Hi, friends! 👋

How are you doing? Let’s talk about gaming today.

Did you know that the global generative AI in the gaming market is expected to reach $7105 million by 2032? (Source: market.us) 

That’s an enormous 670.6% increase! 🤯 Doesn’t that sound spectacular?  

Now before we dig into AI and gaming, let’s talk about new AI features first.

Open AI launches massive updates

Recently, Open AI has announced massive updates that will help us use AI more efficiently than ever.

What you can expect:

• You can now create custom GPTs, which combine knowledge and instructions without you needing to possess any skills. Being able to develop AI apps without code is an example.

• OpenAI will now share revenue from the GPT store with other creators. It means you can create your own AI agent and earn revenue. Plus, you can sell GPTs in a to-be-launched GPT store.

• GPT-4 Turbo’s product-ready version will be announced soon, which will be able to access data until April 2023.

• Assistant APIs will enable developers to build agent-like experiences like data analytics applications.

• OpenAI will now help defend customers against copyright lawsuits. It intends to pay the legal costs incurred by customers.

Now, let’s get back to gaming. Today, we will discuss 2 aspects: game development and post-game development.

The Latest In Gaming: Stay In The Loop!

1. Development Stage

Procedural Content & NPC Development (Non-Player Characters)

Procedural Content Generation

The procedural content generation process emphasizes creating content algorithmically instead of manually. Defined rules and parameters enable this. Microsoft’s recent partnership with Inworld AI is an example. 

Microsoft’s collaboration will help improve game developer creativity, reduce complexity, and enhance player experiences. These are the 3 highlights of the multi-platform AI toolset it aims to launch:

• The toolkit aims to be responsibly designed and in line with Microsoft’s AI principles and Responsible AI Standard.

• A design copilot turning prompts into detailed scripts, quests, and other game elements. 

• A character runtime engine developers can plug into actual games. It helps players generate new stories, quests, and dialogues. 

There are already games based on the open-world concept where developers can create cities, landscapes, people, and backstories.  C

For example, check out Grand Theft Auto. 

P.S. GTA 6 is due to be released between 2024 to 2025.

NPCs

Besides procedural content, NPCs are revolutionizing gaming. They are fictional entities that interact with the player within games. In other words, they lack independent thought. Contrary to other game characters, they are not controlled by the player.

The NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine is one tool that helps bring intelligence to NPCs through AI-powered natural language interactions. Plus, these NPCs can have conversations with people. 

For NPC examples, take a look at The Justice mobile game and Replica Studio’s AI-powered smart NPCs.

Research shows 61% of game developers use AI to create player-related elements in games. Not just that, Unity’s CEO John Riccitiello has predicted that generative AI will cut down the costs of developing video game by up to 10 times. Sounds like a compelling reason to use it in your next game? 

Next, let’s know how AI can help post the game creation stage, right before it’s time to launch.

2. Post Game Development Stage

Game Testing & Debugging

Did you know that glitches in games can cost developers revenue? Take the case of Cyberpunk 2077, a game that led to $52.1 million being spent on refunds.  The reason? Performance issues during gameplay. Fortunately, in such a scenario, AI can come to the rescue.

Computer science researchers Sasha Volokh and William Halfond have developed a program that helps detect quality game control issues before game release. 

How does the program work? Volokh talks about the concept of a valid action. In other words, specific buttons should evolve the desired response in the game, to call an action valid.  ‘’As long as the player is on the ground when they jump, they go up. It’s not a valid action if they’re already in the air and pressing jump won’t do anything,’’ he explains.

If you wish to cut down time spent on quality checks and eliminate human error, AI is the answer.

We’ve spoken about fixing bugs-a critical aspect post-game development. But next, let’s talk about another important yet overlooked aspect- data analytics.

Data Analytics 

After developing a game, it's critical to test your game at regular intervals. To do this, data analytics tools are critical. There’s a lot you can measure- user playing time, number of active users, returning users, etc.

Based on metrics, developers can take specific actions. For example, if the number of active users goes down, new plots in a game can be devised and executed.

It’s important to use data smartly, though. AI gives data, but humans need to ensure they aren’t compromising on quality to save costs, and vice-versa. Kiran Brahmandam, founder of Gaming Analytics, a platform to digitally empower casinos through AI, expands upon this.

Want to see analytics in action? Take a glimpse above.

To sum it up, use analytics to make data-driven decisions. You’ll spend less time beating around the bush and more time focusing on improving your games.

Next, learn how you can stand out in a world with AI.

I’ve compiled some cool resources to help you learn about AI in gaming better. Take a look!

How can we miss the AI toolkit? This time, they’re all focused on gaming. Call all the gaming enthusiasts!