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A hot potato: According to renowned developer and producer Peter Molyneux, AI will become a game-changing technology over the next 25 years. Molyneux, known for creating numerous gaming hits in the past, has a controversial recent history, with some criticizing him as a hype-driven digital conman.
Are you waiting for the AI bubble to burst so you can go back to enjoying art and entertainment products created by human beings who can actually make a living from it? You'd better get comfortable. According to Peter Molyneux, AI will soon become an even bigger asset for the video game industry than it is today.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Molyneux was asked to consider what the next 25 years will hold for the gaming industry. The British designer predicted that generative AI algorithms will eventually be used to create "huge parts" of games, including AI-generated characters, animations, dialogue, and essentially every other meaningful in-game asset.
AI will also democratize video game development, allowing anyone to create games. A wannabe developer could simply input a prompt like "make a battle royale set on a pirate ship," Molyneux explained, and the AI would handle everything needed to turn that idea into a complete game. However, selling such a game would be a different challenge, as Sony's Concord fiasco clearly demonstrated.
Molyneux also mentioned that Hollywood's fascination with games will continue to grow, with studios and filmmakers increasingly looking to pillage stories and narrative worlds from the gaming industry. He cites Fallout and, "to some degree," The Witcher as two examples of how the industries are interweaving. Recent deals to bring Control and Alan Wake to the big screen follow the same trend.
Molyneux isn't alone in praising AI's potential to turn video game development into something that even stay-at-home teenagers can do. Big, immensely wealthy companies like EA are eager to employ AI to speed up development time, while skilled workers and actors are currently striking because they believe these algorithms will effectively take their jobs by replicating their voices and performances.
Molyneux built a solid career as a successful game programmer and designer, with notable titles like Populous (1989), Populous II (1991), Syndicate (1993), Theme Park (1994), and Dungeon Keeper (1997). However, in recent years, the British designer has had a string of disappointing ventures, including Godus and the puzzling "Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?" experiment.
He also attempted to replicate the success of Second Life by selling NFT-based virtual estates with Legacy, but the game is no longer even mentioned on the company's official website. Molyneux later explained that the blockchain concept came from the publisher, as he had no deep understanding of it. He is now working with his company, 22cans, on a new "god" game titled Masters of Albion. Perhaps they'll experiment with a few AI prompts to see what they can create.