Jonathan Lai, General Partner at a16z Games, presents his 2024 thesis on how large language models will transform video game design.
Insight
Lai: AI's biggest gaming opportunity is reinventing gameplay, not efficiency
“And while much of the early discourse on generative AI in games is focused on how AI can make game creators more efficient, I actually believe the largest opportunity long-term is on leveraging AI to reinvent the nature of the games themselves.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lai: Future game worlds will be generated at runtime by neural networks
“And in the game worlds themselves can no longer, will no longer be rendered, but actually generated at runtime using neural networks.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lai: Startups, not AAA incumbents, will build the most innovative AI games
“So I think in, in that same vein, I think the most innovative AI native experiences are more likely to be created by startups and teams that are just getting going and are bringing that fresh perspective, I suppose to coming at it with a lot of history and bag…”
Assertion Partly supported
Lai: 87% of surveyed game studios use generative AI tools
“So we surveyed 230 game studios earlier this year. And it turns out that 87% of them are already using generative AI tools. And so some of the products that they named include ChatGPT, Midjourney, 11 Labs, KDEM, Adobe Firefly, GitHub Copilot, et cetera. And th…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lai: Cloud inference costs break traditional gaming monetization models
“The challenge is that with an AI game, if you have a game that's running a large language model in the cloud, the influence costs of serving users dynamically generated worlds or texts would probably make either of these models unprofitable right off the bat, …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lai: Subscriptions will become default business model for AI games
“My guess is that companies like mid journey or care, like character AI have been able to address this with a subscription model. And so basically every power user pays for their own sort of like inference costs, so to speak. And we could see that subscription …”