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  new intelligence report

yes, we are very close to a future where ai video games are generated in real time.

a few weeks ago, google released its first neural engine-powered ai, gamengen, which can predict the next frame at a speed of 20 frames per second.

at that time, some netizens exclaimed that in a few years, we will have ai-generated 3a game masterpieces in real time.

just at the annual developer conference, roblox, the world's largest online game development platform, announced plans to launch a 3d base model.

creators only need text prompts to complete the production of the game's 3d scenes.

from text, image, and sound generation to video, 3d assets, and scene generation, ai is reshaping the way games are created.

currently, roblox has a total of 79.5 million users and more than 1 million daily active users. its future goal is to "cover 1 billion users."

in other words, in the future, 1 billion players will use ai games, and the trillion-dollar gaming industry may be disrupted.

at the developer conference, ceo david baszucki said that ai has become a part of roblox.

genai has been integrated into multiple functions such as code assistant, texture and material generator, user avatar setting, etc.

three months ago, they organized a 40-person team within the company to build a multimodal 3d base model with the goal of "promoting 3d generation through text, video, and 3d prompts."

what’s even more exciting is that roblox plans to open source this model. vice president anuam singh said that anyone, including competitors, can use this model.

the introduction of genai tools will give game developers greater creative freedom.

whatever style they prefer — photorealistic, anime, steampunk — ai models can help generate matching objects and scenes.

developers can even let the ai ​​create an entire world and provide feedback to the ai ​​to tweak the generated results to their own preferences.

the new tool will be part of roblox's push to integrate ai into all processes. they now have 250 ai models.

in addition to ai, many updates to roblox seem to be closely related to the "metaverse".

remember zuckerberg's previous dream of a "metaverse"? he hopes that every user will have his or her own "digital avatar" in it?

but roblox has gone further and closer.

the 3d avatars on the platform have become a symbol of user identity. in 2022, more than 10 million daily active users will update their avatars every day.

however, even for experienced creators, it can take several days or even a week to create a new avatar.

this process will be made easier with the upcoming genai models.

there is no need for tedious modeling, rendering and other operations. you can seamlessly create or modify 3d avatars in just a few minutes through image and text prompts.

in the near future, with the help of machine learning, 3d avatars will become even more realistic and lifelike.

from facial expressions to gestures and upper body movements, even the blinking frequency will be the same as the user.

in fact, not only 3d avatars, but also the user communication method imagined by roblox is also very "metaverse"

in roblox connect, which was launched last year, two users in a voice call were able to upload their "digital avatars" to a virtual shared space.

your "digital avatar" can even convey subtle facial expressions and body language.

the technology behind this is similar to the motion capture technology used in hollywood animated films, but roblox compresses and packages it into a program that can run on mobile phones or laptops. it does not require additional equipment such as motion tracking points, and the camera can capture and convert in real time.

it is reported that the working principle of this new 3d model is to "tokenize" the millions of 3d objects in the game world.

roblox treats 3d blocks as independent units and assigns them numerical values ​​based on how likely they are to appear in the environment.

this is similar to the way llm processes words and sentences. for example, gpt-4 predicts the next output token based on the context.

well, the roblox ai system processes 3d blocks in a similar way, creating an environment by looking at the block that is most likely to appear next.

however, achieving this has always been difficult.

first, the data of 3d environments is much less than that of text.

to train its models, roblox had to rely on user data generated by creators, as well as external datasets.

