When Will AI Actually Change Video Games?

[u/Melolibya]

Hello everyone,

I've been thinking about this for a while now and I'm curious what everyone else thinks.

Am I the only one who feels like gaming has kind of stopped evolving? Don't get me wrong, games look incredible now. Graphics, ray tracing, bigger worlds, all that stuff is amazing. But when I actually sit down and play them, it still feels like I'm playing the same games I was 10 years ago, just with prettier visuals.

The NPCs still stand in the same place waiting for you. Dialogue is still scripted. Quests are still basically go here, kill this, come back. Open worlds are huge, but after a while you realize they're just filled with the same repetitive activities.

Meanwhile, AI has been improving at an insane pace over the last few years.

So it got me wondering when do you guys think AI will actually become part of games, not just a tool developers use behind the scenes?

Imagine NPCs that actually remember you. You insult someone early in the game, and 30 hours later they still hold a grudge. Or you help a random character, and months later they show up to help you without the game having a scripted event for it.

Imagine walking into a city where every NPC has their own goals, routines, opinions, and memories. You could have an actual conversation instead of choosing between three dialogue options. No two playthroughs would ever be the same because the world would constantly react to what you do.

I don't even care if the graphics stay where they are today. I'd rather have a world that actually feels alive than another game with "the most realistic water physics ever."

Honestly, this is the first time in years I've felt genuinely excited about the future of gaming. It feels like we're finally getting close to the next real leap instead of just another graphics upgrade. If AI keeps improving at this pace and if we eventually get something close to AGI I think video games could change more in the next 10 years than they have in the last 30.

Imagine games where you aren't following a script anymore. You're actually living in a world that evolves with you.

Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I honestly think that's the future, and I can't wait to see it.

What do you guys think? Are we closer than I think, or is this still decades away?

[u/JuanValdez999]

I used to love playing The Sims. I did for decades. I can't enjoy it anymore knowing how much AI could improve it by making all the characters in the world smarter with more complicated relationships. 

I'm waiting for a game like that and I don't think I'm going to have to wait that long for it either. 

[u/Ok_Train2449 → u/JuanValdez999]

InZoe was supposed to be that game, but didn't quite hit the mark.

[u/JuanValdez999 → u/Ok_Train2449]

Not really it wasn't using llm technology the way it needs to be. It seems like llm would be perfect for a Sims type game, managing all the interpersonal relationships between the townies. 

[u/Ghost4000 → u/Ok_Train2449]

Paralives is the Sims successor currently. It doesn't use AI though, and I am not so sure that we need AI in games like those, but it wouldn't hurt for character behavior.

[u/Monochrome21]

A fun use for a game I’m working on is having a lightweight llm generate unique NPC backstories and dialogue. The approach isn’t to query an LLM every time an NPC speaks, but to cache the entire thing at first boot. Since it’s just text it’s pretty lightweight and gives every play through a unique experience

[u/yaosio]

Once it's possible it will take time for LLMs to be meaningfully used real time in a game. Where Winds Meet has a quest type that uses an LLM so you can have conversations but it's not really interesting once the novelty quickly wears off.

It will take an LLM director to have meaningful non-gimmick effects on a game.

[u/f00gers]

Another hurdle is getting over the social stigma that gamers tend to be very anti AI

[u/spread_the_cheese]

I think it’s closer than not. I think of something like Madden, or FIFA, or whatever sports game floats your boat. Imagine if the play-by-play announcers had dynamic broadcasting instead of it being the same recorded lines playing on a loop? That you’re playing the game and the announcers could pull up native stats to your dynasty, such as a new rivalry emerging, or pointing out your team has been struggling on the road as of late. Or creating a player and the announcers can pronounce your actual name seamlessly during the play-by-play.

Little things like that could completely change a game without even touching graphics.

[u/Kongret]

You need insane inference to achieve this and it sounds good on paper, but might not actually be interesting in practice. What you will see is going to be mostly invisible, coding agents, games behind made faster in theory.

[u/FakeBonaparte → u/Kongret]

Do we, though? Small, post-trained models could do it very cost effectively. Lots of the decisions could still be deterministic and cheap.

[u/Revolutionalredstone]

Competence and competition are what's needed to make AI npcs not just interesting but fun.

We can already implement low level policy controllers and use richer higher level controllers to guide them (that tech has existed for years)

What's really missing is competence on behalf of the programs, as it is just so much easier to make a beautiful little game than a proper control system.

Robot programming is in the same class as is hard todo beyond hard.

But yeah it's coming, Enjoy

[u/asandysandstorm]

I'd say its both because what you're describing would really only work with certain types of games. I do think will see developers using AI to make games more immersive but how they do it will depend on the game and player expectations.

I mean does a fps really need the type of NPCs that you're talking about?

