AIGC kicks off the gaming industry

Original source: Zhengjian TrueView

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

The gaming industry is currently the industry with the clearest monetization of AIGC.

From the perspective of the game product itself, the content materials can be handed over to AIGC technology, and the construction of game content assets can be completed in a short period of time through Vincent diagrams and technical means of generating text. When AIGC technology is integrated into the game production pipeline, content production costs can also be reduced. According to data, 60% of game manufacturers have already taken advantage of AIGC capabilities.

However, when we talk about AIGC+ games, if the focus is more on the dimension of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, it will seem that AIGC is not sexy enough.

**The really sexy side of AIGC lies in the unpredictability of AI generation. **Based on the creation of prompt words, AIGC uses the imagination of the machine to break the shackles of the creator's thinking and provide a steady stream of inspiration. This kind of explosive content creativity is the key to promoting game change in the long run.

As mentioned in the "2020 China Game Innovation and Development Trend Report", lack of creativity has become the biggest bottleneck in the game industry. When the lack of creativity becomes a normal phenomenon in the industry, there will be homogenization of products and the phenomenon that it is difficult to produce high-quality products in the industry. And **AIGC technology can stir the quagmire of homogenization to a certain extent. **

It can be seen that compared with explicit financial data, AIGC's help to accumulate creative assets in the game industry is more worthy of attention. As this benefit increases exponentially, what changes will we see in the gaming industry?

Part.1 Breaking the Impossible Triangle

Cost, efficiency, and quality are known as the "impossible triangle." Most industries are unable to balance these three factors and must make trade-offs. The same is true for the gaming industry.

Take the two-dimensional game "Genshin Impact" that has been in the spotlight in recent years as an example. Since it is set in an open world, the biggest problem during the development process is the large content requirements and high costs. Not only did it take five years from project establishment to announcement, but the early production team had more than 300 employees, 70% of whom were in the art department; the research and development cost was close to 700 million yuan, and the subsequent annual maintenance costs were 700-1.4 billion yuan. , one of the most expensive games in history.

Although "Genshin Impact" did not disclose the production costs of each link, we can get a glimpse of it from "Onmyoji", which is also a two-dimensional game. At that time, NetEase spent huge sums of money to hire well-known designers to draw original paintings. The price of an original painting was 150,000, and the average salary of new designers in the industry was also around 10,000.

It can be seen that in game products, it takes a long time to polish more exquisite graphics and character image designs, which in turn leads to higher total costs. **This is also the main reason why it has been difficult for the game industry to find a problem-solving idea for the coexistence of quality, cost, and efficiency for a long time. **

AIGC technology can help the game industry break this "impossible triangle".

At present, some AI creation tools have been implemented in the industry. Among them, Ziva Dynamics can be used to produce characters’ muscles, expressions and other elements in games. Speedtree can quickly generate vegetation in real-time 3D images of games. Tencent’s 3D virtual scene automatic generation solution The program is used to create virtual cities with diverse styles and close to reality.

Unity China President Zhang Junbo once said that AI creation tools save a lot of time in manual animation production. The same drawing can take several days or even longer to complete manually. Using AI, it can be generated in a few seconds, and the original artist only needs to make slight modifications. In this way, the efficiency is improved hundreds of times.

NetEase’s Q2 quarterly financial report also disclosed that, using AI and other self-developed technologies, NetEase has achieved a 90% efficiency increase in key links of digital content production.

In addition to empowering a single link, AIGC's technology can now take over the entire game production pipeline.

Take MoonlanderAI, a 3D game development platform based on AI technology, as an example. Its production process can be understood as the "Wensheng Game" platform. According to Moonlander's introduction, users who don't have any art, programming, or planning skills only need a simple text description interaction, and the platform can generate a 3D game through the program reasoning framework, and developers can save up to 95% of development time.

With the help of AIGC, game producers will not only save art production costs, but also gain new production inspiration. Cheng Zhujiang, the person in charge of "Lingyue Realm" once said, "In the past, whatever was designed would eventually be produced according to strict design, but now we don't know what will happen to the designed thing."

The design results are handed over to AI in the form of prompt words. Maybe AI will not satisfy the production team 100%, but it will definitely enhance the imagination of the production team.

Simply put, AIGC can bring more creative surprises while reducing costs and increasing efficiency. However, this surprise is by no means a replacement for creative practitioners, but serves as an exclusive "inspiration library" for practitioners, providing help for practitioners when they lack creative inspiration.

**This is the biggest "invisible asset" for the producer when AIGC integrates into the game industry. **

Part.2 "Infinite Story" Era

In addition to the application of art links, the application of large models based on AIGC technology can also assist NPC interaction in game production.

NPC is often considered to be the bridge that pulls players from the real world into the game world. When the player opens the game page, the appearance and dialogue of the NPC are the first act for the player to explore the game world. The traditional NPC interaction is mainly based on fixed dialogue interaction. The process of players receiving tasks through questions and answers is relatively simple and boring.

