Let NPC "speak human words"! AI promotes the game revolution, and the A-share game sector continues to rise

Source: China Times

Author: Zhao Yi, Hu Jinhua

A few days ago, Nvidia announced on its official website that it will provide custom AI model foundry services - Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games, which can develop AI models that run on the cloud and on PCs. Developers can use this service to build AI models in their software and games. And deploy customized speech, dialogue and animation AI models.

Ma Axin, an analyst in the cultural consumption industry at Analysys, told a reporter from the China Times that the impact of the AI model foundry service proposed by Nvidia on the game industry is more reflected in giving opportunities to mid- and low-income companies, reducing costs and increasing costs. efficiency and develop new categories.

"For example, in ACE for Games, companies can choose all NPC customization, speech recognition and model generation real-time expressions, and can also customize and choose the functions they need. For example, the development of MMO category products is no longer limited to head companies , With good ideas and concepts, middle and mid-tier companies can also rely on AI tools and services to create excellent and playable products." Ma Axin said.

Make NPCs smarter

According to reports, ACE for Games is a custom AI model foundry service that middleware, tool and game developers can use to build and deploy custom voice, dialogue and animation AI models. It empowers non-player characters (NPCs) with intelligent and evolving dialogue skills, allowing them to answer player questions with a lifelike personality.

"Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize the way players interact with game characters, dramatically improving player immersion in games. NVIDIA, leveraging its expertise in AI and decades of experience working with game developers, is taking the lead in Generative AI in games,” said John Spitzer, vice president of developer and performance technologies at NVIDIA.

In Nvidia's view, ACE for Games foundry service will help developers readjust models for their games, and then perform real-time inference through Nvidia DGX Cloud, GeForce RTX PC or local deployment. These models are optimized for latency, helping to optimize the immersive interactive experience of the game.

According to Nvidia's official website, many overseas manufacturers are already using Nvidia ACE game development version, including the game "Heart of Chernobyl" by the European game company GSC Game World, "Fort Solis" by the independent developer Fall Leaf, and the virtual social company Charisma. .ai is also taking advantage of its animation generation capabilities.

The custom AI model launched by Nvidia has accelerated the combination of AI and the game industry. "We believe that with the iterative upgrade of tool products combined with AIGC functions and the rapid exploration and application of game companies, the process of AI's comprehensive empowerment of games is expected to accelerate." Huatai Securities Research Report shows that the application of AIGC is expected to change the relationship between players and game characters. Interactive mode, and greatly improve the immersion of the game.

Huatai Securities pointed out that the huge demand contained in the game market itself is a good application scenario for technologies such as AIGC, and the advancement of related technologies will further enhance the product quality and comprehensive competitiveness of my country's game industry, thereby driving the long-term growth of the industry.

Has become the consensus of global game companies

In addition to Nvidia, domestic head game companies are also actively trying to generate AI. As early as February 15th, Netease (09999.HK)'s "Naishuihan" mobile game announced that it had installed the first "game GPT" in China. NPCs can freely talk to players and give logical actions based on the content of the dialogue. feedback. The program comes from Netease's Fuxi Lab, which was established at the end of 2017. The bottom layer is a set of exclusive models that strengthen the learning of a large number of martial arts novels, history books, and poetry and songs.

The person in charge of Youzu Network (002174.SZ) told the reporter of China Times that for the game industry, artificial intelligence will greatly improve the overall quality of the game and the efficiency of research and development. Among them, the threshold for game production will become lower and lower, the number of games will increase, and competition in the entire industry will intensify. But at the same time, there are more positive impacts. Benefiting from more natural interactions, artificial intelligence will truly realize a game experience for thousands of people; the lowering of the development threshold will also promote the rise of independent game producers, especially Those developers who master AI tools will have an even greater advantage.

"From the perspective of the development side, the overall R&D efficiency will be improved, and the R&D cost will be reduced, especially the output of art content, which can be seen to be significantly reduced. From the perspective of the user side, thanks to the powerful artificial intelligence With the analysis and summary capabilities, users can get a more personalized game experience." The person in charge of Youzu said.

According to his introduction, "As far as YOOZOO is concerned, relying on AIGC's capabilities, we have already produced a lot of content in terms of planning, art, and programs, such as original painting design, image super-resolution (Note: image super-resolution reconstruction) ), fine coloring, plot copy generation, TTS dubbing, translation in small languages, etc. have already been applied in practice. At the same time, we are also actively cooperating with other companies that have the ability to develop artificial intelligence technology, and we are expected to introduce it in the game in the future AI large model technology."

Kaiying Network (002517.SZ) also told the reporter of "China Times" that in the field of artificial intelligence, some of the company's strategic investment companies have also formed their own AIGC capabilities, and some strategic investment companies have developed AIGC tools under the Unreal Engine. , has been able to generate high-precision renderings of characters and scenes in batches, which greatly reduces the art cost in the research and development field, and fully applies the AI tool MidJourney in the research and development to generate scenes and characters in large quantities, which can effectively reduce the creation time.

The reporter of "China Times" noticed that the application of AI has become the consensus of the global game industry. A few days ago, Activision Blizzard launched the in-house generative AI game development tool "Blizzard Diffusion", which is an image generator trained on in-game assets such as "World of Warcraft", "Diablo" and "Overwatch" to reduce some design problems. and the tedious work of development.

Not long ago, Paradox, a major European and American SLG manufacturer, also made it clear in its earnings call that it embraces AI, "We are using AI in all departments of Paradox, from marketing to development, from graphics to design, from game planning to everyone. We hope Using artificial intelligence to help us become a better game studio."

According to the calculation of Guotai Junan Securities, the actual sales revenue of the domestic game industry in 2022 will be 265.9 billion yuan, and the expected research and development expenses will account for 15%. Assuming that the proportion of AIGC in the future is 50%, then the market size of AIGC in the current game industry application can reach 200% About 100 million yuan. From this point of view, the integration with AIGC is expected to increase the market value of the game industry.

It is worth noting that although the "AI+ game" is all the rage, while it brings new opportunities, it also hides many unknown challenges.

"The current game review mechanism actually limits the possibility of generating uncontrollable content. Existing games are all numerically balanced models. To make full use of AI, new game types and gameplay are needed." Engaged in game development for more than 19 years Sun Hui, CEO of Fuzhi Jiujiu, told the reporter of China Times.

An Guangyong, an expert from the Credit Management Committee of the Quanlian Mergers and Acquisitions Association, told the "China Times" reporter that first of all, the development of AI requires a large amount of data and computing power support, which may put forward higher requirements for game developers. Secondly, the game industry needs to solve data privacy and security issues to ensure that the application of AI models will not infringe on the rights and interests of users. Additionally, AI algorithms and decision-making processes need transparency and explainability so that developers and users can understand and trust these systems.

"At present, there are still some bottlenecks in the development and application of AI in the game industry. One of them is the further improvement of the algorithm to improve the performance and effect of the AI model. Another bottleneck is the quality and scale of the data set, which requires more high-level High-quality training data to support the training and verification of AI models. In addition, game developers also need to solve the technical challenges of model deployment and integration to ensure that AI models can run efficiently in games.” An Guangyong said.