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New Intelligence Report

Editor: Aeneas

【New Wisdom Introduction】Anxious game industry professionals are about to suffer from PTSD about AI. Every time they see an email from a CEO about AI, they get a jolt in their hearts. In 2023 alone, 10,500 people in the game industry will be fired.

Workers in the video game industry are suffering from the critical impact of AI!

When Noah saw the email from the company's CEO, he was hit by a wave of anxiety.

It was the spring of 2023, and the Activision artist saw a message from the CEO stressing that AI had become a top priority for the video game publisher.

The CEO said the system is still being tested, but the AI's performance is promising.

Employees at the Call of Duty studio also received similar emails approving them to use Midjourney and Stable Diffusion to create concept art in the game.

That spring, rumors were flying around about which jobs AI was about to replace, and people were whispering and worrying about their future.

Executives see reason to be excited about AI, but many game artists, writers, and designers see a huge threat to their livelihoods.

Employees like Noah were worried and heartbroken.

"I feel like we're abandoning our humanity."

Then the jobs started disappearing.

In 2023, the gaming industry will stage a battle royale of tens of thousands of people

Clearly, AI has gotten the gaming industry into trouble.

In 2023 alone, 10,500 people will be laid off in the industry.

This year, layoffs in the nearly $200 billion industry are only expected to get worse.

The number of layoffs at the nearby film company has reached 11,000 and is still increasing.

Microsoft, the parent company of several studios including Xbox and Activision Blizzard, shut down Tango Gameworks and Alpha Dog Games in May this year.

Now, we can see that generative AI built by OpenAI and others has infiltrated almost all industries and destroyed many people's careers along the way.

Among all industries, which one is most affected by AI?

One of the answers is the gaming industry.

While the industry's economic influence eclipses that of Hollywood, they have one glaring disadvantage: there are no unions.

And AI has apparently already invaded.

A recent survey by organizers of the Game Developers Conference found that 49% of more than 3,000 respondents said they were already using AI in their companies, while four in five said they were concerned about it.

Violet, a game developer, technical artist, and veteran of AAA games for more than a decade, said, “AI is here, and it’s here now!”

"Everyone can see it's being used. The question is: how is it used? To what extent? The genie is out of the bottle. Pandora's box has been opened..."

Judging from emails obtained by Wired and interviews with artists, developers, designers and other practitioners in the game industry, the industry landscape was already precarious, and now the rise of AI will further accelerate it.

Historically, automation of work has rarely occurred evenly or been completed cleanly and immediately.

Most of the impact of AI is felt through “deskilling”: more roles are handed over to machines or programs, and employees are fired, laid off, and not rehired.

And based on past experience, the aggressive AI this time will be no exception.

While video game companies may not necessarily be eliminating entire divisions because of AI, many are already using it to cut corners, increase productivity, and make up for lost manpower after layoffs.

The process is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but is complex and based on a variety of opaque executive decisions, and the outcomes are often ambiguous.

It's more of a group effect than Skynet.

Game practitioners strongly oppose AI

Molly Warner is a game environment artist working on Overwatch at Blizzard.

When she saw the email from the CTO, her anxiety reached its peak.

“Almost everyone I know is vehemently opposed to the use of AI-generated imagery.”

In May 2023, Bobby Kotick, then CEO of Activision Blizzard, once again raised the issue of how generative AI would affect the gaming industry at the company's collective meeting.

During his speech, he mentioned Sam Altman and OpenAI.

I've known Altman for a long time. I don't know how many of you realize that many modern AIs, including ChatGPT, started with the idea of ​​beating games, whether it's Warcraft, Dota, StarCraft, Go, or Chess. I saw AI last year and felt the same way I felt when I saw the first Macintosh: AI will have a huge impact on our society, both positive and negative.

In July 2023, Vance announced that Activision Blizzard had gained access to GPT-3.5.

Employees are allowed to use AI tools to create concept art, write marketing materials, and even write user surveys.

Many game developers and artists are uneasy about the spread of AI.

Everyone is beginning to worry about their livelihoods, but few are speaking out. The reason for remaining silent is the fear of losing their jobs.

Activision has repeatedly assured artists that AI will only be used for internal concepts, not final game assets; it will not be used to replace employees.

However, what is coming has finally come.

By the end of the year, Activision launched an AI-generated skin in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

In late January 24, 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees were laid off.

The team most affected is the 2D artists.

Lucas Annunziata, a former environment artist at Blizzard, posted on X, “What a fucking day.”

At Activision, the situation is not much better.

Many 2D artists were laid off, and the remaining concept artists were forced to use AI to assist in their work.

Now, company employees have been required to participate in AI training, and AI is being promoted throughout the company.

The entire industry is being swallowed up by AI

"Why spend a lot of money to hire a bunch of expensive concept artists and designers when an art director can get something good and fast by giving AI some wrong instructions?" said one company employee.

There is now a general consensus that concept artists, graphic designers, asset artists and illustrators are the groups most affected by AI so far.

After working for 6 years and producing more than 6,000 graphic design works, the employee learned that he had been replaced by AI.

The 3D artist said that since the release of Midjouney V5, he is no longer an artist.

Here, creativity is no longer important, and these Internet contents copied from artists save bosses a lot of time and money.

He was sad and angry.

