Watch above! There's quite a lot of procedural/automated graphics happening in the background, but unlike prompts, Tiny Glade puts the emphasis on user choice and creativity. The goal with the AI here is not to replace human creativity, but to make it easier, more delightful. It also seems robust enough that very dedicated people could, with enough practice, create especially amazing worlds.
Hypersonic Laboratories is a new startup which just got funding to build HELIX, an upcoming multiplayer role-playing sandbox platform for user-generated content (UGC). I got an early peek at what they're building, and the ambition is pretty impressive. As David Chiu, Hypersonic's head of business, put it to me: "Think of it as Garry's Mod meets Grand Theft Auto meets Second Life powered by Unreal Engine 5".
So, yes, intriguing. Also notable that the development team has veterans of major game developers from Roblox/Uplift Games (creators of "Adopt Me") and Activision. This roughly fits my prediction in the book that we'd soon see the rise of Grand Theft Auto-type metaverse platforms.
Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat has the whole story, including:
Now on Kickstarter: Can You See Me Now, a crowdfunder to update a groundbreaking mixed reality game of the same name for the modern era of iOS and Android. Launched in the early 2000s, it helped inspire the creation of Pokémon Go, but Can You See Me Now is much more accessible:
"It's hide-and-seek with the hiders online and the seekers in the real world," veteran virtual world dev Jim Purbrick explains, "but having two parallel realities and the players relying on information leaking between the realities make it interesting and feel like each reality is haunted by ghostly presences from the other." Purbrick worked on the original game from UK tech art collective Blast Theory before going on to work at Linden Lab and Meta, and will also help develop this modern update.
In the original version, the real world runners were kitted out with bulky PCs and GPS trackers, but with the reboot, it will just require a smartphone to run. The gameplay creates the cool and eerie experience of existing in two realities at once:
To go by social media froth, the rise of AI technology like Large Language Models is soon going to utterly Change Games Forever, leading to waves of roiling layoffs of game industry employees. Why pay game writers, one common argument goes, when we can just get ChatGPT to churn out reams of NPC game dialog?
Speaking with several actual writers of hit acclaimed games, however, I got a much more thoughtful perspective, bereft of doomsaying.
Leigh Alexander, an independent writer who contributed to the award-winning Reigns: Game of Thrones (2018) among many other titles, sees understanding tools like LLMs as crucial to her profession:
“Kinda feel like writers need a nuanced view of generative technology to keep up in the game industry right now,” as she puts it. “There's a big big big gulf between ‘working with generative systems to have an emergent relationship with my own writing’ and ‘having ChatGPT write the NPCs.
“The latter is an exploitive fad that I expect to soon collapse. The former isn't going anywhere and probably if you work in games you'll need to be more literate with it than [saying] ‘all AI is lazy’-- which is itself a lazy view. You still gotta hand-author everything in your own models, and consider applications of emergence deliberately and for a reason, because it often makes things harder.”
She likens the “AI is lazy” charge to a photographer saying, “‘Photoshop is only for lazy photographers’.
"It misunderstands the purpose and breadth of the tool, and it actually makes you sound like you don't understand photography (which seems bad for your prospects if you are working as a photographer).”
Above: Reigns: Game of Thrones, co-written by Leigh Alexander
By contrast, Leigh adds, “professional longevity for storytellers in the game industry means not just writing, but literacy with tools -- tools are the backbone of narrative design to me.”
Charlene Putney did narrative design for the recent hit fantasy RPGs Baldur’s Gate 3 and was a writer on Divinity: Original Sin 2. She also co-developed LAIKA, a LLM tool for game writers “to offer suggestions using their voice, characters and concepts.” So as you might guess, her view on AI is also nuanced:
"I think AI will bring big changes to every creative field over the next few years, but not in an apocalyptic way,” she tells me. That’s even more the case with the game industry, which unlike the other arts, is only a few decades old. By her lights, AI offers games a chance to differentiate itself from other medium even more:
Above: Baldur's Gate 3, featuring narrative design by Charlene Putney
“To my mind, this is another tool. I don’t see it replacing writers in the long run, I see it as a brand new spark of potential that we can use. And that beautiful little spark of potential in it that delights me is the same little spark that delighted me in the independent game development scene a decade ago: dream it up, make it, share it -- now using the tenets of consensus reality as LEGO bricks. Not trying to recreate the media of the past: not novels, not movies, not songs. But some strange new creatures, new forms that are no more than shadows right now, coalescing into shape just out of the corners of our eyes.”
To that end, she’s creating other LLM-based tools for game developers, though notes that many of them are too busy -- or perhaps too apprehensive -- to experiment with them.
"With the strong productivity focus of the current games industry, it's hard for people to take time to play, to explore, and to bounce around with experimental things when there are hard deadlines and such a hostile general approach to working with AI,” as she puts it. “One needs a strong sense of self to weather the social media vitriol, and a strong sense of your own voice and what you want to say in order to experiment wildly."
As the lead writer of the classic Deus Ex franchise, set in a dystopian future amid the rise of sentient AI, Sheldon Pacotti actually contributed greatly to our popular apocalyptic conception of artificial intelligence, especially in Silicon Valley. (Elon Musk, among many other AI technophiles, is a fan of the game.)
“My usual experience writing science fiction is getting things wrong,” he acknowledges now. “Writing in 2000, I had a kid in the 2020s still buying CDs. Etc.”
“But one thing we might have gotten right in Deus Ex is people’s desire for AI in their lives. Morpheus, one of the Ais in the game, says that people crave being seen, and will take an omniscient AI in place of an omniscient god.” (Watch above.)
That’s illustrated even more in the game’s sequel, Invisible War, with an AI popstar character, NG Resonance. (Watch below).
