LocalLLaMA

There is no doubt current gen games will be made way more awesome with AI, but I think the real power of LLM's is opening up whole new types of game. Current games are (largely) static universes and static stories, with simple things like physics simulations (bullets, destruction). These are all things that are easy to program using traditional techniques.

LLM's will allow new genre's: spying simulators where control of information flow has a significant impact. Political games where you actually have to negotiate and convince NPC's of your actions. Managerial games with subordinates who can operate independently. RTS's where you operate as a general because AI's handle passing battlefront information up the command structure. And dozens probably more I haven't yet thought of....

Many board games rely on social aspects. These can now be made into single player games.

but in a nut shell I think Microsoft will eventually push out a local LLM to machines to cut down on a lot of resources and cost

Not their valuable LLMs. You don’t want to give those weights away.

I don't agree with the assumption that there is a pressure for companies like MS to reduce costs via local models. Compute on that gamer's PC is probably the biggest problem right now. Especially since in a game, pretty much all of the hardware is already used to the limit. And then you throw a 10GB LLM on top, maybe even loading different finetunes for different jobs? Then the TTS model? This does not result in reasonable response times any time soon, at least not with somewhat generalistic models.

On the other hand, that's something MS must like a whole lot. What you see as "optimizing costs" is optimizing their profit away. They can sell that compute to you. That's great for them, not something to be optimized away. And it's the best DRM ever too.

I think this would play well with some games.

Might need to go back to dual graphics cards setups, one for finetuned LLMs and one for the actual game.

But imagine a civilization 7 with LLM based AI.

Can't imagine the batshit stuff that would come out of that and high replayability. It would even pair well with the more limited context (we don't really need catherine the great to hold a grudge from 3000bc in 1800ad).

I could see secret alliances, clandestine plans to take over the world, strange treaties... the world congress could be a lot more fun/interactive...

Why did Gandhi team up with Sulaiman to launch a first strike nuclear attack on me???? What does he mean the burning flesh of my people is more satisfying than the scent of fresh rose water???

We are already testing local llms with unreal 5 for educational purposes (digital twin), combining it with RAG and faster whisper. Still in testing phase but seems really promising: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe1fstF9/ (starting at 0:40)

I doubt LLMs will become an integral part of storytelling any time soon (at least less than 5 years). Where I think they will play a major part (and already are) is in making the game, larger and more detailed environments, bigger and more expansive (curated) stories and potentially and I think very very tiny models trained to the tits for limited and controlled interactions. Running them will take nothing and the results won't break the world.

First use probably won’t be deploying live to games.

It will be to turbocharge developers to develop / tweak storylines and content faster. Get inspiration and first drafts done 10x quicker and then polish.

It will be part of the tooling, not the actual game. But just a guess.

I always felt like Animal Crossing would be a perfect candidate for LLMs. A lot of the appeal of the earlier games was its sheer quantity of charming dialogue that also changed depending on the time of day or current events. You could also write letters to the villagers, but they always replied with something vague.

So having LLMs generate endless, creative dialogue and engaging response letters could probably breathe new life into the older games.

Also off-topic, I'm surprised I haven't seen any AI-based world generators trained on fantasy heightmaps