Can AI help the traditional gaming industry regain its youth when facing a midlife crisis

Coin World News Report:
For many years, the gaming industry has seemed like an unstoppable “giant”, with the constant enrichment of game content and the flourishing development of mobile games leading to a continuous increase in gaming revenue.
However, as we enter the mid-2020s, more and more signs indicate that the gaming industry is entering a downturn.
After experiencing a brief boom caused by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, global gaming revenue declined in 2022. According to data from Newzoo, global gaming revenue is projected to grow by only 0.5% in 2023, with the global gaming market size reaching approximately $184 billion.
Although this number is still impressive, it is far from the double-digit percentage growth that the industry had anticipated.
The slowing growth trend is more evident in mature markets such as North America and Europe, where key areas such as console and mobile gaming have reached saturation. Mobile gaming revenue, which had been driving industry growth, actually declined in 2022 and is only now beginning to stabilize.
However, revenue stagnation is only part of the problem. Even with slowed growth, the cost of developing top-tier AAA games continues to skyrocket.
Budgets for famous games like “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto” now typically exceed $300 million. The development and marketing costs of some titles combined approach $660 million, an astonishing figure that was unimaginable just ten years ago.
These ever-expanding budgets have forced game companies to play it safe, heavily relying on existing franchises and established formulas rather than taking risks with innovation, which has taken a backseat.
Furthermore, there is evidence that people’s level of enjoyment of games has declined significantly, with game ratings dropping from 3.4/5 in 2014 to 2.9/5 in 2021.
Even the popularity of recent games like “Call of Duty” and “FIFA” seems to be waning. While we have witnessed some groundbreaking game releases recently, such as “Elden Ring,” the production time for such games is around five years, with costs exceeding $200 million. These are now games that come once in a generation, rather than the yearly releases we saw prior to 2020.
The financial strain has also led to significant layoffs that are hard to ignore. The pace of layoffs is accelerating, with over 10,500 game developers from more than 30 studios becoming unemployed in 2023.
At the same time, the industry is grappling with a rising wave of labor activism as workers push back against the notorious “crunch culture” that has plagued game development for years.
The Rise of Indie Developers
In the midst of strained relationships in AAA studios, independent developers are having a greater impact on the gaming industry, offering a strong counter to mainstream game development.
In 2024, independent games occupied five out of the top ten highest-grossing positions on Steam.
Games like “Hunshou Paru” (budget of $6.75 million, sales of 25 million copies) and “Mistlock Kingdom” resonated with players, demonstrating the commercial potential of indie games similar to AAA games.
The rise in popularity of indie games is part of a larger trend, with the market share of indie games on Steam projected to grow from 25% in 2018 to 43% in 2024.
Even in 2023, with the highly anticipated releases of AAA games like “Baldur’s Gate 3” and “Spider-Man 2,” indie game revenue remained stable, indicating a growing audience for these games.
The rise of indie games reflects an increasing interest among players for novel experiences and creative risks. AAA game development typically focuses on established franchises and proven formulas, while indie developers push boundaries and explore new ideas.
Meanwhile, tools like Unity and Unreal Engine make it easier to develop high-quality games, and digital marketplaces like Steam provide an excellent platform to reach audiences.
Many indie games have achieved success through viral social media marketing, surpassing traditional marketing strategies of large studios.
Building on this momentum, artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to further disrupt the power balance in the gaming industry, redefining the essence of creativity in game development.
By automating and streamlining design and creation processes, AI will create a more level playing field, enabling small teams or even individuals without professional technical knowledge to create competitive gaming experiences.
The Shift in the AI Paradigm
The potential for AI to revolutionize gaming has been discussed for decades, but this prospect is no longer just theoretical.
Recent breakthroughs, such as Google’s GameNGen and DeepMind’s Genie, give us a glimpse into the future of AI-driven game design.
GameNGen can generate fully playable classic game levels, such as DOOM, in real-time, while Genie can create interactive 2D environments based on simple image or text prompts.
