The news that an enterprising US dev team has just added AI to a Stardew Valley game mod, may have shocked the purists, but probably not those who have been following game trends over the past months.
The fact is, behind the scenes, most serious game developers have been looking at AI in one form or another if only to avoid egg on face if the market develops the way many people think it will.
The Stardew Valley mod joins a growing list of released, and half-released, products that are using AI to bring game characters (aka NPCs) to life.
The intention is to move away from carefully scripted interactions, and towards more dynamic, AI generated, conversations as part of the unfolding story.
Of course, right now AI is more suited towards text-based adventures and role-playing games, rather than your typical high-resolution first-person shooter, or Triple-A titles like Cyberpunk 2077 — but that is going to change.
Bringing text adventures to life with AI
A quick glance around some of the AI products on the market at the moment mostly reveal simple text-based adventures like SimTown, which features a Harry Potter world with graphical sprites you interact with via plain text.
This game, like the Stardew Valley version, is basically a text adventure with some graphics and AI thrown in.
The AI Dungeon title goes one step further and has no graphics at all, instead offering an engrossing text narrative. This is AI storytelling with style. It may just be text, but it’s really engaging text. Full marks to the AI prompt engineers on this title.
Those looking to experience more sophistication may prefer AI People. This is a full high-resolution 3d graphics game, featuring a small cast of SIMS-like characters, all powered by OpenAI’s GPT4o-Mini.
Despite the relatively crude optics, the game offers a glimpse into a new gaming universe where the characters you encounter have a mind of their own.
Moving into reality with AI
The game’s tagline is "they think, they feel, they’re alive", and while the responses and emotions are very crude in this early version, it’s interesting to encounter AI characters who express spontaneous thoughts and actions at the whim of an AI model.
We may be a long way away from a super smart Grand Theft Auto, but this game gives a tiny peek through the doorway of what may be possible when characters are given a 'mind'.
The game has just been released to the public following its locked alpha testing, and I spent some time playing around with the storylines.
The gameplay is very rudimentary, with simple characters and very basic plots. The AI interactions mainly consist of discussions about eating, even in the whodunit role play.
While this is clearly a pointer to the future, right now it's only a small step up from The SIMS, if that.
The problem is mainstream game titles are hugely complex and fast-moving, which makes it almost impossible to integrate any form of sophisticated AI into the gameplay.
By the time the latency and computation time of an AI model is added to the equation, the whole interactive process becomes a stutter-fest of disappointment and unfulfilled expectations.
We need super fast — preferably local models, and an exponential uplift in the processing power of everyday computing. Right now all the game compute focus is on improving the graphical quality of a title. There’s no bandwidth left over to fold in interactive AI as well.
This will change, but right now we’re a long way from any kind of AI gaming revolution. In the short term, we’re likely to see the introduction of games featuring hybrid intelligence.
Here we’ll see NPC interaction made up of a combination of limited AI, with a preset selection of character responses which makes it look like a free-form conversation.
Rather like fake sandbox games where you really can’t go anywhere you want, but it feels like you can (looking at you Starfield).
Final thoughts
The bottom line? AI is definitely coming for games, starting with baseline text adventure games and RPGs, and slowly moving up the food chain to 3d graphics titles.
But hardware and computer processing challenges continue to remain a barrier. Nevertheless I’m already saving my pennies for a graphics card update, just in case.
