Portal and Half-Life writer Erik Wolpaw recently appeared on a podcast and said that he and a small team at Valve have been “poking around” at using AI to generate text, audio, and more. The veteran games writer says he’s not worried about AI “taking over creative writing” anytime soon, but is very interested in how the controversial tech could be used in video games.
During an episode of the MinnMax podcast last week, Wolpaw joined the crew to talk about game news and of course, Valve. And the topic of generative AI came up, leading to Wolpaw saying quite a lot about how some devs at Valve are using it while also making it clear this isn’t a company-wide initiative, nor is it meant to replace anyone.
“So, one thing we’ve been doing—and when I say we, I don’t mean Valve, I mean a small group of people at Valve—we’ve been looking at some AI stuff,” said Wolpaw on the podcast.
“I’m currently not worried about AI taking over creative writing because it is pretty bad at it. And I’m not just saying that defensively. Like, we’ve really been messing around with it. I don’t think it’s going to be anytime soon writing novels that are better than human[-written books].”
Erik Wolpaw thinks AI could be used in game development
Wolpaw says, however, that generative tools like ChatGPT could prove useful for letting games and the characters in them react in real time to whatever chaos a player is causing. In fact, according to the Half-Life writer, after toying around with the tech at Valve, that’s the thing he claims AI is best at doing.
“The thing that with game writing and game writing specifically is that we have always had to simulate…characters in the game reacting to whatever you do,” explained Wolpaw.
“It’s the one place where I feel like AI is worth investigating, game writing. And the thing that we’ve found is that, and this is just early days…It’s not good at being especially creative. It’s not good at being funny. But it’s kind of interesting in an imagined Grand Theft Auto where you’re going around creating a lot of physical chaos. There’s a certain amount of social chaos where you have the AI play the straight man as much as it can, and it’s just reacting to whatever insanity [happens]. It’s one thing it’s very good at, just going along with whatever insane thing you say and kind of adjusting to the flow of that.”
“I am very interested in [AI] in this very specific case,” admitted the Half-Life writer who left Valve for a few years before returning in a part-time capacity in 2019. “It will allow you to do something that is impossible, no matter how many humans you throw at it.”
Valve isn’t making Portal 3 or Half-Life 3 using gen AI tools
At a few points in the interview Wolpaw, seemingly aware that this might get reported on and his quotes spread online, tried to make it clear that Valve isn’t investing heavily in AI or using it on all of their projects.
“When I say we, this is not a Valve…well, it’s Valve-endorsed in the sense that we are working for Valve, but just kind of poking around at this stuff,” he said. The writer also tried to make it clear this isn’t being used on any specific video game that hasn’t been announced yet, like, oh, I don’t know, Half-Life 3. He added later: “Let it be known far and wide that this is not a concerted Valve thing, right? In fact, this may be the first time they’re hearing about it!”
“This is nothing other than…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,” said the writer.
Wolpaw also said that the idea of using AI to replace people or make games cheaper didn’t interest him at all. Instead, he just thinks the tech could be used to make “a better experience for people playing the game.”
