In a new Sony Corporate Report, Sony has revealed that PlayStation will use AI and machine learning to speed up its game development.
On page 16 of the report, Sony had that “bolstering technologies that can help creators engage in maximizing the value of their IP in efficient, high-quality ways, including sensing and capturing as well as real-time 3D processing, AI, and machine learning,” and that these technologies will help to deliver its IP “rapidly and at low cost to a broader range of fans.”
The report reveals that PlayStation used machine learning in the production of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 by applying voice-recognition software in certain languages. This process allowed the company to automatically synchronize subtitles with each character’s lines to “significantly shortening the subtitling process.”
AAA games don’t have a production quality or even a development time problem. They have a far more existential one. A gameplay focus problem. These are games made with profit as first priority, not fun. They have confused engagement and addiction with gameplay quality. Live services poisoned their design language. This is why they want more, faster, at higher budgets. The fallacy is that more, faster, more graphically demanding, will magically make them all the money.
I want less games, with lower budgets, that take longer to make, have less graphic and animation fidelity, that pay better to their devs to do their job well. And I mean it.
The video games market is already overflowed for its size, yet somehow these companies are inflating their budgets like balloons instead and charging ever more and more for shittier games that somehow cost more to make. This isn’t sustainable. AI won’t fix any of these issues.
I find myself buying almost exclusively from indie devs lately. They make games that still have a soul and aren’t driven by this stupid mentality that better looking magically equals more engaging gameplay.
There are probably a ton of devs in the video game world that were once passionate about making games, that have since been burned out by the industry’s grueling demands. AI is a bandage on a far bigger existential problem and that real problem is capitalism.
If I see a game that costs $70-100 now, I drive right past it. So many of those high dollar AAA turn out to be absolute duds that have live service and other BS jammed into them that some suits in a boardroom thought up.
If you truly break it down, you’ll notice that AAA only actually makes two or three games, open world third person action RPG with parkour, open world shooter with looting and crafting, and live-service coop/competitive shooter with loot boxes. Every iteration of these same ideas are just varnishing the same bored gameplay concepts over and over with different coats of theming and slightly different stories. I only ever find original and stimulating gameplay on indie projects and the occasional small studio. They’re the only ones actually experimenting with innovative game design and varied concepts.
Yeah, 100%. They don’t build games first; they build a profit framework and then build a game around that.