Legendary game developer and co-creator of Doom John Romero revealed that he considers AI the most exciting development in gaming.
Last night saw the games industry come together to celebrate the best games of 2023 at the 20th BAFTA Game Awards.
GameSpot’s Lucy James and Outside Xbox’s Jane Douglas were on the red carpet greeting and interviewing nominees and guests during the hour long prologue to the award ceremony.
Romero joined James and Douglas around the forty-seven minute mark of BAFTA’s official Red Carpet presentation, which streamed live on YouTube and Twitter.
Romero revealed his love for AI when Douglas asked what had excited the Wolfenstein 3D designer over the past twelve months in gaming.
“AI is massive, that’s huge and people have not seen what it’s going to be doing to games but it’s been used in the creation of games, it’s been used in games. It’s just going to be amazing. Our hardware is going to change on our computers, your video cards will have AI chips on them, that’s going to be nuts”.
When asked by James about the usages of AI in games that excited Romero most he responded by saying “I love the idea that you can have an AI in a game that’s a sidekick or somebody and just talk to them, like you would talk to anyone with a headset, and they can just talk back to you about anything, really, you don’t even have to talk about the game”.
“Getting away from all the pre-canned VO and lines that we have and having them be hinted at and designed by a narrative team but having them voiced by AI in different ways. Like, if you could ask the same question of somebody and they say something different to you but with the same meaning, that’s going to be amazing, that none of that VO had to be recorded and it was able to generate really cool, interesting dialogue. But it’s going to take a narrative team working with AI to make that stuff really usable”.
Romero was in attendance to present the BAFTA for the Best Game, which ultimately went to Larian Studios for Baldur’s Gate 3.
A Divisive Topic
Romero’s praise of AI come less than two months after he posted on Twitter, commenting on the raft of layoffs happening across the industry by saying “being a game dev is not just a job, but an identity, community, and culture. I am so sorry to everyone who has lost their jobs.”
Eurogamer’s Ed Nightingale was in attendance at last night’s ceremony and spoke to several prominent voice actors about their concerns relating to AI and voice cloning technology.
During an interview with Eurogamer following the BAFTA Game Awards in 2023, Troy Baker, the voice actor behind Joel in The Last Of Us and Higgs Monaghan in Death Stranding, offered a different perspective on the use of AI within games.
“As long as we understand it, as long as we are using it in a way that is benefitting and moving the medium forward, I’m for it. If my job can be replaced by an AI, it’s going to be. So it’s incumbent upon me to prepare for that. I don’t want to fight stuff that’s going to be inevitable. If there’s an easier more efficient way to do it, then that’s probably what’s going to happen”.
Romero’s next title, a first-person shooter, is currently in development using Unreal Engine 5. The legendary developer didn’t confirm if the unannounced title with use AI for it’s NPC voiceovers but did tease that it will contain “some cool, new stuff, which is what you’re supposed to do when you’re making new games”.
