Large virtual science fiction worlds tend to revolve around similar core concepts. If they weren’t made by aliens, then they must have been made by artificial intelligence. Movies like The Matrix or TV shows and books like The Three-Body Problem use this crux to explain how someone with limited resources can somehow create something that feels so limitless.
Take a look at any of the biggest games and you’ll quickly see what I’m talking about. Grand Theft Auto V, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Realm, and Starfield all feature giant virtual worlds that eventually come to an end and, for the most part, have some strange limitations. It all comes down to the real-life three-body problem: human time, skill, and money.
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But something like No Man’s Sky, it’s procedurally generated, so literally endless, let’s see what a fully AI-based generative game looks like, and how this tool solves the problem in one fell swoop. The latest update is a masterclass in development, showing how to add new systems and items to never-ending worlds, making them deeper and more complex. No Man’s Sky doesn’t use generative AI like Meta or Google, but it uses algorithms similar to those used to build the world you explore in the game.
And it doesn’t stop with open-world games. Generative AI plays an important role in making Metaverse-style games like VR chat and entertainment rooms accessible to more people. It makes it easier to build your own worlds and places, eliminating the costs and tools that professional developers use to make beautiful games. Some games are giving us a glimpse into this future, and as we’ve seen many times before, science fiction is driving our vision of the future of VR gaming.
third body problem
While sites like The Verge have been focusing on the VR headsets featured in Netflix’s new series The Three-Body Problem , I’m more interested in the virtual worlds experienced by the characters in the show. These worlds are realistic and believable. They feature dynamic content unlike anything we’ve seen in modern games, and they represent a leap that I think will only happen when we fully embrace generative AI in games.
Many gamers love their AAA games, games like Cyberpunk 2077, Spider-Man 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and The Last of Us Part 2, but they all have one Huge common problem. They require hundreds of millions of dollars, teams of hundreds of people, years of development, and overtime. None of this is sustainable and absolutely out of reach for the vast majority of development studios.
The problem becomes even more complicated when you think of games like Rec Room, VR Chat, or Roblox, which rely almost entirely on user-created content to keep players interested and coming back regularly. While all three of these examples feature tools to help players and potential creators create their own worlds, these tools may require more time and effort than you would personally need. This is where generative AI comes in.
In late 2023, the popular social game Rec Room released information on how its new generative AI tools can help creators create a better world. Most player-made rec room worlds are visually simple and often rely on placing pre-made assets in different ways to mimic the look of more complex objects, but Fractura is different.
The team at Rec Room used a range of generative AI tools to create a world that’s far more complex than anything I’ve seen in Rec Room, and the game’s performance on my Quest 3 certainly proved that. Part of the problem is that the assets in the game are not optimized for performance, but this and many other explanations are provided as you wander around the virtual world.
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In addition to some impressive visuals made with generative AI tools and placed by human hands, there’s also a fire sprite who asks questions using ChatGPT. The idea is that players can hang around the elf and use it as a conversation starter to break the ice in what might otherwise be an awkward social situation.
I’m an introvert at heart and don’t usually start conversations with strangers, but tools like this definitely make it easier! Not only that, but being able to come up with a world concept and spend a few hours using these new tools to implement it is more appealing than having to spend hundreds (or thousands) of hours using more traditional methods. Ironically, Google is already urging developers to do just that.
Because of this, the quality and quantity of player-generated content will increase dramatically, on the heels of more accessible development environments provided by engines like Unity and Unreal.
But what if you’re not interested in making your own game? Generative AI can still enhance your gaming experience in surprising ways. Last year, one of the best Meta Quest games, Golf Plus, rolled out an update that used ChatGPT-powered virtual caddies to create specially tailored courses to help you out.
🤯AI Caddy🔥 completely believes this is the future of #VR interaction! Huge thanks to @batwood011 and @SindarinTech for getting the API ready in record time. The implications here are incredible. pic.twitter.com/EDMfyS9w8oMarch 31, 2023
Golf Plus founder Ryan Engle told me that the update “isn’t ready for prime time yet,” but that the team is using it “for inspiration and medals for our game.” Engel is very positive about the concept of AI-driven caddies assisting players, and has publicly stated that he believes this is the future of game interaction.
Likewise, Nvidia’s avatars have come a long way in just a few months, going from what The Verge called “a fairly unconvincing pre-made demo” to “beyond my expectations of The Elder Scrolls or The Elder Scrolls.” The expectations of ordinary people in Assassin’s “Creed”. “
That’s not to say AI needs to completely replace what human hands and voices have been creating for decades. I think human developers and voice actors still have a very real place in video games, especially when we’re talking about protagonists. However, as I said before, human resources are limited, and usually things like NPCs in games are the first things to demonstrate this limitation.
This brings me back to the virtual world in “The Three-Body Problem”. It’s clear that the aliens in the story can’t stop time or change it in any meaningful way, so that means they’re probably getting With the help of some super-intelligent artificial intelligence.
But this isn’t a game with just AI-controlled NPCs or a procedurally generated world. It’s also populated by human players who – like No Man’s Sky – can explore and solve problems on their own without affecting anyone else’s experience. If anything, their presence enhances the impact by creating a more believable game.
We are at the beginning of the journey towards generative artificial intelligence, and while it may scare some people (including myself as a journalist), this technology has the potential to have an impact on the lives of many who will inevitably use it significant positive impact in the future.
Some game developers worry about their jobs as these tools evolve, but I don’t think these tools will completely replace humans. These tools will be the building blocks for bigger and even better things, allowing us to expand the possibilities of gaming beyond the realm of human time, energy, and money. If not, here’s how to solve a real-life three-body problem.