As someone who experiments with video games as a hobbyist, the latest changes with AI is, conflicting, to say the least.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to finish a game and make some money on it, and one day maybe I will motivate myself enough or find a reason I avoid finishing my games and move past that. Regardless, the changes with AI and where it seems to be going gives me hopes and fears all at the same time.
On the bright side, it does seem that some of the AI tools could aid in design and maybe help developers create game content faster. I don't think we are to a point where we can just plug and play some AI and we will have a full fledged game with no bugs, but as fast as it keeps changing, it may very well be faster than we think.
I think my biggest concern comes to the content creation aspect of game development. Creating 2D art, whether 2D assets, concept art and other digital artwork can be generated with AI tools now. Even Photoshop has it integrated within the software. What does that do for someone who creates 2D art for games? Will being a 2D artist become difficult as the market gets flooded with AI art? I experimented and messed around with AI art, and I find it great and intriguing, but it made me reconsider putting any focus on creating 2D game assets.
AI voice over keeps getting better, and I debate on using it for some YouTube videos, but I always feel like it won't relate as good in videos if I had just recorded the videos myself. Personally, this is the one feature I do enjoy, and I'm sure it will get better over time. The only downside is that with it becoming better and more available to content creators, will that flood YouTube with a mass amount of low quality videos to compete with?
Of course we have things like Chat-GPT, and it has the ability to write code for you, write stories and even summarize content. It's great on the surface, but the content isn't always the greatest. Finding a shortcut to coding is always nice, and that part might be nice in the future to save someone time writing code if they are stuck on something. Stories always seem, off, when looking at AI generated, and again, will there be a ton of content that floods the market for books, game storytelling, and other creative works?
One of the latest ones I looked at is AI music. Even someone who focuses on creating audio content can be outsourced to AI. Will there be less great artists that create amazing music for games and other areas of media get replaced with AI?
There is AI video creation even. Make one from scratch with a prompt or plug in a bunch of videos, images and audio and then ask the software to build a video for you. That sounds great when creating videos and looking to speed up time, but it also takes away the personal aspect of creating videos.
The last one is 3D models, which is hard to believe is a thing within the AI space. Write a prompt and generate a 3D model. Not all are that great, but let's say you need to make some characters for a game. All you need to do is type up some prompts, fine tune the prompt model, download on your computer and then just update the model as needed with rigging and animation. As someone who liked the idea of creating assets just for the simple fact of enjoying creating models, it almost looks like it is a field that would be hard to get into if you can just build it with a few sentences.
AI is amazing, and at the same time scary. Someone who would like to be a game developer someday where I learn to create my own 2D assets, 3D models, maybe some audio and then publish videos about all my works, it seems like that landscape might not be an option for some people. I even think about all the great assets that are out there and the individuals that create them, are they seeing fewer sales as this AI content starts hitting the market? Are they worried that sales may start to get worse or are they excited about using AI?
This really isn't a specific blog by any means, but it is something comes to mind when I think about the future of game development with as many new AI tools that keep coming out. Will most of the 3D models and 2D games assets be generated by AI in the next 5 years? Will the market become saturated with all this content? Will large developers start using this as a means to attempt to kick out games faster by assuming that AI will save time?
The future of any artistic jobs whether that be game developers, 3D modelers 2D artists, music composers, or even content creators seems like it could get blurred as AI tools evolve.
Anyways, let me know what you think in the poll below about AI in Game Dev!
What do you think about AI in Game Dev?
AI Will not Change Game Dev
AI Will Change Game Dev for the Better
AI Will Change Game Dev Negatively
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