Don't say BYE to AI just yet!
Using AI in game development is controversial in its way.
Some big companies are using ChatGPT to enhance NPC dialogues? Outrageous! As if they couldn't hire people to do that! There's a high probability that it wasn't the CEO operating the AI, but rather people who would write those dialogues in the first place. And they did the job faster. Afterward, it was just a matter of reading and confirming their quality, but it still went faster than usual.
AI won't be making video games for us for a long time; rather, it will assist us. It will relieve us from mundane tasks, as befits proper automation! Not long ago, the Corridor Crew decided to use AI to create... anime! Spoiler: they still had to do the work themselves ;-)
A person who has been involved in animation for decades shared a very interesting reaction. The gist is that he would like to draw characters, and AI would add shadows. If I had to guess, I'd bet that shadows are necessary, but creating them is often a tedious task.
Just like the tedious work of in-betweening in manual animation (still is?). While the keyframes in a given shot were made by the main artist, the in-betweener created all the frames in between so that no one could see the difference. An ideal task for artificial intelligence, isn't it?
In every job, including game development, some tasks would make our lives less tedious if entrusted to a competent AI. The aforementioned in-betweener could speed up their process, "complete" frames faster, assess their quality, make corrections, and creatively use the surplus time! (how? That's the real challenge for every specialist!)
Solo game developers, who often can't afford a team, can also use AI in their work. Check out this tweet, where someone uses Chat GPT and a few others to create a text-based adventure.
Let’s look at some AI a game dev can use!
Elevenlabs - an AI text-to-speech voice generator.
RunwayML can turn images into a video. So a good cutscene generator?
Luma AI Genie lets you create almost photorealistic 3D assets and environments.
Blockade Labs lets you create skybox experiences
Waveformer lets you create music from prompt
Phind can help when you're stuck at something. If you don’t use ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Copilot for that already. Who knows maybe it’s better, it literally asks you what are you stuck on 😉
I have not mentioned Dall-E 3 or Midjourney as I don’t think static image generation would be useful for a game dev. Unless you want to make comics like cutscenes like those in Max Payne. What do you think?
And surely, more will come.
Most of them are paid services. So using them will force you to have a monthly budget for your little AI-driven studio. But what I wonder is: how much of this work requires further adjustments?
What AI services do you know that I missed?
Share them in the comments or reply to my e-mail!