For a long time, the role of NPC is only to promote the progress of the game, and the playability is not high. In addition, since the NPC's answer is written by the production team, it will be affected by the three views of the production team to a certain extent. Once the professional level of the production team is limited, the answer projected to the NPC will also "destroy the three views", further affecting the game's reputation. Once a game NPC described the player as a "mad dog".

**With the technical blessing of AIGC, NPC is no longer limited to fixed question and answer templates, but uses AI to drive various question and answer methods within the rules of the game world. The content of each player's interaction with NPC will be different, giving NPC has a great degree of freedom, which deepens the player's impression and improves the game's playability. **

NetEase announced in February this year that GPT has been installed in the mobile game "Backwater Cold". Players can "tease" NPCs in the game. When facing NPCs that can trigger tasks, they can also unlock more ways to complete tasks.

For example, if a player tells an enemy NPC, "Your house is on fire," the NPC will rush home, and the player will no longer need to fight. Or, if the player has extended a helping hand to an NPC, when the player encounters the BOSS, the rescued NPC will also come to help the player defeat monsters and upgrade.

There is a scene in "Lingyue Realm" where the player and the heroine NPC need to fight wits and courage to get out of the supermarket. The production team only sets the clearance status, and the specific method to use to get out is left to the player to explore.

It can be seen from these scenes that with the help of AIGC's capabilities, the game can open up the "infinite story" era in the plot part. The story plot can derive different branch plots within a large setting range. NPC is no longer just a switch to carry out the plot, but a soulful group performance, strengthening the connection between players and the game.

Fang Han, CEO of Kunlun Wanwei, said that a game can realize thousands of people, and NPCs are no longer dolls bound by simple rules. They can respond to player actions by themselves, and the playability of game products will be greatly improved. In this way, the expansion of the game market supported by AIGC will also squeeze the space of other entertainment forms. **

Players are also more receptive to this interaction mode. After the launch of miHoYo's "Star Rail", the AI dialogue NPC has been highly praised, and the relevant video data of Station B is considerable. Senior gamer Xiao Di said to Zhengjian TrueView that more distinctive NPC dialogues can make the experience more immersive.

**Making NPCs "alive" is the most obvious aspect of AIGC's current game creativity. ** From a micro perspective, the player's interactivity and playability have been improved; from a macro perspective, interactions that are not limited to fixed dialogue details will promote the development of the game industry and may become mainstream.

Part.3 Chance to stand out

The above-mentioned discussion around the integration of AIGC into the game industry and the changes in productivity and creative assets essentially implies that **AIGC technology will accelerate the transformation of the game industry and provide more new entrants with opportunities to stand out. **

It has been a long-standing phenomenon that new dark horses are difficult to break out in the game industry. The industry has been monopolized by large manufacturers for many years, with Tencent and NetEase occupying more than half of the market share. MiHoYo, which has become the top two-dimensional game with "Genshin Impact", has become the "only" exception. . MiHoYo only had the opportunity to step into the poker table after having been dormant in the industry for many years and finding game areas that major companies had not set foot in.

When there is an absolute giant in the industry, there will be a competitive situation of "big fish eating small fish". In the past, when small and medium-sized teams and independent game developers competed with large companies, they often faced the end of being overwhelmed by the huge size and funds of large companies or being acquired.

In addition to the strong players in the industry, another restrictive factor is that the entry threshold is too high, and the extremely high production costs of programming, art, etc. hinder a group of creative new players who want to enter the industry.

**The emergence of AIGC has lowered the threshold for entry into the industry and provided an opportunity for new players to enter. **

In October last year, "Strange RPG" was launched on Steam. In just two months, its sales exceeded 100,000, and it received 94% positive reviews on Steam. It is hard to imagine that there is only one creative team behind the exquisite game production. Also emerging on Steam is "Mountain and Sea Traveler" produced by Yunshan Xiaoyu Studio. The studio has no more than 10 employees, and the main creator is a returnee AI doctor with no working experience.

Giving small and medium-sized teams and independent game developers a sharp edge to break the game, and bringing game developers into the UGC era, AIGC brings a paradigm revolution in the game industry.

**From the perspective of big factories, in the face of the surprise attack of new technologies, in addition to integrating, big factories also sell shovels to gold diggers and enjoy the dividends of the AIGC era. **When Tencent released its Q2 financial report, it stated that the self-developed large model has begun internal testing in different businesses, such as model testing in games and other businesses, and has begun migration work.

Not long ago, at the TapTap press conference, Xindong Games announced that the game creation tool "Spark Editor" has also added AIGC functions to help developers quickly generate art resources and copywriting. At present, more than 20 games have been successfully launched with the help of Spark Editor.

In addition, domestic game giants Tencent and NetEase both have plans to deploy zero-threshold game editors.

All in all, AIGC's release and stimulation of the imagination of the game industry, and the lowering and breaking of the threshold seem to have pulled the big game companies and upstarts to a new starting line.

**AIGC is like an invisible hand, opening the "Pandora's Box" of the gaming industry. **