About the talk
Generative AI has the potential to deliver radical new gameplay experiences – featuring emergent stories, unshackled characters, and unprecedented player agency.
But it won’t do it without a fight.
Left to its own devices, Generative AI will happily churn out incoherent, soulless slop. A million miles from game-ready quality. And no – contrary to popular belief – you cannot fine-tune and prompt your way out of the problem. So stop trusting the model, and start bullying it.
This talk draws on seven years of R&D in the AI gameplay space – culminating in the development of our game Dead Meat. It argues that developers are not going far enough in their efforts to wrangle AI – and advocates for the adoption of an additional “bully layer” that forces AI to deliver to a human authorial vision.
We’ll give a behind the scenes peek at what “bullying” AI means in practice – combining real-time “direction”, dynamic context control, and intelligent quest systems to generate meaningful AI-powered gameplay. This will include real-world examples from our own game Dead Meat, as well as a number of our other key demos.
Because, as we know from experience, GenAI is not magic: it is a deeply flawed technology. But, if you get it its face and bully the hell out of it to do what you want, when you want, it CAN create experiences that feel magic.
Takeaway
– Stop putting your faith in AI’s ability to semi – autonomously – create good gameplay experiences. Left to its own devices, AI WILL create slop.
– Stop believing that prompting and fine – tuning can save you from AI slop. Despite the near – universal emphasis of these methods, they cannot deliver game – ready quality.
– Start BULLYING AI into doing what you want. Additional technologies are needed to force AI to create something good, because it sure as hell won’t do it on its own accord.
– Start adopting a “bully” layer that intelligently manages character direction and conversational quests in real – time – based on game consciousness, player desires, and authorial intention.
– GenAI is not magic: it is a deeply flawed technology. But, if you get it its face and bully the hell out of it to do what you want, when you want, it CAN create experiences that feel magic.
Experience level needed: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced