29 ms·

EA CEO: "Real hunger" among developers to use AI to speed up development

23 points by jarsin 2y ago

nothercastle 2y ago
More like corporate has been screaming about ai And wannabe leaders keep saying yes
olliej 2y ago
Real “hunger” among the MBAs to replace all the actually skilled employees with low paid code monkeys so that mbas can make even more money. That’s the MBA model of business: don’t create anything of value just try to extract as much of the existing value as possible while short changing anyone who actually does real work.
aerotwelve 2y ago
What EA is asking for is the ability to cut even more corners in their game development pipelines so that they can release a higher volume of unfinished titles, all of which require months of patches to be applied before any of them are reasonably playable. Sounds great!
- ohmyiv 2y ago
  Don't forget about the game breaking DLCs that they'll gladly take money for but never fix.
- theeandthy 2y ago
  If you think about what is fundamentally required for a game, in an ideal world, you don’t have any programmers at all—just artists and game designers.
  - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
    > just artists Well, oops on that, I guess.
  - cafard 2y ago
    Ideal for whom, though?
    - theeandthy 2y ago
      I mean ideal as in the physics notion of an ideal spring, simplified from all of natures forces so it may be modeled in a useful way. In the same way, an “ideal” game is one separated from its inner workings, and what you’re left with is the user experience, beautiful artwork, music, and engaging entertainment value.
      - interstice 2y ago
        I think this is missing the creative aspect of taking an idea and turning it into reality. Developers spend all day finding the middle ground between an idea that won’t work and a simple realistic solution that will
        theeandthy 2y ago
        Sure and that’s a reality today. That process will still happen. We’re talking about AI’s doing that for us don’t forget. And those mechanics will still be driven by prompts and such, but the nitty gritty will be automated.
  - hulitu 2y ago
    > If you think about what is fundamentally required for a game, in an ideal world, you don’t have any programmers In an ideal world, no. In the real world, your 3D surface must be displayed on a screen.
pocketarc 2y ago
> “As a company, we’ve been deeply tied to AI since our inception,” This kind of statement is just so weird. Really? They were deeply tied to AI in the 80s? When they were launching their first games and calling devs “software artists”? Unless they’re talking about computer players and NPCs, but… what a stretch that is. It’s like greenwashing, it’s… AI-washing. Very silly.
- jnwatson 2y ago
  Generative content in games has been around at least since Nethack? "AI" in games has been around since Pong.
  - _lvbh 2y ago
    In pong, the bar literally just moved towards the ball at a set speed depending on the difficulty. That is not AI
- caseyy 2y ago
  As a game AI developer since the 90s, I can say that lost and confused recruiters have only recently started tying me to machine learning AI, lol. Game AI is closer to robotics (“perceive-think-actuate”) than machine learning. Always has been and continues to be. The think part is achieved by anything from a script to a state machine like behavior trees, to utility or planning networks. But it would be woefully inefficient to think with neural nets. So the two AI are very unrelated. Neural nets are used in games only a little bit. Ubisoft had a research division where they made them play animations and drive a car in game. Epic Games built a ML deformer for character model meshes, which is faster than kinematically resolving realistic deformation (skin stretching). In mobile text based games, there was a time of experimentation a bit earlier. But game AI is much more complex in the breadth of types of calculations that it does to benefit from slow and imprecise generative AI. Offline, yeah, game developers want to use Copilot and Dall-E to create filler content quicker, whether boilerplate code or textures for environment art like paintings, lore inspectables and decals. Also placeholder TTS has been done with generative AI for a while (like Google/Azure/Amazon TTS services). People are doing these things, minus Copilot probably, in the AAA space. Then the assets get replaced by final ones before shipping the game. This is great, it allows prototypes to be closer to final quality, which makes the game more cohesive. But EA’s CEO… just wants to pump the stock to sell like most tech CEOs, in my humble personal opinion. To recap: game runtime AI is AI but materially different and the overlap is probably through robotics more than directly.
999900000999 2y ago
What a weird future. AI reduces the need for humans, AI then makes products for people to buy. Those people now don't have jobs to consume the products made by AI. It's almost like we need a new economic system which guarantees a nice lifestyle even if you just don't want to work. And then if you want nicer things, like a bigger house you can be one of the lucky ones who can still find a job. It's not to far off to say within 20 years driving/transportation will be completely automated. We'll have mail robots drop off packages. Robots building houses, etc. I don't see a utopian no work future though. More like a dystopian high income disparity future
- johnkpaul 2y ago
  I feel like I'm noticing this more and more often in media in general and definitely hacker-news-circulated media. This weird future is straight out of manna - https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    I've read that short story before. It's wildly optimistic to think the government would opt to give everyone housing over just letting them struggle.
- nine_zeros 2y ago
  The future involves UBI - there is no other way. But, before that, - A lot of people will be shed from jobs because companies seem to prefer this over loss of shareholder value - A lot of products will become shitty as they try to extract money. - A lot of companies will collapse as people will not have the money until UBI is implemented.
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    Thanks for seeing my bigger point, I don't know the specifics of course but less people will have jobs in the future. As is UBI would probably be more efficient then the patchwork of programs we have now. But I don't really see that happening anytime soon.
hollowdene 2y ago
On the one hand, gaming is one of the few industries where generative AI can have a big impact on producitivity today. It's easy to be cynical, but used well it could reverse the trend of excessively expensive AAA game development. On the other hand, who would trust the CEO of EA / EA in general not to do all the wrong things with AI to save a buck. TL;DR: Generative could help a lot, but big publishers will use it the worse ways possible.
- squigz 2y ago
  I don't trust EA, no, or many of the large publishers. I do, however, trust many small- and medium-sized publishers, and particularly indie devs/publishers. In short: I trust the industry at large to adapt properly. (As others have pointed out, there will be growing pains)

