Author|Shizuru Takeshizu
Editor|Su Jianxun
The magic wand of the big model is igniting new imaginations in the field of gaming.
On the one hand, large models are changing the production of games, improving efficiency in code writing, NPC dynamic interaction, content creation, and art design. Large models, on the other hand, are creating a more immersive gaming experience.
There are already startups trying to create smarter NPCs (Non-player characters) with the help of large models, so that the cyber world can come as soon as possible. Inworld AI, a startup, is already working in this direction, using AI to build intelligent NPCs with personalities, thoughts, memories, and actions, so that NPCs in games can interact more deeply with humans. At present, the valuation of Inworld AI has reached $500 million.
OpenAI has also laid out this field. In August 2023, OpenAI announced the acquisition of Global Illumination, an AI start-up game company, Biomes, a massive-multiplayer online sandbox game similar to Minecraft, running on the web. Just like the new virtual world in the sci-fi movie "Ready Player One", OpenAI is trying to create a large virtual world.
Tan Qunzhao is one of the pioneers of China's first batch of online games, and as one of the co-founders of Shanda, he became the chairman of Shanda Games in 2009, and led the team to launch large-scale online games such as "World of Legends", "Dragon Nest" and "Aion". By 2023, the products "Legend of Blood" and "Legend of Blood Mobile Version" can create hundreds of millions of revenues, and legendary IP can bring more than 10 billion yuan of turnover every year.
In 2012, after the privatization of Shanda Group, although Tan Qunzhao bid farewell to Shanda Group, he has also been paying attention to the new changes in the game industry. Two years ago, he saw new opportunities with technology:
"AI and Web3 will disrupt the gaming industry," Tan told 36Kr.
He believes that the current competition in the game industry is fierce, and everyone is more cautious, and the core is that there is no innovation. "Looking beyond the small environment and looking at the global market, the gaming industry is entering a golden age. ”
Two years ago, Tan Qunzhao, who was already an investor, decided to pay close attention to the game industry again, and entered the game to incubate and invest in a new generation of Web3 and AI-empowered games overseas, MetaCene, an MMORPG game.
This time, 36Kr had an in-depth conversation with Tan Qunzhao and talked about the opportunities and challenges brought by new technology variables to the game industry in his eyes.
Former Shanda co-founder Tan Qunzhao
The following is the conversation between 36Kr and Tan Qunzhao, edited by 36Krypton:
1. Take advantage of Web3 and large model technology to build a massively multiplayer online game platform
36Kr: What is the opportunity to incubate and invest in new projects, and when did you start planning?
Tan Qunzhao: When I started my business in 1999, I wanted to create a virtual world parallel to real life, but in the early days, dial-up was needed to access the Internet, and the imagination of the virtual world at that time was realized through 3D technology and VR technology. Later, it was found that there are many ways to build virtual worlds, the most mainstream is games, and it is also the first demand of human beings for virtual space. So, in 2001, we launched Legends, an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing) game. The game was a huge success when it went live.
On the other hand, after making investment, he also continued to pay attention to the development of the game industry, and made an investment layout in the game industry, especially focusing on the huge role of the technological revolution in promoting the game industry. In the PC era, online game companies were the first to make money, and in the mobile Internet era, mobile game companies became the first companies to make money. Nowadays, Web3 and generative AI are gradually promoting the upgrading of the new generation of game industry, especially the development of AI technology, which not only promotes the development of the game industry, but also promotes the process of game commercialization. This will revolutionize the gaming industry, and I want to continue the entrepreneurial dream of two or three decades ago and be deeply involved in this change.
MetaCene game scene
36Kr: What new opportunities do you see for the gaming industry with new technologies?
Qunzhao Tan: Two years ago, I realized that the global gaming industry would enter a golden age driven by AI and Web3.
The competition for stock in the game industry is very fierce, the R&D cost is increasing, and the growth is slowing down, and there is a lack of opportunities for new teams. At its core, there is no innovation. However, from the perspective of the domestic environment, the global market and the game industry are entering a golden age.
Web3 and AI have subverted the production relationship of the game industry, and we see two upgrading trends in the game industry:
First, UGC is becoming a game innovation model that allows players to participate in the design and distribution of games.
Second, the gradual increase in the value of game assets is also a new opportunity, for example, in the game "Minecraft", bricks and tiles seem to be worthless, but through clever game design, the value of these virtual products can be enhanced. At present, many war strategy SLG, MMORPG and other types of games are being transformed with new gameplay.
The focus of the gaming industry is actually on technological change, and each new generation of technology will give rise to new platformers. For example, Atari (Atari) and early red and white machines, these platforms will only have new games, but the games are limited by hardware specifications. Later, we experienced iterations of computing power and 3D graphics drawing capabilities, and these technical iterations have almost come to an end on the original platform.
