How you can tap into the AI revolution to make games more efficiently | GI Sprint
No industry has been left untouched by the looming presence of artificial intelligence – and gaming is no exception. But the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney have somewhat obfuscated the fact that AI has been influencing development in one way or another since at least the 1980s.
In the interest of time
1. Don't just chase the latest craze and tap into something because it's being hyped up – it might not be right for you.
2. Explore open source tooling and experiment with free services (but that doesn't mean you won't need to do a lot of work to integrate these).
3. Pick out the best workloads to automate by determining which boring and monotonous tasks are being wasted on people.
4. Figure out which are the best tools to use for the best use cases, and know when you're automating too far.
5. It's easy to slip into the trap of automation and lose your identity – don't forget what gamers are looking for and retain the human touch.
There is a broad consensus that AI is "new" to the space, says Tommy Thompson, director of consultancy firm AI and Games, speaking on a panel as part of our new GI Sprint series about how to make games faster and cheaper. But the idea that AI is a new innovation, and that it's only now beginning to threaten jobs, is far from true.
Thompson, who works with developers on how to integrate AI into their pipelines, has seen this "silent revolution" brewing in the industry since the late 2000s. Back then, developers began incorporating machine learning into their workflows. But AI is a field of computer science that stretches back to the 1950s, and the games industry has been a beneficiary for decades.
Sean Cooper, technical director at Didimo, explains: "I can think of countless automations and AI that we've used since the '80s. And now we're starting to talk about it, and starting to worry about it. But it's always been there. And it puts people out of jobs. Things like, we don't need a tester to test the game, or we need less
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