23 points by jarsin 2y ago

More like corporate has been screaming about ai And wannabe leaders keep saying yes

Real “hunger” among the MBAs to replace all the actually skilled employees with low paid code monkeys so that mbas can make even more money. That’s the MBA model of business: don’t create anything of value just try to extract as much of the existing value as possible while short changing anyone who actually does real work.

aerotwelve 2y ago

What EA is asking for is the ability to cut even more corners in their game development pipelines so that they can release a higher volume of unfinished titles, all of which require months of patches to be applied before any of them are reasonably playable. Sounds great!

ohmyiv 2y ago
Don't forget about the game breaking DLCs that they'll gladly take money for but never fix.
theeandthy 2y ago
If you think about what is fundamentally required for a game, in an ideal world, you don’t have any programmers at all—just artists and game designers.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  > just artists Well, oops on that, I guess.
- cafard 2y ago
  Ideal for whom, though?
  - theeandthy 2y ago
    I mean ideal as in the physics notion of an ideal spring, simplified from all of natures forces so it may be modeled in a useful way. In the same way, an “ideal” game is one separated from its inner workings, and what you’re left with is the user experience, beautiful artwork, music, and engaging entertainment value.
    - interstice 2y ago
      I think this is missing the creative aspect of taking an idea and turning it into reality. Developers spend all day finding the middle ground between an idea that won’t work and a simple realistic solution that will
      - theeandthy 2y ago
        Sure and that’s a reality today. That process will still happen. We’re talking about AI’s doing that for us don’t forget. And those mechanics will still be driven by prompts and such, but the nitty gritty will be automated.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > If you think about what is fundamentally required for a game, in an ideal world, you don’t have any programmers In an ideal world, no. In the real world, your 3D surface must be displayed on a screen.

pocketarc 2y ago

> “As a company, we’ve been deeply tied to AI since our inception,” This kind of statement is just so weird. Really? They were deeply tied to AI in the 80s? When they were launching their first games and calling devs “software artists”? Unless they’re talking about computer players and NPCs, but… what a stretch that is. It’s like greenwashing, it’s… AI-washing. Very silly.

jnwatson 2y ago
Generative content in games has been around at least since Nethack? "AI" in games has been around since Pong.
- _lvbh 2y ago
  In pong, the bar literally just moved towards the ball at a set speed depending on the difficulty. That is not AI
caseyy 2y ago
As a game AI developer since the 90s, I can say that lost and confused recruiters have only recently started tying me to machine learning AI, lol. Game AI is closer to robotics (“perceive-think-actuate”) than machine learning. Always has been and continues to be. The think part is achieved by anything from a script to a state machine like behavior trees, to utility or planning networks. But it would be woefully inefficient to think with neural nets. So the two AI are very unrelated. Neural nets are used in games only a little bit. Ubisoft had a research division where they made them play animations and drive a car in game. Epic Games built a ML deformer for character model meshes, which is faster than kinematically resolving realistic deformation (skin stretching). In mobile text based games, there was a time of experimentation a bit earlier. But game AI is much more complex in the breadth of types of calculations that it does to benefit from slow and imprecise generative AI. Offline, yeah, game developers want to use Copilot and Dall-E to create filler content quicker, whether boilerplate code or textures for environment art like paintings, lore inspectables and decals. Also placeholder TTS has been done with generative AI for a while (like Google/Azure/Amazon TTS services). People are doing these things, minus Copilot probably, in the AAA space. Then the assets get replaced by final ones before shipping the game. This is great, it allows prototypes to be closer to final quality, which makes the game more cohesive. But EA’s CEO… just wants to pump the stock to sell like most tech CEOs, in my humble personal opinion. To recap: game runtime AI is AI but materially different and the overlap is probably through robotics more than directly.

999900000999 2y ago

What a weird future. AI reduces the need for humans, AI then makes products for people to buy. Those people now don't have jobs to consume the products made by AI. It's almost like we need a new economic system which guarantees a nice lifestyle even if you just don't want to work. And then if you want nicer things, like a bigger house you can be one of the lucky ones who can still find a job. It's not to far off to say within 20 years driving/transportation will be completely automated. We'll have mail robots drop off packages. Robots building houses, etc. I don't see a utopian no work future though. More like a dystopian high income disparity future

johnkpaul 2y ago
I feel like I'm noticing this more and more often in media in general and definitely hacker-news-circulated media. This weird future is straight out of manna - https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
- 999900000999 2y ago
  I've read that short story before. It's wildly optimistic to think the government would opt to give everyone housing over just letting them struggle.
nine_zeros 2y ago
The future involves UBI - there is no other way. But, before that, - A lot of people will be shed from jobs because companies seem to prefer this over loss of shareholder value - A lot of products will become shitty as they try to extract money. - A lot of companies will collapse as people will not have the money until UBI is implemented.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Thanks for seeing my bigger point, I don't know the specifics of course but less people will have jobs in the future. As is UBI would probably be more efficient then the patchwork of programs we have now. But I don't really see that happening anytime soon.

hollowdene 2y ago

On the one hand, gaming is one of the few industries where generative AI can have a big impact on producitivity today. It's easy to be cynical, but used well it could reverse the trend of excessively expensive AAA game development. On the other hand, who would trust the CEO of EA / EA in general not to do all the wrong things with AI to save a buck. TL;DR: Generative could help a lot, but big publishers will use it the worse ways possible.

squigz 2y ago
I don't trust EA, no, or many of the large publishers. I do, however, trust many small- and medium-sized publishers, and particularly indie devs/publishers. In short: I trust the industry at large to adapt properly. (As others have pointed out, there will be growing pains)