These breakthroughs are part of a long-term trend of AI-driven game innovation, even though the industry is still young.
This journey began with early milestones like IBM’s “Deep Blue,” which defeated the renowned chess world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Deep Blue’s victory was a pivotal moment, showcasing the potential of AI in rule-based strategic challenges.
Fast forward to 2016, we witnessed another major leap with Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo. This AI system mastered the ancient Chinese game of Go, known for its immense complexity and reliance on intuition.
By defeating world champion Lee Sedol with a score of 4-1, AlphaGo demonstrated that AI could tackle domains once thought to be exclusive to human intelligence.
In 2018, researchers David Ha and Jürgen Schmidhuber published “World Models,” showcasing how AI could learn to play video games by building internal models of the game world.
A year later, DeepMind’s AlphaStar showcased the power of reinforcement learning, mastering the complex strategy game “StarCraft II” and challenging top human players.
GameNGen represents the cutting edge of this field today, having been trained on actual gameplay footage of “Doom” to internalize the game’s mechanics, level design, and aesthetics. GameNGen then uses this knowledge to generate novel levels in real-time, seamlessly connecting layouts and gameplay flow.
On the other hand, Genie uses basic models to generate interactive environments based on more free-form inputs like sketches or descriptions. By training on various game genres and visual styles, the genie can adapt to different aesthetic styles to create content.
Behind the scenes, these AI systems are powered by deep neural networks, and the networks themselves are becoming game engines capable of generating complete playable experiences from scratch.
Fundamentally, the game world is created within the AI system, not through traditional programming techniques, but by deep neural networks that have learned the rules, patterns, and structures of game design.
As the game world is generated by neural networks, it has the potential to be more dynamic and responsive than traditional game environments. The generating network itself can also be used to simulate NPC behavior, dynamically adjust difficulty, and even reshape the environment in real-time based on player actions.
With AI handling the heavy lifting of world-building and level design, developers can focus on higher-level creative decisions such as art direction, concepts, and storytelling.
While job positions may be at risk, AI is poised to bring significant advancements that the gaming industry is seeking.
Empowering Players and Disrupting Business Models
The true revolution begins when these AI tools are placed directly in the hands of players.
Imagine a world where players can simply provide a few simple prompts and imagine a game’s name, then jump right into the game and start playing.
For example, combining the neon-lit cityscape of “Cyberpunk 2077” with the frenetic combat of “DOOM Eternal” by describing it to an AI model would make it a reality.
This is a vision for the next few decades, but in the near future, AI will enable players to create and customize simpler games based on their unique preferences.
For instance, players can use AI tools to create a platform game, defining the abilities of the protagonist, the types of enemies they face, and the style of the environments they traverse. Players can also create puzzle games, setting the difficulty curve, visual themes, and even the types of puzzles encountered.
The game industry will no longer be limited to the creative guidance of professional game designers but can be shaped by the collective creative input of millions of players.
Furthermore, as AI game creation tools become more sophisticated, they can foster a new generation of “professional player” game creators, blurring the lines between consumers and creators.
This bottom-up, democratized approach to game creation has the potential to fundamentally change the power dynamics of the game industry. We will see the emergence of a more diverse, player-centered game ecosystem, rather than a top-down model dominated by a few large studios dictating game types.
Platforms that provide AI tools for creation and curation will drive technological advancements, taking cuts from user-generated content sales or charging for advanced features.
Of course, realizing this industry vision is not without significant challenges. Issues such as content moderation, intellectual property, job displacement, and revenue sharing will need to be addressed.
However, the wheels are already in motion. With technology continually advancing, we can expect to see more AI assisting game development and fundamentally reshaping the possibilities of gaming.
Original article source:
https://dailyai.com/2024/10/the-gaming-industry-is-facing-a-midlife-crisis-is-ai-its-future/
Chinese content translated by the MetaverseHub team. Contact us for permission to reproduce.