While SAG-AFTRA members are striking against some of the world’s largest video game makers for better protection against artificial intelligence, the head of Amazon Games remains pretty sure that bringing artificial intelligence into game development is a good idea – partly because “we don’t really have any acting for games.”
Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann told IGN he hopes AI can speed up the development process, which can take “up to five years per game” at AAA studios – leaving those developers constantly behind the current zeitgeist. Hartmann said: “Hopefully AI will help us streamline processes so that hand-work can be faster. Ideally, we can shorten it to three years so we can iterate more, which in turn will bring budgets down a little bit.”
Hartmann was then asked for his thoughts on the current AI-focused SAG-AFTRA strike in the gaming industry. “I mean, I have to be cautious about what’s happening here because we’re a big company and we’re dealing with all these organizations, so I don’t really want to get involved in that,” Hartmann said. “But when we talk about AI, hopefully first of all it will help us come up with new game ideas, which has nothing to do with taking anybody’s job away. And in games in particular, we don’t really have acting… The majority of the team is in programming and that’s not going to go away because that’s all about innovation. If it takes anything away, it’s really going to be the boring parts.”
I probably don’t need to tell you that there is actual acting in video games – especially AAA games – including full performance capture technology that brings life to beloved characters from The Last of Us to Baldur’s Gate 3. The latter game in particular is an impressive example of community-embraced casting and has become inextricably linked to the role-playing game itself. And then there’s Tomb Raider, a series Hartmann also gave an update on as part of this interview.
Even New World, Amazon’s biggest internally developed game to date, has a pretty large cast. Take a look at the MMO’s credits list, which includes around 200 different voice roles, each voiced by up to eight different actors, corresponding to the game’s various localizations. Some actors play multiple roles, but a rough calculation suggests that New World employed hundreds of voice artists across all of its various localizations. Hundreds by actors.
Hartmann hopes AI will also help speed up localization. “I think what could be very helpful is localization,” he explained. “Right now we’re localizing our game into a certain set of languages. Basically, does it make commercial sense to offer it in one language, yes or no? AI will actually help us. So I think it’s not going to make it cheap, it’s just going to allow us to translate our games into more languages. That’s great for gamers because there are countries where maybe not everyone speaks perfect English and they’d like to have a local language, but those are only half the size.”
The creative spark, Hartmann said, is something that cannot be replaced by AI. “Humans will always be one step ahead in that respect. The machine could come very close. I don’t know what you think, but I don’t think it will be able to translate those unique things into fresh ideas. When AI designs games, the game will always be the same.” I guess then it’s just up to AI to do the boring, artless tasks, like acting and making sure words have the right meaning when translated from one language and culture to another.
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