Will AI start to take the jobs of people employed in the video games industry? - Jamie Sefton

As a region – we have created or produced some of the best-known and multi award-winning global titles in the games industry and our game studios continue to innovate.

Yorkshire thanks to its leading position represents over 8 per cent of UK games studios contributing to the £7.05bn UK games industry.

From Worms to Snake Pass, some of the all time great video games have emanated from this part of the world.

So what does all this AI talk mean for our region’s games sector?

In January 2022, the Government released a report on AI Activity in the UK. At that time around 15 per cent of businesses (432,000 companies) had adopted at least one AI technology.

The higher adoptions of the tech were in IT and telecommunications and legal firms. In September that year the USA Department of Commerce stated that the UK AI market was valued at over $21bn and was expected to grow significantly to over $1 Trillion by 2035. AI appears to be rapidly becoming a tech that is used across increasing numbers of sectors and games is one of them.

I’m sure that most people will have played with ChatGPT and had discussions at home and work about the possible future impact of AI on jobs in industries as varied as film, health and construction.

The games industry is probably one of the best-placed to understand and benefit from the technology of AI – we have after all been innovating in this space since Pac-Man in the early 1980s.

In a sense AI has always been a key element of video gaming.

Games have often sold themselves on the ‘believable AI’ of their NPC (non-player character) behaviour in games as varied as EA Sports FC and Grand Theft Auto.

Good recent examples of AI in games include Alien: Isolation, where the terrifying acid-for-blood xenomorph from the movies learns your patterns of behaviour to hunt you down more effectively, and the racing series Forza where your virtual ‘Drivatar’ actually takes on your style of racing (aggressive, tactical etc), so online friends can challenge you in races when you aren’t even playing the game.

However, the debate around AI in the games industry really focuses on the use of it to create 2D and 3D art, game design and programming code.

The question is - will it start to take the jobs of people employed in those roles?

The general consensus is that generative AI is here to stay and if used responsibly, could be (and already is) a very useful tool for creatives to get more done in less time.

In fact the emergence of AI has also led to the establishment of new job titles in the industry - ‘AI Wrangler’ is a relatively new job role, and is the person (or team) that deals with the best implementation of the technology on projects and will be an absolutely essential role going forward, not just in games companies.

It will however be vital for developers to ensure that the AI they use to make games does not use other people’s and other companies’ raw art, code, data and designs to ‘feed’ the AI to create work – this is basically theft and will most likely lead to copyright infringement and lawyers getting involved.

Valve Software, a US company that owns and runs Steam, the biggest PC games platform in the world, has recently stated in its updated rules that developers “will need to disclose when their games use AI”, and promise that the use of the tech is not “illegal or infringing”.

Fortunately, increasing numbers of companies, such as Avalanche Software with its sloyd.ai tech that produces 3D models sourced from its own artist-created images, means that any developer that uses it can be confident that they are not breaking any laws.

While AI is already having an impact, and some job roles and descriptions will have to change, the technology should be seen as a tool like any other piece of software such as a word processor or a music sequencer – although it does need to be handled responsibly.

AI won’t be able to replace human beings with the individual passion, humour, inspiration, creativity and, most importantly, the vision they have for a game – fantastic titles made in Yorkshire such as Broken Sword, New Star GP, Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Worms won’t be made by AI. At least, not any time soon…

Jamie Sefton is managing director of Game Republic.