AI’s Potential to Transform Gaming: Unlocking New Experiences for Players with Groundbreaking Technology
The world has embraced artificial intelligence (AI) with hopes of witnessing its transformative power in various fields. Generative AI models have gained immense popularity, and discussions regarding AI’s potential have become mainstream. Today, entrepreneurs are utilizing AI in different industries to streamline and automate processes, revitalizing ecosystems that have lost vigor over time.
In the gaming industry, AI is seen as a means to go beyond incremental upgrades. It has the potential to redefine how gamers consume products, from utilizing existing hardware to maximizing the price-performance ratio of the latest graphics processing units (GPUs). Ryan Wyatt, former global head of gaming partnerships at Google and former head of gaming at YouTube, believes that AI will be a crucial tool for game developers to enhance their work output and production and unlock new and immersive experiences for gamers.
Wyatt, with his extensive gaming experience, understands the intersection of a gamer’s expectations and an entrepreneur’s reality. He now serves as an advisor for a blockchain company after retiring as the president of Polygon Labs.
According to Wyatt, AI is just one of the many powerful tools in a developer’s toolkit, expanding and enabling a variety of new gaming experiences. He emphasizes that AI shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for human work in gaming but as a tool that empowers game development teams to achieve more than ever before. This may require leveraging human resources differently, but it doesn’t diminish the importance of the roles required to create games. As a result, gamers will enjoy experiences that were previously unimaginable.
When asked about the role of AI in handling heavy computational tasks currently dependent on GPUs, Wyatt believes it is wishful thinking to expect AI to repurpose legacy systems and reduce e-waste significantly. While AI can introduce some optimization techniques, such as offloading resources to the CPU and optimizing for legacy systems, the ongoing advancements in technology and hardware will likely contribute to the increase of e-waste. Wyatt predicts that the issue may worsen in the next 5-10 years due to the emergence of AI.
Regarding the use of AI in gaming, Wyatt is asked to choose between AI-driven graphics optimization, unlimited map rendering, or never-ending storylines. He expresses his personal preference for both improved storylines and boundless world maps. Open worlds have played a significant role in gaming over the past decade, and Wyatt believes that storylines and non-player characters (NPCs) can evolve significantly with the help of AI.
Shifting the focus to mainstream gaming, Wyatt discusses the benefits that AI and blockchain can bring to the industry. He acknowledges the need for native app developers and indie game developers to explore these technologies to push the boundaries of what they can achieve. However, for true mass adoption, bigger players in the industry will eventually have to incorporate AI and blockchain technologies.
In conclusion, AI’s potential in the gaming ecosystem holds great promise. It is viewed as a transformative tool that empowers developers to create new gaming experiences. While challenges exist in repurposing legacy systems and reducing e-waste, the integration of AI and blockchain has the potential to shape the future of gaming. As the industry continues to evolve, both smaller and larger game developers will play a crucial role in adopting and infusing these technologies into their gameplay, leading to groundbreaking advancements in the gaming experience.
