Is the future of artificial intelligence in video games playing out in a cyberpunk ramen bar? Tech companies would like you to think so, but game writers aren't so sure.
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
On Amazon, you can't get an RTX 4090 for less than this one from Gigabyte, which now offers great value after an eye-catching April deal.
From witnessing countless ai generated articles and content it's clear ai is not very creative and often produces nothing but word soup so I'd like to keep ai away from storyline or side quests as much as possible
Where does ai have a place I think ai can be used effectively in upscaling technology or the remastering process for older games touching up assert etc however it must be done with human supervision ala GTA trilogy where it was used but clearly not vetted before being included in the game
I mean the core issue with AI is exactly what it's substituting. Generating visual art is a perfect example of this. Currently, if you want to use AI to generate anything short of a background, you are going to deal with numerous drawbacks. From anatomy issues in humans and animals to completely broken fonts for logos and visibly recycled styles.
But when it comes to writing, things are a bit messy. There are indeed extremely talented writers out there working on video games. But there are also a lot of them who really aren't, and we all know it. Take games like the recent Suicide Squad or Starfield; those game scripts could very well have been done by AI.
Another issue with AI writers that is often pointed out is the ludonarrative issue. Basically, AI, by its very nature, wouldn't be able to write within the context of the game mechanics and scenarios, which would lead to a lot of ludonarrative problems and break immersion. However, against that argument, one need not look further than The Last of Us Part II. That game is a embodiment of ludonarrative issues and is still considered by many as one of the best games and game stories out there, so it's clear that for the majority of the market, that would not be an issue.
So AI, with all its limitations right now, probably wouldn't hurt game stories as much as the writers would like gamers to believe. I doubt that it would improve what we have now, but given what we have now, I also doubt that it would be measurably worse.
Games made by Ubisoft, Activision, EA and Bathesda already feel soulless.
As it stands right now, AI is really good at taking existing concepts that a human imagines and then organizing them into a coherent story. You still need creativity, but I think having a "room of writers" is probably no longer necessary. So in that regard AI is taking jobs. For instance, let's say I provide AI with a number of characters and what their personalities are. I might say, (if making a murder mystery) the Butler who seems like the protagonist is actually the killer. If you try this, AI will do a pretty fantastic job of writing dialogue between characters that would lead you, as the reader, not to suspect who the killer is. Normally a writer works with other writers and breaks a story down into parts where the characters motives start as unclear and then progressively become revealed. AI does a really nice job with foreshadowing also. You can also tell AI to incorporates symbolism, and misdirection. TLDR; I'll never not use AI when writing a story. It's just a tool that when used properly will make good writing great.
Horrible future awaiting us all.