Portal and Half-Life writer Erik Wolpaw recently appeared on a podcast and said that he and a small team at Valve have been \u201cpoking around\u201d at using AI to generate text, audio, and more. The veteran games writer says he\u2019s not worried about AI \u201ctaking over creative writing\u201d anytime soon, but is very interested in how the controversial tech could be used in video games.<\/p>\n
During an episode of the MinnMax<\/a> podcast last week, Wolpaw joined the crew to talk about game news and of course, Valve. And the topic of generative AI came up, leading to Wolpaw saying quite a lot about how some devs at Valve are using it while also making it clear this isn\u2019t a company-wide initiative, nor is it meant to replace anyone.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, one thing we\u2019ve been doing\u2014and when I say we, I don\u2019t mean Valve, I mean a small group of people at Valve\u2014we\u2019ve been looking at some AI stuff,\u201d said Wolpaw on the podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m currently not worried about AI taking over creative writing because it is pretty bad at it. And I\u2019m not just saying that defensively. Like, we\u2019ve really been messing around with it. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be anytime soon writing novels that are better than human[-written books].\u201d<\/p>\n Erik Wolpaw thinks AI could be used in game development <\/p>\n Wolpaw says, however, that generative tools like ChatGPT could prove useful for letting games and the characters in them react in real time to whatever chaos a player is causing. In fact, according to the Half-Life writer, after toying around with the tech at Valve, that\u2019s the thing he claims AI is best at doing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing that with game writing and game writing specifically is that we have always had to simulate\u2026characters in the game reacting to whatever you do,\u201d explained Wolpaw.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the one place where I feel like AI is worth investigating, game writing. And the thing that we\u2019ve found is that, and this is just early days\u2026It\u2019s not good at being especially creative. It\u2019s not good at being funny. But it\u2019s kind of interesting in an imagined Grand Theft Auto where you\u2019re going around creating a lot of physical chaos.\u00a0 There\u2019s a certain amount of social chaos where you have the AI play the straight man as much as it can, and it\u2019s just reacting to whatever insanity [happens]. It\u2019s one thing it\u2019s very good at, just going along with whatever insane thing you say and kind of adjusting to the flow of that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI am very interested in [AI] in this very specific case,\u201d admitted the Half-Life writer who left Valve for a few years before returning<\/a> in a part-time capacity in 2019. \u201cIt will allow you to do something that is impossible, no matter how many humans you throw at it.\u201d<\/p>\n Valve isn\u2019t making Portal 3 or Half-Life 3 using gen AI tools <\/p>\n At a few points in the interview Wolpaw, seemingly aware that this might get reported on and his quotes spread online, tried to make it clear that Valve isn\u2019t investing heavily in AI or using it on all of their projects.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I say we, this is not a Valve\u2026well, it\u2019s Valve-endorsed in the sense that we are working for Valve, but just kind of poking around at this stuff,\u201d he said. The writer also tried to make it clear this isn\u2019t being used on any specific video game that hasn\u2019t been announced yet, like, oh, I don\u2019t know, Half-Life 3.<\/a> He added later: \u201cLet it be known far and wide that this is not a concerted Valve thing, right? In fact, this may be the first time they\u2019re hearing about it!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is nothing other than\u2026just some people sitting around being like \u2018This is a crazy technology.\u2019 It would be kind of silly for us not to look into it at least,\u201d said the writer.<\/p>\n Wolpaw also said that the idea of using AI to replace people or make games cheaper didn\u2019t interest him at all. Instead, he just thinks the tech could be used to make \u201ca better experience for people playing the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portal and Half-Life writer Erik Wolpaw recently appeared on a podcast and said that he and a small…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,242931,242932,74,15109],"class_list":["post-543910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-erik-wolpaw","tag-half-life","tag-technology","tag-valve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}