A small group of people inside esteemed developer Valve are “looking at some AI stuff,” according to Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, and Portal writer Erik Wolpaw.
He said in an interview with MinnMax that he’s learned “a bunch of stuff” from experimenting with AI, but he has no worries that the implementation of the technology will take over the creative writing process. That’s because, in its current form, AI is “pretty bad” at creative writing, as reported by GamesRadar.
“We’ve really been messing around with it. And like art, there’s a lot of questions about that, but I don’t think it’s going to–anytime soon–be writing novels that are better than human,” he said.
However, Wolpaw believes generative AI may play a helpful role in the process of creative writing for games. He said writing for games requires writers to simulate characters in the game reacting to things, and it might be helpful for a generative AI system to fill in lines based on situational context. In a game like Left 4 Dead, a particular line could play if a specific event took place, he suggested.
“It’s the one place where I feel like AI is worth investigating, is game writing,” he said. For now, Valve is only “poking around,” he said, adding that whatever AI solution Valve might one day embrace would be “Valve-endorsed.”
“This is just some people sitting around, being like, ‘This is a crazy technology–it would be kind of silly for us not to look into it at least,'” he said. “It’s a hot topic, that’s for sure.”
Developer Embark’s The Finals and Arc Raiders use an AI-based text-to-speech system for situational dialogue, so the kind of thing that Wolpaw is referencing is already happening, in some form at least.
Games have been using some form of AI technology for years, but things are ramping up of late, and causing controversies. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Crimson Desert both caught flak for featuring generative AI art, with the developers behind each ultimately removing that content. There are ongoing fears about AI-related job losses, too. Recently, Fortnite developer Epic Games laid off 1,000 people, but the company said AI had nothing to do with it.