Dragon Age creator is convinced: stories written by AI will never work in games
The story and the world of Dragon Age come from his pen: David Gaider is a veteran of game development. However, he is apparently not at all convinced of AI-generated stories. Gaider has now reacted via tweet to an article by (Guardian). He has raised the question of whether AI could write super-intelligent video game characters. BioWare has also been looking into this, according to him.
Ah, yes. The dream of procedural content generation. Even BioWare went through several iterations of this: “what if we didn’t need every conversation to be bespoke?” Unlimited playtime with dialogue being procedurally created alongside procedural quests! https://t.co/iTLAFgRDUk
– David Gaider (@davidgaider) May 29, 2023
Each time, the team believed together from deep within that it was possible. Within reach. And each time we found that even if the procedural instructions were written by human hands, once assembled the end result was … lacklustre. Soulless.
In his view, the problem lies at the core of procedural content. Something is created that only takes the form of a quest. The end result is no better than the typical ‘Bring me 20 bug heads‘ MMO quest.
With text AIs like ChatGPT, of course, the idea of computer-generated content has become even more enticing, the technology constantly evolving. On this point, Gaider comments as follows:
If we ever get to the point where an AI can successfully replace human intuition and soul, then making games will be the least of our problems, okay?
Despite this, however, he is sure that many studios will work hard at it – and eventually fail. Expect to see it, Gaider says. It’s too tempting for them not to. Especially in MMOs and similar games where they feel the players aren’t there for a deep story anyway. A lot of effort will be wasted.
How do you see it? Do you think AIs will be able to write some gripping stories for video games in the near future or do you have a similar view to David Gaider? Drop us a line in the comments