The iteration of computers from stand-alone to networking, and from wired networks to mobile networks, has profoundly affected the design of games: for example, the earliest design of mobile mobile games is fragmented, and a game can be played in 5-15 minutes, which changes the pattern of the game industry; MMO (massively multiplayer online games) was not very popular on mobile phones at first, because it often takes 3-4 hours, but people need to use mobile phones to read WeChat for a while, and watch other things for a while. Therefore, the iteration of technology platforms has revolutionized the development of the game industry.
Over the past few years, the gaming industry has not seen a new direction for technological change. We used to pin our hopes on VR, but it turned out that VR is not very good at least for the next few years. But now AI and Web3 are going to have a revolutionary impact. First of all, it will completely change the industry pattern, and will give birth to a number of new great game companies, and will also eliminate many old game companies; second, it will make the form and appearance of games completely different; third, it will also affect many peripheral industries.
36Kr: What is the positioning of the MetaCene project?
Tan Qunzhao: MMORPG is a type of game that is almost the mother of everything, and it can accommodate almost all the rules of the game, as well as a lot of technical achievements. So, the team chose to make a container, which can hold a lot of things, and the Agent project in Stanford Town is very suitable for the MMO.
I hope that each server will look different, have a different management style, have a different form of social organization, and have some new content and fun. As shown in the movie "Ready Player One", using Web3 underlying technology to regulate and encourage this behavior will give users feedback on their creations, and secondly, the project will also provide AIGC-based creation tools.
Taking advantage of the borderless nature of games such as MMOs, players can attract people from all over the server, and the larger the platform, the more attractive it is to UGC players, and the platform itself is a very important network effect.
36Kr: What is the value of Web3 for the game industry?
Tan Qunzhao: From the perspective of Web3, the existence of smart contracts can enable a game to run under the guarantee of contracts in a non-repudiatory way. The gaming industry is one of the most decentralized. Almost all game companies will state that the account and all the data assets in the account belong to the game company, which is legally safe, but it is unfair from the player's point of view.
Technology can solve this contradiction, and game companies need to cede certain rights to players in exchange for the trust of players, which is the revolutionary transformation of blockchain technology to the game industry.
Now game companies are also facing a new transformation, there were two types of companies before, online game companies and stand-alone game companies, online game companies are more like Internet companies, providing continuous services, stand-alone games may end when a version is released, more like publishing a book. So many single-player game companies didn't survive the year 2000 because they couldn't adapt to such a transformation.
Nowadays, game companies must make a clear commitment to players that the rules of the game, the way of asset allocation, the rules of cooperation, and the details of player restrictions must be made public, and a lot of information must be fixed through smart contracts in order to gain the trust of players. In the long run, trust with users is the core weapon of one group of game companies to defeat another group of game companies, which can make players trust me, and future performance, which in itself is a change and the key to ecological relationships.
From a regulatory point of view, Web3 technology has also brought more transparent rules and data, and the rights and interests of players have been better protected, which is undoubtedly more conducive to industry regulation and creating a more harmonious industrial environment.
2.AI large models to reshape the game production process and create new interactive experiences
36Kr: What significant changes have the large model and the current agent technology brought to the entire game market?
Tan Qunzhao: AI's transformation of the game industry is reflected in two aspects:
First of all, AI can improve production efficiency, and change the traditional purely manual game production process through technologies such as Wensheng diagrams, Wensheng Wenwen, and Wensheng 3D, further reducing costs, compressing production cycles, and changing the R&D process.
At present, many game companies are using AI technology to directly generate 3D models based on specific prompt words. AI-assisted programming and related testing changes are also happening, and many programmers are experimenting with this method to improve the efficiency of game development, and I have friends who used AI to make a pretty good little game in an hour, which used to take a week to complete.
Therefore, for small game companies, AI technology is a big benefit, which can greatly reduce costs and increase efficiency. Provide better basic conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship. Products that could change the game industry could emerge this year. Of course, it is also possible that it is completely outside my predictions, as others may choose a different direction of study.
At this stage, most people are mainly concerned about how AI can improve production efficiency, such as script generation, writing code, and making concept art. But in the future, I think AI has even more potential to innovate gaming experiences and business models.
AI can change the form of games, create new gaming experiences and business models, and the next step may see the emergence of new game genres that have never been seen before. New ways of interacting will also emerge, as in the Ready Player One movie, which is not limited to the player's interaction with the game, but also includes the interaction between players.
36Kr: What new game forms will be brought about by the emergence of large models?
Tan Qunzhao: AI is not powerful enough at the moment, but it has a lot of potential in terms of gameplay, and almost every round of technological revolution will start with the application of the asset-light genre of games. For example, it can provide endless maps and plots, and there are already quite a few RPG projects, but these games have too low a barrier to entry, the themes are simple, and the characters are relatively few.
There may be some completely different types of games in the future. Open-world games like Assassin's Creed, for example, would be significantly less expensive to develop. In addition, AI can also make the NPCs in the game smarter and more human-like, and multimodal technology can also make the interaction between players and NPCs more realistic, and the game experience will be greatly improved.
