Press Start: how AI is transforming video game development in Groningen

Artificial intelligence is changing how video games come to life, and the next generation of game developers are learning how to cope with it.

‘It’s a new way of doing more work in a cheaper sense’, says Hanze lecturer Douwe Terluin. According to him, that’s why video game companies have been embracing artificial intelligence eagerly. Indeed, the video game industry is growing rapidly, with over 700 video games being released on Steam last week.
Narrative designer Gerben Grave, from the Groningen cooperative Game Bakery, warns that using AI to create video games faster will lead to the industry ‘fighting even more for the attention of the consumer.’

Students learn how to integrate softwares, such as ChatGPT or Copilot, as aides in the game development process

The shift towards the increased use of AI in game development processes, such as coding and module creation, is reflected in the educational environment. Part of the Creative Media and Game Technologies curriculum at Hanze is an AI elective. During this elective, students learn how to integrate softwares, such as ChatGPT or Copilot, as aides in the game development process.
‘You are tasked to build your own tool or programme that incorporates AI in some way that is useful for future students as well’, says one of the students who took the elective, Willem Ploos, ‘such as creating a non-playable character (NPC, ed.) that answers questions, facilitated through a language model.’

The AI elective was introduced three and a half years ago as an experimental idea, pitched by lecturer Douwe Terluin (and his colleague Steven Warmelink), to introduce students to different applications and limitations of AI in game development. ‘We focus on different parts, so that people know what tools are out there… and to demystify it to some extent’, Terluin says. ‘You can try to use these tools to help your own development process, as long as you realise what kind of effect it has on your own skills and your own learning.’

‘The very latest, newest models are probably a better programmer than I was’

In his game development project, Willem used ChatGPT to create a chatbot on Discord, which could send in messages and voice chats with a specific personality. Other students and developers use the AI platform Copilot as a supporting tool in the coding process. Willem: ‘When Copilot detects you write a certain type of code, it predicts the next code.’

Beyond the educational environment, AI is still used as a tool to help with the programming side of game development. Game developer Bart van der Werf, who is also part of Game Bakery, says he uses AI in the programming process of different modules within a game, such as movement controllers.

‘The very latest, newest models are probably a better programmer than I was’, he admits. ‘It takes many weeks of incrementally adding features to make something. At this point, I don’t read code anymore, because there’s no use in doing that.’

‘I have had my art stolen and run through an AI-tool to make prints out of it, which they have been selling’

However, when it comes to the creative side of game development, such as narrative storytelling and video game art design, the use of AI is still seen as controversial.

Game artists, such as Nadine Baumgardner, have spoken up about AI systems being trained on stolen art without their permission. ‘I refuse to use it, because it’s just not ethical’, she says, still a bit indignant. ‘I have had my art stolen and run through an AI-tool to make prints out of it. They have been selling them and I had to go quite far to get those removed.’
Narrative designer Gerben Grave adds that the environmental impact keeps him away from using AI tools on creating narratives, dialogues and scripts. ‘The output is just too mediocre for my taste. I think we are missing out on some exceptional output. The act of collaboration is more valuable to me than just having a machine create something.’

‘There are going to be companies that have overcommitted to AI’

Student Willem Ploos argues that AI can be useful as a supplementary tool to clean up work or offer feedback, but ‘it is not the goal’.

AI is not perceived as an imminent threat to take over any time soon. The prices of AI softwares are now increasing, while some companies have become ‘dependent on their workflow’, says Douwe Terluin. He thinks this may lead to a turnaround in the use of AI.

‘There are going to be companies that have overcommitted to AI and have let go of too many people crucial to their process realizing that they’re lacking fallback’, he explains. ‘But it’s hard to predict if the applicability of AI will go down.’

Image: geralt – Pixabay