'There is no AI-driven software that I know of that we would put in a shipped game,' says Blackbird Interactive's president
Several members of Homeworld 3 studio Blackbird Interactive recently took part in a roundtable discussion hosted by PC Gamer's Evan Lahti, with AI as the main topic. While all of them saw the value of algorithmic tools in creating videogames, the consensus was that things aren't 100% ready for prime time yet.
«There is no AI-driven software that I know of that we would put in a shipped game that would come from Blackbird,» said Rory Mcguire, the studio's president and CCO, «none of the art that's being produced on Midjourney. We would use it to block in some ideas or explore some ideas we already have—we're doing that now. But we wouldn't put that art into the game. It's just an inspiration, the same way you would do Google image search.»
By contrast, Blizzard just applied for a patent on an AI system to make art for its games. Blizzard's patent describes an image generator to aid in «generating structured textured images using machine learning with a reduced requirement for training data.» The idea is that artists create a small number of paired training images of surface tiles, representing the kind of floors, walls, and terrain that make up a huge amount of the workload texture artists face. The AI would then create new tiles based on those inputs.
Blackbird is a studio that's familiar with the state of AI. As well as developing games like Minecraft Legends, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Blackbird was responsible for designing a training environment for Sanctuary AI(opens in new tab), which has been dubbed «the world's smartest robot». But even when it comes to programming, Mcguire isn't ready to put things made by AI into a final product.
«The same thing is true of ChatGPT,» he said.
Read more on pcgamer.com