“As an amateur futurist I’m gratified but also a little freaked out that in 2024 ‘companionship apps’ are a thing and in fact one of the fastest-growing applications of AI,” Pacotti puts it to me. “Whether as companions or “agents,” we’re likely to invite AI (and mass surveillance) deeper and deeper into our lives, and that should be great fodder for many dystopian plotlines to come, if not the key to the final triumph of the Illuminati in our time.”
As for potential use of LLMs in game development, Sheldon wrote me a mini-essay worth quoting in full:
With Life by You soon to go into early access on Stem and Epic, we're seeing publisher Paradox Interactive put out more walkthrough videos for Sims-meets-Second Life-meets-Garry's Mod sandbox simulation lead developed by Rod Humble. This one focuses on avatar customization, and notably, it's by YouTuber Nini's Planet, who generally shoots Sims 4 videos.
Also notable: Before his two year stint as CEO for Linden Lab, Humble was a lead developer on Sims 2 and Sims 3. So compare and contrast with avatar/character creation with both Second Life and Sims 4!
Pretty interesting Polygon story on the successful user community-led uprising against Sony's policy changes to Helldivers 2. The multiplayer game is reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven's version of Starship Troopers, satirizing war movies heavy on propaganda while also succeeding as an enjoyable war movie in its own right.
In the case of Helldivers 2, the protest consciously echoed the rousing military rhetoric from the game:
On Friday, Sony announced that Helldivers 2 players would need to link their in-game accounts to their Sony accounts, requiring a log-in to an additional platform... The PlayStation Network is not accessible in 177 countries and territories, and so players from regions like the Philippines completely lost access to a game they had already paid for.
Helldivers 2 players immediately moved into action, coordinating on platforms like Reddit, X, and Discord to make their displeasure clear. Helldivers 2 was hit with hundreds of thousands of negative Steam reviews, turning its very positive ranking upside down. Players made memes and propaganda posters, rallying under the slogan “We dive together, or we don’t dive.”
... Sure enough, Sony caved on Sunday night, announcing that the game would no longer require account linking.
Thankfully, the protesters are also calling to delete their negative reviews, which can be a death sentence for a game's longevity.
At any rate, I love how the community leveraged the game's own themes and rhetoric to rally for their cause. It reminds of the famed Tax Revolt rebellion in Second Life, where the user community involved with creating Americana, an SL tribute site to US landmarks.
So to protest a company-imposed "tax" on building, the community covered Americana in giant tea crates:
Just got word that Life by You, The Sims-meets-Second Life-meets-Garry's Mod sandbox simulation lead developed by Rod Humble, is now available for wishlisting in the run-up for its June 2024 early access launch:
Video on the announcement from Rod above. Humble, as longtime readers know, is a game industry veteran who worked on The Sims franchise and other hit titles before briefly becoming Linden Lab's CEO in 2011. Hopefully I'll be chatting with him on soon, asking him how he synthesized his experiences with those games into Life By You, but for now, here's more from the official announcement and previous NWN posts below:
The Crush House, an upcoming indie game on Steam, is one of those "I can't believe no one's thought of this before, but I'm glad a quirky creator got the idea first before a bloated AAA publisher did" titles. The creator in this case is digital artist Nicole He, and the idea is basically: A first-person shooter where you pay the camera-person for a cheesy reality show, and you get more points for shooting the best sex and scandal -- and maybe some dark conspiracies beneath the surface. (Watch the trailer above.)
Each season is unique based on your chosen cast and the ever-changing audience demands. The longer you manage to keep your show on air, the more questions start to arise. What's up with the cast's dependence on Crush Juice? Where does the Success Slide even go? Clandestine conversations and some good old-fashioned snooping will help you uncover the truth.. providing the Network doesn't get in your way.
You know, I bet someone could make a live action variation of this concept in a virtual world (he hinted broadly). See also Spy Party, an indie game in a somewhat similar vein, i.e. stealthy voyeurism of NPCs interacting.
In case you missed it, the "cozy MMO" Palia was published to Steam recently. though so far, the reviews are decidedly Mixed. My first thought is Steam's largely hardcore gamer user base doesn't like an MMO with a decided dearth of face-punching. But then again, Steam players gave Overwhelmingly Positive reviews to the seriously cozy farm sim Stardew Valley.
In fact, the top review on Steam brings up that comparison too:
Palia had a 50 million dollar budget. Team consists of 20+ employees which come from big companies like Blizzard, Sony, Epic, Zynga, and Riot. Development started in 2018. Palia was released more unfinished than Stardew Valley, a game that only took 4.5 years to make and was designed by one person who was working as an usher for a cinema.
Most games I personally enjoy in my off-hours are rarely metaverse platforms/virtual worlds/MMOs, because while playing anything in that broad category, I inevitably come across an interaction or experience that makes me think, "Hmm, I should write about that." Which feels like work! (Work I love, yes, but if I'm on break, I'm on break.)
Anyway, of the dozens I tried and of the many I enjoyed for an extended period, highlights include:
Immersive Action/Simulation
Control: Thrilling and moody action/adventure with heavy emphasis on gunplay merged with various telekinetic abilities. Loved the Stranger Things-esque government conspiracy backstory and the brutalist architecture, though the story itself was not as emotionally resonant as it could have been. (Completed)
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider: Standalone expansion to part 2 of the acclaimed Dishonored franchise (itself deeply inspired by the beloved Thief franchise), I actually enjoyed Outsider more than the first game, with a compelling hero voiced by Rosario Dawson, incredibly beautiful art and level design, and some of the most cleverly unique missions I've played in quite awhile. (Completed.)
Valheim: I admired this survival crafting sim more than I enjoyed it -- great physics/craft and build system, and beautifully immersive. However, since I insisted on playing it solo, it got pretty brutally difficult quite quick, and I moved on.