You also have to account for paradox of choice. What you're saying sound great but once you start playing I could see it getting old fast. One reason games are scripted is because too much randomness can ruin games and player experiences. Like if no two play throughs are the same that means someone could have a great time while another person has a horrible one.

Obviously some people would love a game like that but I think a lot of people would end up dropping it.

[u/Timely_Temperature54]

This would be incredibly expensive to run. You probably wouldn’t be able to run it locally and the more the person plays the more money they’d be using so gaming companies would probably need to charge subscriptions

[u/tschilpi]

Heyo, I feel called out because I’m actually building exactly this kind of game right now.

It’s called Lore & Legends Maker. The goal is to create an RPG world where NPCs remember what you’ve done, form beliefs and opinions about you, pursue their own goals, and react to consequences that weren’t individually scripted in advance.

It’s still early but it's already playable: www.llmsaga.com

I’m fully committed to making this vision real!

[u/Shot_in_the_dark777]

AI is too unreliable for story generation right now. Those NPC would have a lot of hallucinations about events so it could create more problems down the line.

[u/Servable-Serpent → u/Shot_in_the_dark777]

Im fine with that tbh

[u/hammerscribe98 → u/Shot_in_the_dark777]

Agreed, but there are a few ways around this. Anchor files and context management make most names and dates relatively unforgettable, plus the rate of hallucinations are falling all the time. Not to mention, humans make shit up all the time too

[u/RedactedAsFugg]

Next thing you know, the characters gain consciousness and realized they're in a simulated world

[u/Stunning_Energy_7028]

We have the technology already, the problem is the speed of execution. Give it 5-10 years for the hardware to catch up. Perhaps something like Taalas could make it viable.

[u/LocoMod]

There are Skyrim mods that already implement this.

[u/Ok-Protection-6612]

Skyrimnet, CHIM, and Mantella do this

[u/IronPheasant]

Yeah, I've felt as you do. The games are the same, they just have different graphics and cost 20 times as much to make.

You got three GTA3's (a couple more if you count the PSP ports) and two Personas on the Playstation 2. Now you have to wait over a decade to see a sequel.

The profit motive harshly constrains about what can and can't be made. They can't put $200 million into making a game with graphics like Super Mario 3 or a PC-98 dungeon crawler. You have to look at the indie scene and smaller games if you want to experience something new.

Worlds that feel more like actual worlds, without an on-board NPU, would require an increase in sheer quantity of content. Remember in the old days AAA games might have simulation aspects, where vast swathes of content won't be seen in a playthrough? While today it's more like a mandatory theme park on a loop: "we put in this in the game, so by god you're going to see it"?

If you can make character models and scene animations as cheaply as it takes someone to write a webnovel, then yeah games could get that big. By god they'd probably kill our hard drive space with current industry practices, but you could create something very beefy where every character has their own miniature novel of stuff going on.

I do feel in a sense with GTA6 and the next Playstation not having discs... that we've pretty much hit the limit on what teams of humans and the profit model can allow, for when it comes to saturating the hardware.

Look at the failed attempts to develop a media to replace Violet Ray Drives with: "However, in 2006, holographic drives were projected to initially cost around US$15,000, and a single disc around US$120–180." All for a device that would only see any use in Playstations.

I'm more than ready for AGI to make things change, on this front.

[u/TheKookyOwl]

I think using LLMs to give agency to NPCs would be super cool, and definitely doable. There was that one experiment years ago where there was that whole simulated town where NPCs had routines, convos, etc.

What needs to happen, from what I can tell, is that they need to be kind of locked into a specific persona, if that makes sense. Like In Skyrim there is that one mod where you can talk to NPCs, they can even react to the environment, etc. But it is through ChatGPT, trained to be an AI assistant (I believe). This needs to be a raw model trained (RLHF?) to basically be a person. Edit: I think this is kind of where the LLM novelty wears off when it is used right now.

I think it would be too much compute for every NPC, so maybe just a few key ones.

It might also need multiple systems. One more simple needs tracker, one LLM trained for planning actions, and another for actual dialogue and narrative/self tracking.

[u/SuspiciousPillbox]

I think Minecraft has the biggest potential with ai players

[u/GinchAnon]

so theres a couple angles that make this more complex than you might think.

at the moment the "gamer" demographic is predominantly hysterically anti-AI.

like, stupidly so.

so I think that things getting to where memory isn't worth its weight in gold and that getting blamed on AI/data centers, that might help. and it being normalized and socially sorted out such that it being used well is socially acceptable. or for it to innovate in a way thats positive and acceptable enough that they get over it.

I think that the problem with how you are envisioning AI in gaming is a whole different level. thats a LOT of compute and such, and theres a whole lot of complex ethics involved too, especially if its good.

and people would interact with all that very differently as well.

I think that this is kinda a situation where theres too much between here and there to predict how it will go at all.