36Kr: What new imagination space will large-scale model technology bring to the interaction of game experience?
Tan Qunzhao: The biggest value that AI brings to the gaming experience is the sense of loss of control.
So far, the rules of the game have been based on the Turing machine's system settings, and the system will run according to the established rules when it runs. Therefore, traditional NPC reactions are preset in advance, which is relatively mechanical, and it is easy for players to guess.
AI has completely subverted this system, and due to the uncertainty and randomness brought about by large language models and multimodal AI technology, there will be surprises outside the rules, creating more fresh game experiences. For users, they'll be happy with the novelty and will be willing to pay for it.
The Agent project in Stanford Township, which exploded in 2023, has created a new possibility for AI to be integrated into games - once AI can control and make decisions on its own, games will be more personalized and playable will be improved. For example, in the past, only a few people could control the game with a high threshold for getting started, but after training with AI, the player only needs to master simple control methods, such as telling the character how to move and attack, and the game character automatically learns various action details according to the learning model.
Of course, this loss of control is not completely out of control, but requires setting certain boundaries and creating some hard physical rules. For example, you design a character who has mastered all the skills of Jackie Chan, but this character needs to match the abilities of normal people, not a superman, and it is impossible to pick up 200 kilograms of things with a wave of his hand.
36Kr: What are the key changes that UGC has brought to the game industry?
Tan Qunzhao: At present, the game mode of UGC has begun to be accepted and liked by more and more players, and it has also become an important direction of game development.
But these games are relatively young, and our platform encourages more players to participate in the game creation process. A lot of people who play games are like me, they want to create an ideal virtual world, but they don't have the platform, the money and the technology, and AI can further lower the barrier to entry for creators, realize their imagination, and be better able to turn original ideas into reality.
Our new project platform allows users to have their own game servers, and then open game side lines on top of them to create unique game content, which is a new possibility brought about by the UGC model.
From an industry perspective, whether it is GPT or other technologies, they can greatly lower the threshold for UGC creation. As a result, the interaction between users and AI will become richer and more diverse.
In addition, players are free to create interesting content, some important assets in the game belong entirely to the developer, and we can provide creation tools, if you create a good game content, the whole platform can be used as a traffic pool.
The new project is currently being tested, and in the near future, players will be able to participate in the operation of the game, share in the profits, and create content.
36Kr: What do you think are the core elements of a successful MMORPG game?
Tan Qunzhao: I think one of the basic principles of game design is to make the economy and the game playable perfectly. The better a player plays, the more they deserve, and I don't want the two to become antagonistics. The benefit mechanism behind the UGC model may have other rewards, such as recognition, likes, or badges. We also need to further explore and research how to make players feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in the game, while also maintaining the economic balance and playability of the game. This is something we need to focus on when designing our games.
In the game, players should get the benefits corresponding to their efforts, and we will also provide some additional support, and original content needs to be supported and incentivized. Players, systems, revenue distribution, and copyright issues in a game are all interconnected. Players need to get the benefits corresponding to their efforts, and at the same time, they need to be supported and motivated by the game company. Game companies need to incentivize players to participate and pay through reasonable revenue distribution, while also respecting and protecting the rights and interests of original creators.
3. The game industry needs exclusive large models, and it still needs a time window of 1-2 years
36Kr: Do you develop your own game models?
Tan Qunzhao: At present, our priority is to polish the practical application of AI technology in games, and constantly improve the creation tools. We don't do AI-related underlying models ourselves, we mainly integrate related software, rather than doing it ourselves. In today's fierce competition in AI, there is no need for us to participate in the competition in person, and we are mainly positioned in the direction of AI applications.
36Kr: What are the main challenges facing the implementation of AI in the game industry?
Tan Qunzhao: Overall, at present, AI technology is still in its infancy in the game industry, and the value of large models is only reflected in the production of small games.
I expect it will be 1-2 years before we disrupt the big gaming experience on a large scale. The new project will integrate large models to implement AI agents in games this year, and will also provide a UGC platform based on AIGC.
At the same time, AI also needs to evolve rapidly to meet the needs of the gaming industry. First of all, the feedback speed of the current large model is too low, and the feedback cannot be achieved in milliseconds. Although this kind of experiment in Stanford Town can be carried out continuously, it cannot be run in practice. In addition, the large model has not yet formed a smooth feedback between multimodal information, for example, if you ask a question about the art of the large model, the large model cannot handle the numbers behind it. From a cost perspective, it is impossible to develop concurrency of this magnitude.
The gaming industry needs to use specialized large models under some preconditions to ensure the smooth operation of the game. There are already companies that offer services such as offline models to reduce the cost of each interaction. There are a lot of demo products in the industry, but these things are still lacking to change the game experience, and it will take some time for the demo product to actually start working. But I believe that AI will be a storm of change in the gaming industry in the near future.