As technology continues to advance, the games industry has stagnated in its implementation of new technologies in game design and gameplay.
AI has proven to be a transformative technology in recent years. With the creation of tools like Claude or ChatGPT, writing code has become easier and many coders have found their jobs taken away as companies replace them with AI tools.
Despite the implementation of AI across the games industry, it has hardly been used in actual gameplay.
Video games have always been bound by what developers can realistically see the players doing. They must create every option, character interaction, or gameplay system before it ships out to the playerbase.
Even the most massive open world games, like Fallout, Far Cry, or Dark Souls, can only have a certain amount of responsiveness to the player. Fixed dialogue options, limited memory of player actions, and static environments all lead to the player having large limitations on the story or environment of a game.
However, with the advent of generative AI, there is a new potential for more unique and immersive gameplay. With generative AI, dialogue no longer has to be fixed to a set of pre-scripted responses. Now, players should be able to have genuine conversations with nonplayer characters without the need to use preselected dialogue.
Each character can have their own separate memories, beliefs, or ideas. This means player actions also have more consequences than before. If you’re rude to a character, they can become antagonistic towards you, being more likely to give you worse trade deals on items, or even outright attacking you if they become too angry.
At the same time, the reverse is true. Saving a character might result in them fighting harder for you or giving you unique items.
AI has the potential to revolutionize gameplay to create truly immersive experiences, but game companies are using it primarily to save on their bottom lines. A lot of the backlash surrounding AI focuses on the programmers’ cut jobs, not the technology itself.
AI has been left underutilized in the gaming industry, despised by the public and used to make games with less human creativity, instead of enhancing it.
