Generative AI is coming for games. It is only a matter of when, not if. And for executives, it makes sense to take advantage of the technology in some way. The cost and time of making games are growing too large, with games taking several years to complete and with budgets that could rival major Hollywood blockbusters.
NVIDIA has announced ACE – Avatar Cloud Engine. Basically, this tool will allow developers to create NPCs that would be responsive and knowledgeable of the game world. In a way this is interesting, as developers could focus less on working on side quest NPCs or background NPCs, and give them more time to add more polish to the game.
In an era of video games where open world is the hottest trend right now – and will probably remain so for the next decade – having AI help out developers might alleviate the stress of crafting a vast and rich world. NPCs that can strike up countless conversations, especially come up with rumors based on the player's victories throughout quests, definitely sound fun. Of course, there’s less magic to the feeling knowing AI is involved. Nonetheless, anything to help developers avoid crunch is a win. And they get to focus on bigger things.
However, it’s also terrifying in a way that executives might assume because of this, they might start reducing the number of employees to further reduce cost. This is something that is going to happen, sadly. We won’t have the full measure until in a few years, so let’s hope it won’t be that bad and human developers continue to work in the industry they love, but with less stress.
Ubisoft, one of the largest game publishers in the world, will be one of the users of NVIDIA ACE, which isn’t too surprising since almost every game they throw out is huge with tons of NPCs.
In line with this, NVIDIA has announced new AI products to deliver AI performances and capabilities across desktops and laptops for consumers and businesses.