After all, AI-generated 2D images are good enough in the eyes of many customers, who care more about cost than quality.

Fortunately, tasks like 3D animation and programming are much more difficult to automate at the moment.

A recent report from consulting firm CVL Economics suggests the gaming industry is poised to adopt AI more than its peers in television, film or music.

Nearly 90% of video game companies are already using generative AI, according to a survey of 300 CEOs, executives and managers.

The CVL report found that games “are more reliant on GenAI than any other entertainment industry for tasks such as generating storyboards, character designs, rendering, and animation. In fact, it is expected that GenAI may be involved in more than half of the game development process in the next 5 to 10 years.”

Suspected infringement

Many people don't understand the overall situation of a large gaming company like Activision Blizzard.

In reality, the company is made up of a winding supply chain of studios, developers, third-party developers, and testers.

The situation at 3A game companies is quite fragmented, so we can't see who is doing what, and we can never see where AI is used in which link.

This ambiguity also eliminates most concerns about infringement.

US law insists that any work claiming copyright must have a human author.

But whether using unlicensed intellectual property to train AI is an infringement remains an open question.

Today, uncertainty over copyright, concerns about the security of LLM systems, and employee fears of job losses are exacerbating the fragmentation of the industry.

Now, there are basically two camps.

It is reported that Blizzard, unlike its sister studio Activision, does not allow developers to use publicly available AI generators.

Lay off your own employees and outsource them

However, the pace of layoffs in the entire industry has not stopped.

Last May, EA CEO Andrew Willson said in a quarterly earnings call, "In every agricultural and industrial revolution, labor was replaced in the short term, and then in the long run, opportunities increased. We hope that AI can bring the same opportunities."

In February 2024, EA laid off 5% of its employees.

Employees at Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends, revealed that leadership has said it has no plans to replace anyone with AI because they understand the value of the artists the company has and the extent to which Riot's art reflects its brand integrity.

However, in January this year, Riot Games laid off 530 employees.

Cross was one of the people who were laid off. He doesn't think his job can be completely replaced by AI, but considering the number of people who were laid off, it is really intriguing.

During the epidemic, many studios frantically recruited and expanded, and then began to lay off a large number of employees.

Many companies are following the lead of big tech companies and relying more on outsourcing and contract labor.

Interestingly, just hours after being laid off, Cross was approached by a company that outsourced art to game studios.

The company asked if he could make skins for a version of League of Legends, which was Cross's old job at Riot, and then outsource it to pay him by the piece.

In Cross's opinion, the biggest problem with AI is that art is underrated in games.

Just like any other job, it’s a race to the bottom, with companies using whatever means they can to drive down wages, usually outsourcing.

Noah, an employee of Activision Blizzard, also said that the company has begun to outsource a large number of 3D art assets because the internal art department is unable to keep up with the work after layoffs.

The same is true in other countries.

Leo Li, a gaming industry recruiter in Hangzhou, said the number of illustrator positions in China has fallen by 70%, partly due to AI.

In Japan, startup Crypko AI has developed AI-generated characters.

Typically outsourcing costs of up to 100,000 yen per character illustration can be obtained from Crypko for a fixed monthly fee of 4,980 yen, with commercial licensing priced at 980 yen per image.

One human illustration costs $692, but for just $34 a month, you can get a steady stream of AI illustrations. Even if you need to touch up a human artist, it’s still a good deal.

Warner, an industry insider, said that in more than a year, many of his friends and colleagues' jobs were transformed into AI image trainers or cleanups, and then they were fired.

Concept art job postings that require applicants to use generative AI are also becoming increasingly common.

For example, in a job listing for a "2D Artist Animator" released by Treyarch Studios, the first requirement is:

Exceptional skills and expertise in digital sketching, drawing, and painting, and advanced expertise using generative AI tools such as Stable Diffusion, Vizcom, Dall-E, or equivalent.

This position has also been criticized by people in the industry.

The scariest thing about AI

Moreover, some video game companies are going even further, pursuing not only embracing AI but even full automation.

Braindump, which calls itself an AI game maker, aims to "provide you with a complete AI game studio, including programmers, artists, etc., to help you create your dream game."

It promises that users will be able to build entire top-down games and interactive worlds simply by inputting prompts.

Meanwhile, studios like Activision Blizzard and Riot have been developing their own in-house systems with varying degrees of success.

Riot is experimenting with making a custom generative AI for internal use only.

At the same time, Blizzard was also building its own AI system, which was once named Blizzard Diffusion.

Practitioner Ortiz said that advanced internal models will further reduce job demand and encourage short-term rather than long-term employment.

He has been looking for full-time work for the past year and a half. He said that many companies in the industry hope to hire him to train their models and then "kick him out" and never have to pay him again.

Among the artists, illustrators or designers interviewed by Wired, none of them were willing to use AI; they were all forced to do so by their bosses.

Ultimately, the extent to which the gaming world can be automated may depend on the attitudes of the developers, artists, designers, and programmers who actually make the games.

How many of them will resolutely resist AI? How many will embrace AI?

"AI itself is not bad," said Violet, a veteran AAA game developer.

What is bad is not AI, but the pursuit of profit maximization.

“Just because AI is very good at solving complex jobs in the world, or doing things that no one wants to do, it’s not going to take someone’s job away.”

References:

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-is-already-taking-jobs-in-the-video-game-industry/