A brand new patent filed by Microsoft might give some perception into sport growth concepts the corporate is exploring.
Microsoft filed a patent in 2024 that is now accessible publicly, exploring ways in which generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be utilized in sport design, permitting the designers and the gamers alike to each customise the expertise via prompts. The patent supplies a “high-level abstract” of ways in which video games could be iterated on, corresponding to rapidly producing objects related to the narrative primarily based on the supplied prompts.
One other instance reveals how the system could possibly be carried out right into a pre-existing sandbox sport like Minecraft. From right here, gamers might present prompts asking for brand new gameplay guidelines, programs, non-player characters (NPCs) or narrative content material to be crafted on the fly.
Now, it is extraordinarily essential to emphasise that that is only a patent, and companies are consistently submitting patents on tech and software program improvements that may by no means find yourself really getting used. Bear in mind Sony’s amusing diagram of somebody excitedly yelling “McDonald’s?” Nonetheless, it is a snapshot into paths the corporate is trying into proper now.
Microsoft is closely invested in the way forward for AI, with the company funding OpenAI to the tune of billions of dollars. In 2024, Xbox head of gaming AI Haiyan Zhang opined that AI will augment game developers, however that the know-how is not a alternative for precise people engaged on a challenge.
Quite a bit to show
AI is a very broad and scorching matter, and for good motive, with discussions abounding surrounding the character of moral utilization, what programs are being skilled on, and rather more. Whereas generative AI has extra particularly remained on the periphery of implementation in video games, main firms are trying into it.
For its 2024 Investor Day, writer Digital Arts gave a quick gameplay demonstration, exhibiting off how gamers might create a novel gameplay expertise that they wished primarily based on offering completely different prompts and generating a world of cardboard.
Brian Fargo, CEO of Microsoft-owned growth studio inXile Leisure (the workforce behind the upcoming time-bending role-playing sport Clockwork Revolution) noted in 2023 that he is inquisitive about some points of how AI can support sport growth, however that he is “not satisfied” AI has anywhere in crafting sport narratives or NPCs.
Personally, I stay completely skeptical of any work round AI-generated narrative content material, particularly if it might come as a menace to folks’s jobs. “AI” as a broad idea might need a spot on the earth in eradicating drudgery and making folks extra environment friendly, however on the finish of the day, I would like extra writers and designers on the earth.
