.
Even if the use of AI wasn’t the reason workers were laid off, it sets a worrying precedent. The laying off of workers means that bosses need to plug the gaps they leave behind, and in these cases, it makes financial sense to turn to AI. AI is cheap and quick, and it produces results. If AI replaces laid-off workers, they are unlikely to be replaced by humans in the future.
AI For Good
We’ve talked positively about AI in gaming for a long time. AI NPCs are more intelligent than dumb characters. They learn from players’ actions and can more accurately predict their next movements. They can theoretically either ramp up or dial down the challenge in a game according to how well a player is progressing.
Sony has even patented technology that uses adaptive AI learning to determine exactly what areas a player is struggling in and then make changes on the fly. If a player struggles with boss fights but breezes through open-world areas, the generative AI would reduce the difficulty of boss fights while making other elements more challenging. These implementations of AI are more than welcome in the gaming world.
Taking Jobs
One Activision insider said that after the layoffs, many 2D artists were laid off during the cull. Those that remained were forced to use generative AI tools to help create the artwork necessary to complete games. Unsurprisingly, the gaming companies themselves don’t see this as a negative move.
They know that AI can produce work quickly and cheaply, especially in areas like 2D background design. The work is classified as good enough, which means that it isn’t as detailed or as good as the work that professional 2D artists produce, but it is good enough to make it to the final game.
The Future
While Hollywood writers have a strong union presence that has helped them stave off the threat of AI for now, the same isn’t true of the video games industry, although that is changing, at least in some organizations. Some Microsoft workers within the gaming industry have unionized and this agreement will carry over to Activision Blizzard, although that has come too late for the thousands that have already been laid off.
Bethesda already has a companywide union, and CD Projekt Red and Avalanche Studios are set to follow suit. More companies will likely follow suit, and there may be an anti-AI revolution similar to that seen in Hollywood, but it will have come too late for the thousands that have already been laid off.
There are also concerns that the move towards AI will not only harm developers but that it will cause a drop in the quality of games produced, too. If that happens, and the video game industry starts to see its massive market size dwindle, it could lead to further problems across the board.