“finding high-quality 3d information is difficult,” said anupam singh, vice president of roblox.

moreover, predicting the next square in a 3d environment is more complex than predicting the next word in a text, because it involves three spatial dimensions (x, y, z) rather than just a linear sequence.

secondly, although ai can generate basic 3d environments, the creativity of human designers and their understanding of player needs are still indispensable.

chris totten, an associate professor in kent state university's animation game design program, said roblox game designers still need to be involved in creating fun gaming environments for the platform's millions of players.

sometimes, ai-generated levels may lack creativity and depth and require more human guidance, just like students using chatgpt to write course papers.

finally, this technique also uses the process of evaluating the 3d model using the 2d model.

basically, while an ai is creating a 3d environment, the 2d model converts the new environment into 2d and evaluates whether the image is logically consistent.

if the image generation doesn’t make sense, like a 12-legged cat driving a race car, the ai ​​will generate new 3d blocks over and over again until the 2d model “approves” it.

according to reports, there are plans to open source the 3d basic model so that developers can modify it and innovate again.

in addition, the conference also announced that text-to-shape and texture models, as well as speech translation, are under development.

years of planning

roblox has already started planning for ai game generation.

moreover, during the metaverse explosion in 2021, roblox showed players what ai looks like in the virtual world.

in february 2023, roblox revealed that it was internally developing and testing ai tools to help game developers easily create 3d assets.

one is an ai asset generation tool with text prompts, and the other is a code completion tool with ai.

for example, change the car cover to a different one.

or, ai generates code to turn the lights on and off.

or, you can make it rain, make the car drift, etc. in the virtual scene. through simple language instructions, ai can help you generate code.

until september, roblox officially announced an ai chatbot tool - roblox assistant, which was fully launched to 200 million players.

as the name suggests, players can create a virtual world while chatting.

for example, if you want a bonfire surrounded by trees, any scene can be achieved in just one sentence.

i want a bear, a bear with various textures, colors, and science fiction, just let your imagination run wild.

some netizens said that 43% of roblox users are under the age of 13, which means that the next generation of creators will learn to communicate with ai at a very young age.

we are entering a new era.

at the latest press conference, roblox ceo began by proposing a goal that he himself admitted was "a bit bold":

in the next few years, increase roblox's content revenue share in the global gaming market to 10%, ultimately reaching 1 billion users.

by comparison, the company currently accounts for about 2% of the global gaming market, with a total user base of 79.5 million.

even though roblox still has a long way to go compared to their goals, their current achievements are already amazing.

in addition to 25 gaming experiences and 1 million daily active users, its monthly user base may even exceed the total of the entire aaa gaming ecosystem.

in a recent interview with the verge, ceo david baszucki talked about this growth plan, as well as the company’s efforts in ai.

in baszucki's view, roblox is not just a gaming platform, but also has social functions, which can be seen from their innovation in the way 3d avatars interact with users.

the reason for setting the goal of 1 billion users is not only because we see a path to more than 4x growth, but also because it has more social significance, more entertainment consumption and practical uses. pure game users may account for less than 80% of these 1 billion people.

he revealed that the company is building a content theme about 300 million daily active users to create a social experience of corresponding scale.

as for why an open-source 3d multimodal ai model was developed, and why the model was made available outside the platform? baszucki's idea is similar to zuckerberg's, both of which use "open source" to drive the development of the industry.

3d creation covers a lot of things, such as meshes and textures, but it is not necessary to make video games truly "immersive experience" and make people feel like they are in the game.

through open source and collaboration within the community, they will jointly develop and even develop the ability to convert 3d information into functional 4d information in addition to the training data already available on the roblox platform.

therefore, open source will also make 3d creation more widespread.

the future promises to be a 3d experience in any game you can imagine, becoming a dynamic feature rather than just a developer tool in the studio.

for example, games in the fashion field can allow users to design and make their own clothes using text prompts; or use generative models to create a simulated george washington.

eventually, many of the gaming experiences on roblox will run on the ai ​​cloud.

you can notice that many assets on roblox are high-quality data, including material properties, embedded code, and physical properties that can be directly placed into the game.

by open-sourcing the core utility - 3d creation, these assets can be quickly put into games, making roblox a platform that simulates the real world.

not only the business prospects, baszucki said he also sees the advantages and potential of using ai in his work within the company.

“ai is getting better and better and more and more complementary to people, and it allows a lot of our employees to perform higher-level functions or drill down deeper into exceptions and so on.”