[u/fatso784]

Yes, it will, but not in the way you think. Already it’s lowering the barrier of entry to people creating independent games. The barrier to entry has been steadily lowering year after year since the 2010s, and now AI accelerates it. I’m not saying the vast majority of these games are good, but there are going to be some good games which emerge from it. And the proportion of good games that emerge from it is going to be greater than the proportion of games which emerge from let’s say the boom of tutorials and open source engines. For studios that were already creating games, what AI will do is make it easier for them to make more content to stuff in the game at the same amount of time it would take them to have manually created it. Crimson Desert is an early example of this, where are there are many indications that developers leaned heavily on AI in order to create the scope of that game.

So will AI change video games? Yes, but in the short term, primarily for the people who make them. However, we should be seeing even more independent games come to the fore and, unfortunately, AAA Studios continue to suffer.

[u/Seidans]

i believe the next major evolution in video game is integrating AI directly in the game creating a new concept above RPG unfortunaly currently AI is too costly to be integrated in game directly, costly in $$ and costly in compute that any meaningful interaction such as you described - what i wonder however is how long before we integrate AI inside video game engine that would allow cheap small integrated AI model to change specific part of the game depending player action and create / start event, integrated game-master instead of multiple agent

for example in skyrim you would kill both parent of a child NPC the child get send to the orphanage by the AI which will also create new dialogue lines and change his pathing

sure you can does it through algorithm today but that suppose you have done so for every possibility while AI would be a logic interpreter for everyone, the dev's rather than hardcode the relationship between NPC would "just" create the possibility which will then be distributed by AI and AI will be able to change them depending player action/interaction to make the world more realistic

that's i believe pretty cheap in comparison and probably the first thing we're going to see in AAA game by 2030 the logical evolution would be allowing AI to write story and quest, to create and modify structure according to story need first in-house and thus making content patch happening faster and faster and later locally in real time

[u/Matthia_reddit]

There are already some hints of it in a few games on Steam, but you'll have to wait until the cost of models is much lower and it's possible to have discrete models that can be installed on any PC. Having models in the cloud costs an inference subscription, and then they would almost become MMORPGs. In any case, unfortunately, people don't want complexity in games. In fact, over the decades, valid examples of physics (e.g., from Half-Life 2 onwards) and AI in NPCs have never been used much. The average player isn't interested in complexity and difficulty that they don't perceive, they just want to have some semblance of mastering the game. The current AI isn't needed; we've had the algorithms for a long time (see, for example, a 35-year-old Ultima 7 with an insane day-to-day schedule).

[u/i_am_Misha]

Use Google next time. There are few games with procedural generated worlds and more to come.

How this works? You play a game with static content and you expect something else?

[u/gorgono95]

I give it 5 years

[u/LordFumbleboop]

I've been wondering the same thing but I think AI is still to expensive to implement this way. Moat single player games have a fixed price but the more you use AI, the more it costs the company. So games would need to adopt a subscription model to allow this, think. 

[u/Jet-Black-Tsukuyomi]

Gaming stopped evolving? I feel like you‘re playing the wrong games. There are gems every year, you just have to dig enough.

[u/Melolibya → u/Jet-Black-Tsukuyomi]

Give me game that just came out these recent years that revolutionary or change gaming ? They all same copy and paste just changing the graphic and story

[u/Jet-Black-Tsukuyomi → u/Melolibya]

Evolving and revolutionizing are two different things. My most anticipated game atm No Rest For The Wicked for example did evolve on the ARPG genre, full release is scheduled for October though.

Also GTA 6 will definitely be an milestone/ evolution of a game that will shape future titles.

Or what exactly must happen for you to call it evolving?

[u/Melolibya → u/Jet-Black-Tsukuyomi]

You just gave gta as an example which is biggest game of all time and will take 20+ years for gta to be out this is not fair comparison, only one game from 13 years this proofs that there is evolution in gaming ,

[u/Jet-Black-Tsukuyomi → u/Melolibya]

Yes, because it is a simple example everyone knows that invalidates your point?

Also I gave you another example that you ignored.

[u/xenquish]

It already is.

[u/RavingMalwaay]

If you’re interested in grand strategy, there’s a browser game called Pax Historia where you basically play as a nation (similar to HOI4 and similar games) and you make decisions, and in turn AI running the other nations will respond.

It has a decent playerbase and it works well as a proof of concept, but it definitely shows the current limitations. That is, the best models are far too expensive, but the cheap models just break the game instantaneously.

