Activision Blizzard is reportedly already making games with AI, and has already sold an AI skin in Warzone. And yes, people have been laid off.
Activision Blizzard is reportedly already making games with AI, and has already sold an AI skin in Warzone. And yes, people have been laid off.
42 Comments
Completely unsurprising, I’m very much not an artist but I can ask AI prompters to generate art for me and in a lot of cases it seems quite good or passable. And that’s just going to keep getting better.
What I really want to see in games are AI chatbot NPC’s that talk conversationally.
And where games AI learns from the millions of games being played on it to get better instead of just relying on cheats like more resources or knowing where the player is.
AI generated artwork are getting harder to be recognise on first glance. People could use AI tools to create small logos or decals and you wont even know it.
I mean what did you expect. Cutting labor cost is the whole reason AI is getting developed. And no random internet circlejerks will not stop it. Economic incentive always will win, thinking anything else is utterly detached from reality.
surely major stores like steam psn etc will disclose that this mega game uses AI like they require of small indoe games
lol
What’s that? Every tech company is using AI? You don’t say!
As someone who’s job could be heavily automated if not completely replaced by AI once it stops hallucinating so much this is scary as shit, but at the same time I simply do not think it can be stopped. The cat is out of the bag and there is very little that can be done to put it back in.
If you think your career is at risk over the next 5-10 years then you gotta start trying to upskill or move horizontally to not get left behind.
What’s an AI skin? Like a texture generated by AI?
I didn’t expect Microsoft to spend all of that money on AI to not try to increase production and decrease costs.
So… how are redditors gonna defend $20+ character skins now?
it’s so over
Looks like they need to be the next to unionize. Might be the only way to combat AI taking over.
I think AI should enhance what’s there not replace people
I don’t buy their games but I wouldn’t buy games like these were AI is replacing stuff
You best believe they will still charge the same amount of money for these things as well
One my biggest wants from gaming is the usage of AI in making game development faster and with more content particularly more unique without sacrificing quality. Because of resources and time you often end up with games that are huge but with too similar cut and paste content.
I just know that what is going to happen is just more poorly rushed cheap stuff though
AI will always be unethical trash
Yeah well their stuff is so sterile and generic ai might as well make it, they’re shop radio
Games have been made with AI for more than 10 years. There is just a buzzword to describe the process now
> The push to use the technology almost always comes from the executive level, who sees cheaper costs and “good enough” art as acceptable.
“At least we maximized shareholder value,” the corporate executives whisper to themselves as they cause modern society’s cultural downfall.
The AI is just a tool. They will still need humans to actually create and design games.
Cutting payroll is a favorite way for corporations to control costs so this is unsurprising. Happens in every sector of industry, AI will cut jobs everywhere, eventually.
Pretty sure one of the battle passes they had featured AI generated loading screen you could unlock. One had a hazmat dude searching the ground and his left leg was twisted in an un natural position.
Fucking boycott Blizzard. Fuck this company, it’s not the dev we knew and love. It’s a crazy corporate demon wearing its skin.
I know the state of AI in video games, I’m currently working on a game for Square Enix Japan.
This article is misleading, go figure. The skin wasn’t an “AI skin”. AI is not at the level where it can generate an entire 3d model and provide seamless texture maps, then rig it with no input. That’s a pretty big insult to the modeller, surfacing artist and rigger that probably spent weeks working on the character.
Furthermore the article goes on to blame AI for the job losses in the game industry recently, which is also false.
The current slump in the games (and animation industry as a whole) is mostly caused by over hiring during COVID, ripples down the pipeline from the writers strike, and general worldwide inflation.
It’s not just about artwork, AI tools have been in use in game development for years even before commercially available tools were made. This is nothing new and no one should be surprised. Especially coming from one of the scummiest companies making games right now.
AI is going to destroy India jobs when it is fine tuned.
Support staff you can message and get an actual result rather than trying to be rushed off the phone is going to replace those call centers.
Who cares? Automation has affected countless industries throughout our lifetimes. What makes video game development any different than some poor Joe Shmoe getting laid off from a car factory because robots took his job?
No way!!! How could this have happened?! Unforeseeable
Oh no
This is another reason why I am glad that all of Bethesda Game Studios unionized. Hopefully, the workers at Activision Blizzard do the same.
Again: Fuck Blizzard
Microsoft coming in hard
Are they laid off or off laying?
Have you played the current Warzone BR map? The interiors of most buildings make so little sense that it has to be AI generated.
At least their AI employees can’t sexually harass the women in the office.
It’s a cronical problem in the Game Industry, it’s all about profit and share holders, fuck the art, fuck the plot fuck everything, lets put a gacha,loot box or anything that can sell and give us a shit ton of money, money is important but nowadays it took over in a way that games are solely made for grap money.
That’s great that means prices will come down!
The personal computer and desktop publishing killed so many jobs back in the day. This is what technology does.
Here’s the last day of the New York times old school printing press.
[FarewellEtaoinShrdlu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU)
Of course companies will try to make more money. No shock here. If you don’t like just stop supporting their product.
AI could make some great realistic camo patterns. And make some background characters.
Never can it make anything but basic background things, and have it maintain depth.
“but guys the Microsoft acquisition can only make it better”
Ok, [looking at the bundle,](https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-reportedly-sold-an-ai-generated-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-cosmetic) it is clearly the Demon Face loading screen that was AI generated. They aren’t selling actual skins… yet
> replace labor with robots to cut costs
> consumers have no money
> profit???
AI has some inherent sustainability issues. Its great for a lot of applications but if companies are going to be using it to write stories or scripts for instance, its going to end up being very same-ey. You need new content to populate the LLM to keep it going. If the LLM never gets anything new other than its own content it’ll end up just reshuffling the same 40 songs so to speak. It can’t actually create something meaningfully new.
At least not yet.
Your dollar is your only real vote these days. Boycott shitty companies.