Picture source @Visual China
Text | Game Value Theory
Two major things have happened in the game + ai in the past two days.
On January 8, local time, NVIDIA released a number of blockbuster game chip products before the official opening of the CES conference. It is reported that NVIDIA's three customized AI chips for the Chinese market (that is, the castrated version previously announced) are expected to be launched this year Shipment in the second quarter.
At the same time, nvidia ace (avatar cloud engine) microservices made their debut at ces, announcing that they would cooperate with miHoYo, Tencent, NetEase and other game companies in the AI digital human business. This is a technology platform that uses generative AI to create virtual digital people. It allows game, tool and middleware developers to add generative AI models to virtual digital characters in games and applications. In short, it is an AI intelligent NPC.
Multiple news boosted NVIDIA's stock price that day, rising by more than 6.4%, with a market value of nearly US$1.3 trillion.
Another one is on January 10th. After the adjustment, V announced new rules for the release of games containing AI content on Steam. will review the game before it is released, and will also put the information disclosed by the developer on the store page for players. Understand how the game uses AI technology, and adopt an AI content reporting system after it goes online.
This is also a follow-up response to the previous controversy over the differential treatment of AI games. The inseparable and ultra-rapid development trend of games and AI forces v.com to assume corresponding platform responsibilities and assist games + AI through more channels before, during and after the event. standardization and development.
game + ai is really unstoppable.
Nvidia's "curve" march into
In October last year, the US chip ban was upgraded. After Nvidia restricted the sales of its two AI chips, the a100 and h100, the sales of the a800 and h800 GPUs developed for the Chinese market were also restricted.
Since the Chinese market accounts for about 20% of Nvidia's sales, in December 2023, Nvidia announced the launch of a modified version of the advanced gaming chip geforce rtx 4090d for the Chinese market to comply with U.S. export controls against China. The company said that the RTX 4090D has achieved a "qualitative leap" in performance, efficiency and artificial intelligence-driven graphics, and the title of the special castrated version of the chip has spread like wildfire.
However, there are also reports that since November last year, several of China's leading cloud computing companies have been testing Nvidia's special chip samples. They have indicated to Nvidia that the number of chips ordered from Nvidia this year will be far less than before. The originally planned purchase of NVIDIA high-performance chips that has been banned. The series of twists and turns of
actually illustrate one thing. AI capabilities are the core competitiveness of current new chips. After castration, their appeal to Chinese companies will be limited.
So we see another curve-forward move on Nvidia ces, which is ace (avatar cloud engine), which focuses on intelligent NPC. It will cooperate with miHoYo, Tencent, NetEase and other game companies in the AI digital human business, which will increase the stock price. for direct motivation.
We have talked before about the difference between game ai 1.0 and 2.0. If uses AI intelligent generation to automate production pipelines to reduce costs and increase efficiency, it is a standard 1.0 model. Then intelligent NPCs can perform intelligent interpretations based on the current environment and scenarios to provide different players with different senses and game experiences. In fact, they have already touched the game AI 2.0 The core is from "can do it with less worry" to "how to do it better".
Last year, Perfect World demonstrated a composite application of AI in gameplay, including scene information, character information, plot development, player behavior, dialogue, etc., all calculated by AI. Tencent Tianmei shared the AI action generation technology based on the autoregressive neural network algorithm model (arnn model) in "Reverse War Mobile Game" at the Waic sub-forum last year. The NPCs in the game will react based on the player's real-time behavior.
The entry points for the application of AI by leading companies include NPCs that cannot be avoided in the game world. Including inworld AI, which previously cooperated with Microsoft, its main business is the manufacturing of artificial intelligence NPCs, mainly creating virtual characters in batches for games, virtual worlds and other entertainment and marketing application scenarios. Cooperation cases include Team Miaozi and Niantic under NetEase Games 8th wall, lg uplus, alpine electronics, skyrim, stardew valley and grand theft auto v etc.
Now that NVIDIA chip AI has hit a soft spot, it has also started to develop engines to produce smart NPCs. This has become an inevitable part of the development of the game industry.
steam must follow up
Last year we reported on the controversy caused by Steam's "biased" removal of independent developer games (in order to enrich the NPC dialogue content, openai's official api interface was provided to players. After negotiations with the steam official, it was permanently removed). The ambiguity or criticism of
at that time was that itself did not clearly limit the use of AI in games. The standard was accused of using AI by star startups in the AI field, including Inworld AI, Square Enix, and NetEase's team miaozi. The differential treatment of technical products has the flavor of unpredictable punishment and unpredictable power. The
game value theory believes that Steam "knows that AI technology will have a huge impact on the industry, but there are so many copyright disputes now. We don't want to take responsibility, and we don't want to be the first person to formulate rules. We first wait for the explicit regulations of the competent authorities of each country." Just execute it."
However, in the second half of the year, we will see the rapid development of game AI, the influx of giants, and the actual needs of small and medium-sized developers for new technologies to reduce costs and increase efficiency. , steam is extremely influential in the world. The PC game publishing platform cannot survive alone and must come to an end (especially in 2023, a total of 14,533 games were released on the Steam platform, setting a record high, an increase of 1,971 games compared to 12,562 games in 2022, an increase of about 15.6%. With the development of AI and other technologies, , developers’ productivity will become higher and higher).
In the latest specifications, Steam divides the use of AI into two major categories:
" pre-generated content : content (artwork/code/sound effects, etc.) generated with the help of AI tools during the game development process. In " Steam Distribution Agreement", we promised Valve that our games will not contain illegal or infringing content, and that the games will be consistent with marketing materials. During the pre-release review process, we will evaluate the AI-generated content in the game and take the steps The conditions are exactly the same as for evaluating all non-AI generated content - one of which is to check whether the game meets the above promises.
Real-time generated content: Content generated with the help of AI tools while the game is running. In addition to the compliance with pre-generated content In addition to the same rules, this type of content must meet an additional condition: during the content investigation, you need to tell us what protection measures you have taken on your AI technology to ensure that it does not generate illegal content.
valve will be released in the game We will use this disclosed information to review the game before. We will also include most of the information you disclose on the game's Steam store page to let customers understand how the game uses AI technology.
In addition, we also A new system will be launched on Steam to allow players to report illegal real-time generated AI content in the game. When players believe that they have encountered content that should have been blocked by appropriate AI-generated content protection measures, they can report it through the in-game Steam Report easily through the interface."
can find that Steam has established a three-part review process for AI copyrights in advance (pre-generation), during the process (real-time generation) and after the event (player reporting). Developers must first confess, Platform review and player supervision are used to clarify and avoid copyright risks. If
corresponds to the development stage of game AI, the efficiency improvement emphasized in 1.0 is more reflected in the pre-production stage, while the generation of smart NPCs and other game content in 2.0 is more in the real-time stage, including it. The dispute over
game AI is essentially a new round of issues about the balance between development and regulation. The different stances of platforms, independent developers, and large companies determine different attitudes. Steam previously chose to be as independent as possible. But on the surface, AI has become the most powerful technical driving force for the advancement of the game industry. Giants are taking action, and Steam's market position determines that it must respond quickly to serve the majority of developer groups.