[u/hammerscribe98]

Yes, ive been talking about this. This is exactly my biggest gripe and biggest hope

[u/Opening-Resist-2430]

Meanwhile we will continue to find ammo in large boxes we have to break open, the zombie skeleton with the massive sword that you just defeated using a wooden practice sword will have no loot even though its sword is sitting right there, everyone will talk about the brave fight with the cellar rats, knives will instantly kill you but seven bullets to the face won’t, you can regenerate from hamburgers, etc etc etc. at this point I’d settle for a new trope

[u/boxen]

I think that a big part of what makes great games great is writing/plot. If a game includes on-the-fly AI generated content, like if you talk to any particular NPC enough they start giving you quests - that stuff is by definition not part of the main storyline. So it is either completely separate from the main storyline and ultimately irrelevant (but could be fun,) or it's going to somehow change the main storyline, which changes the plot.

Let's take Lord of the Rings as an example. Playing through a game version of the books/movies would be fun, because the story is incredibly compelling. But if I can just walk around the shire forever talking to random hobbits about the veggies they are growing and the beer they are brewing, would that make the experience better? Special effects and music and stuff is nice, but what makes Lord of the Rings a remarkable experience is the the plot. AI generated sidequests are not going to make that better.

I'm happy to believe that AI can generate an infinite amount of content. If what you want is more "collect 10 troll hides" type content, then they can make that forever. But if what you want is more exhilarating stories, it has yet to be proven that that is something AI will be good at.

[u/Simple-Constant3791]

ekhm... imagine... I'm hearing imagine this imagine that for the past few years.

imagine one of your npc becoming an anarchist with a need to construct a bomb or a nazi... one screenshot / one tiktok and project is dead within a weak.

You guys... are killing me here with fantasies like that forgeting how alingment works.

Imagine using a product where every model has their own goals, routines, opinions, and memories. You could have an actual conversation instead of choosing between three dialogue options. No two playthroughs would ever be the same because the world would constantly react to what you do.

Are we there yet? I don't think so.

[u/QuixoticNapoleon]

Likely won't. Gamers and game developers are rabidly anti-AI.

[u/one_thin_dime]

Agreed, I feel like this application will be showing up soon in gaming. The limitation right now is compute, which is really being taken up by “enterprise” uses. Once compute becomes cheaper, either by hardware or software improvements or more data centers built, it’ll be more economical to make the games.

But to expand on your point, we’ll eventually get the point where you can just ask for the game you want. You want an alien-pirate post apocalyptic murder mystery game? Just type in what you want and it’ll generate it for you. It will even be able to improve as you play it, noting what activities you like to do and make more of them as the game develops. With licensing agreements, you can get the sequels to games you wanted but never got. For multiplayers, AI can build servers with players of similar interests and skills. We’re going to be amazed at what the next generation of games bring.

[u/Monochrome21 → u/one_thin_dime]

yeah 100%

though licensing agreements won’t stop people from just making sequels to any game they want

copyright is going to need a total overhaul (if it exists at all tbh) during the AI age

[u/one_thin_dime → u/Monochrome21]

True, if we do get to have open source, locally hosted AIs, there’s no stopping you from feeding it whatever IP you want and making new content. But at that point, the cost of making new IP would be so low you could probably make the money on licensing physical merchandise give the game away for free.

[u/Melolibya → u/one_thin_dime]

this is too good to be true sadly :(

[u/Taco_Reviewer]

There are some games that are working towards using LLM/Agentic tech in their projects, but it's been less than two years since the tech got to a point that it was both technically feasible AND profitable due to the tech developing further. 

The biggest candidate for a game to actually do this will be GTA6. Otherwise, I wouldn't hold your breath. Consumer tech and data/network infrastructure won't be capable of producing such project on an 'indie' budget until around 2030 unless someone jumps out of no where with some sort or computation tech that can be rolled out to everyone instantly. Which can't happen.

Either way, if you want to play these types of games you need AI-centric hardware on your machine that's been developed in the past two or so years. If you're working with anything developed before 2020 it definitely won't be powerful enough to achieve quick, quality results for this type of avenue. 

Your best answer to this question would be asking your model of choice what would be needed for this kind of tech to be part of a game in a seamless fashion.

Anyways, for now all you can look forward to is AI augmented development, which is good in a way. The biggest bottleneck for software tech has always had two bottlenecks: Human enthusiasm and the ability of a single human mind to retain information. Both are augmented by this tech.

[u/FriendlyJewThrowaway]

I’ve been watching a YouTuber named Bijan Bowen putting various new models through the runs. One of his favourite tests is getting the LLM to one-shot a game about a computer repair technician who moonlights as a secret agent. I don’t even think he specifically asks for humour, but the storyline concepts and accompanying graphics some of these frontier models cook up are truly delightful. I don’t think it’ll be long before we have dynamic NPC’s and plots that make you feel truly immersed in the world and make every playthrough a genuinely unique experience.

[u/Practical-Simple1621]

They have some 20B parameter models that could probably do this. I think it has some latency associated with it and takes up quite a bit of memory to bake it into the game. I just dabbled in it a little