AI First Game Development
Part 0. The Challenge
As we move into the AI era, embracing a new way of doing is going to be essential to survival in our professional lives. This way is referred to as AI-First, and there is a race to both build the tools for AI-First doing, and to adopt those tools to get the competitive edge through greater productivity, quality and creativity.
This AI-First shift has been instigated by, of course, the rise of Generative AI and all the new superpowers it has unlocked in terms of being able to produce images, text, video and audio through a single prompt.
This magical ability has created much debate, fear, and excitement in equal measure. Some believe this is a new general-purpose electricity that will power our lives. Others fear once AI is able to set its own objectives, human beings will be a footnote in a post-human history.
What is indisputable is that AI is going to have a major impact our jobs. Just as industrialization changed the lives of the working class (factory workers, and so on), AI will have an even greater impact on the knowledge class.
By knowledge-class I mean those who occupy jobs that are based on the application of knowledge, as opposed to a physical force, to complete tasks. For example, being a Hairdresser requires operating scissors in a complex and artful way. AI is a long way from impacting life as a hair-dresser, unless you’re Okay with one of those 80s-style bad haircuts.
A job that is knowledge-heavy is a Lawyer which involves consuming, analyzing, summarizing, and applying a vast amount of legal knowledge to new contexts. AI will impact how Law is practiced in ways we can’t imagine yet.
A profession that has been closest to the blast radius of Generative AI is Software Engineering. Large Language Models, have been trained on petabytes of content and through the absorption of language has acquired intelligence and the ability to churn out complex code with some simple instructions. What would take a software engineer weeks to write, now takes minutes.
My relationship with d) all of the above, is an ex-software engineer now helping lead the technology direction and development of digital solutions in an Enterprise world. My industry is being affected from the inside out, and the outside in. From the inside out, how we design and build digital applications is fundamentally changing with new GenAI tools available. From the outside in, our clients’ will (and already are) have new expectations for the digital solutions we build, and the speed and cost they are produced and maintained. I am in the confluence of this change, which is invigorating and exciting.
But what does all this have to do with AI-First Games development? I hear you ask.
Firstly, it’s about excitement. Seeing all this new technology emerge that can be used to create digital products is very exciting. I’m a maker at heart which is why I got into software engineering in the first place, so this is taking me back to that original wonder and excitement that blossomed when I was around the age of around ten.
Secondly, it’s about deep understanding. There is a lot of talk about Generative AI but I wanted to get my hands dirty to wrap my head around this technology at a deep level. This will help me have more meaningful conversations in the context of work and forge better solutions and ways of working in the future.
Thirdly, it’s about games. I love computer games and always wanted to make them. The world of commercial software development steered me away from that, but you’re never too old to try things out.
Finally, it’s about creativity. Creating computer games is the ultimate challenge in creativity and creative problem-solving. What better challenge to test all the dimensions of AI than creating a game?
So, my challenge was born.
Can AI help a rusty ex-coder with a passion for games, not a lot of free time with work and family, create a decent game? And if so, how much load did the AI take, how has the software engineering process changed since I was in the driver’s seat, and what other aspects of game design and development can AI help out with beyond writing code? And finally, what are the best tools out there to help me with this job?
As this series unfolds, I will talk about my experiences, trials and tribulations, and insights and give you glimpses of the game in development.
Hopefully, by the end of it, an IOS and Andriod Game will be published that is fun.
Check out Part 1: Training the GPT, where I set out the concept for the game, choose my weapons and prep my AI tool assistant.
Or skip ahead to my other parts in the series.
Part 2: AI-First Game Development. My AI Teacher
Part 3: AI-First Game Development. The Chasm Between Design and AI-Generated Art
