a16z General Partner Jonathan Lai explains traditional video game economics and monetization ratios.
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…”
Prediction Held up
Lai: 2024 will bring the first cohort of AI-first games
“So in 2024, I believe we'll see the first cohort of AI-first games from creators that leverage large language models to enable novel game systems and mechanics.”
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, …”