AI and Games - November Newsletter

Your monthly round-up of all the big happenings on AI and Games.

Hey everyone and welcome to the monthly AI and Games newsletter. This is where we take a look behind the scenes, and discuss what I’m working on as part of my ongoing delivery of articles, videos, podcasts and more. In this months newsletter, I’ll be talking about how I plan on wrapping up 2023 and what I have in store as part of 2024.

Personal Update

So first up, a quick behind-the-scenes update on my work and how things are progressing outside of the content that is produced here. As a reminder (or even an introduction), I work as a consultant, developer and educator in and around AI for the games industry. So my work is often spread out in a lot of places.

Two major projects wrapped up in the past month: the first was the Inworld video series (which has now launched on both YouTube and Substack - see above) as well as my work with professional training company Gamaste in France. I ran a series of training days on applications of machine learning in games, aimed at an audience of existing game developers. I was rather nervous in doing this, given it was the first time I’ve ran a session for existing game developers (rather than university students, which I did for many years), but it went fairly well. Fortunately, it looks like there is a chance I will return to do more of this, either via Gamaste or with other companies both here in the UK and overseas.

Say hello to my ‘Introduction to Machine Learning’ class in Lyon.

Now with these projects complete, I’m back to a more regular pace. I’ve been a little oversubscribed for the past few months. And while I am glad to be in demand and have work coming in, it nonetheless can be quite draining. Thankfully, having completed a bunch of projects in recent months, I’m in a good position to chill a little for the remainder of 2023. I can continue my work with one or two companies, and dedicate more time to video production, which has slipped a little in recent months.

So on that note, let’s dig into what’s coming up on the channel…

Recent Releases

Let’s just quickly summarise everything I’ve released in the past couple weeks across both YouTube and Substack:

Analysing the AI of Inworld's 'Origins' Demo

Inworld Sponsored Project: Two videos dropped recently as I was invited by AI company Inworld to find out all about their offerings. This was broken up into two parts. The first is an analysis of their ‘Origins’ Tech Demo, while the second is an interview with their CPO Kylan Gibbs as we dig into more detail on the tech stack.

How Inworld's Origins Demo Actually Works

The Branching Factor Podcast #010 - A Seaside Chat at Develop 2023: George Obsorn and I sit down for a coffee and a chat all about surviving attending games events, and the value of building professional and social currency

Branching Factor #010 - A seaside chat at Develop 2023

The Video Games Industry Memo - Generative AI and Safety: So recently George has created his own Substack: the Video Games Industry Memo. VGIM acts as a nice weekly newsletter about the big talking points of the games industry (you should subscribe to it, go on, do it!). In a recent issue, I was invited to discuss the current issues surrounding AI safety in the games industry. In the issue, I argue for action to be taken by trade representatives to educate and inform the broader development community on opportunities and risks of AI for game development.

Leading academic calls for games industry action on generative AI: Video Games Industry Memo, 26/10/2023

Player Choice: Meanwhile, over on YouTube, we completed our run of the Player Choice project on AI and Games Plus, where viewers got to vote on their favourite games for a given topic. Our season on ‘Best AI in a First-Person Shooter’ just wrapped up with the winner being declared as Arkane’s Prey.

AI and Games #74 - Marvel’s Spider-Man: Last but not least, I just released this month’s big video, the first of a two-part video series all about Marvel’s Spider-Man. The first entry focusses on the inner-workings of non-player character systems. Meanwhile, the second entry will be looking at the procedural city generation workflow used during development.

And so with that out the way, let’s talk about all the stuff I have planned for the rest of this year, and what to expect in early 2024.