Horizon MMO Uses AI 'Extensively' in Development, Says NCSOFT

This game gets more appealing by the minute

I bet most studios are using AI in their production pipeline by now

Couldn't care less what technology they use, so long as the game is good, that's all that matters to me.

“How can we make people hate the idea of a Horizon mobile MMO that isn’t even on PlayStation even more?”

“Use AI to develop it and then brag about how extensively we used it?”

“BRILLIANT, get on that right now!”

Personally can't see a problem with it, they literally say it helps

And just like that I'm out, I'm sure most people will also change their stance and be happy it's not on console.

Using it for Art you say? So basically admitting copyright infringement cause AI only works using existing art. Get out of here oh hell naw meme

The irony of using AI "extensively" to work on a new game in the Horizon franchise is hilarious.

Why would you tell people this lol

Most people don't want ai involved in the stuff they consume.

Game devs, today your using a.i to help make the game and tomorrow they are taking your job👀

No wonder the game looks like it's gonna be booty

We should assume that every new game was developed using AI in some form.

Personally, I have no issues with its use.

@UltimateOtaku91 Damn, you folded like a deck chair on this one...

No way they just outright said they used AI art for the game

And yet it looks a hundred times better than the original!

Boooo! Generative AI for coding assistance is one (often brining) thing, but for the creative side of things, the art and such? Gross to be bragging about not paying actual artists or people for the work

I really feel AI is desperately needed if we are going to want AAA games that aren’t £100+ as standard, and especially if we want them released at the same cadence as previous generations. It can be used intelligently, and I’ve personally seen AI constructions that seem to me more unique, varied, and “imaginative” than what you would likely get from a dev pulling staff from one local culture and point in time.

Better get use to it, ai is going to be used in everything

@zimbogamer
It doesn’t “use” existing art as in the exact design. It acts like a human, using what it’s experienced and adapting it as per specific needs. Sure, you can see a database used by the AI in a way you can’t get inside a persons brain, but there is no real difference in practice.

I guess in Korea there’s no widespread moral objection to AI in Artistic fields….

There's nothing wrong with using AI for coding - it effectively uses mostly your own code to speed up writing it, and the result is exactly what you'd write but faster (I speak from experience).
That's assuming they're not actually generating whole blocks of code without really looking at them (aka "vibe coding"), as that doesn't make much sense for big projects like this

As for art... I wish they could be more specific.

Yuck 🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮. Hope this doesn't infect Sony's 1st party output.

@Oram77 I don't mind AI for QA but using it for game design and in game art is just lazy and cheap, any games that are substantially using AI should cost less for the consumers, it's especially worse for free to play games that want you to spend hundreds on a gacha system (not sure of this has a gacha yet).

What I don't understand is if they want to use art and assets then why not just ask Guerrilla who should have a whole data base full.

@UltimateOtaku91 I just think a lot of you on this site have so much stigma towards AI you just jump to conclusions and assume the absolute worse every time (where's the nuance thinking?). When any dev studio says AI helps them work, what can you argue against?

Guess we are about to start seeing how good this AI coding / QA is going to work in practice!

I was already planning to ignore the thing, you don't have to keep convincing me that's the correct decision! This is honestly really genius marketing if you don't think about it 😅

Guessing they didn’t actually understand the plot of the first Horizon?

Garbage. No thanks.

Hate the thought of AI but then it should speed up development times surely? Rock and a hard place

Ai for art? I had no interest in this game before but that's disgusting. No the k you, and if that's the company Sony keep it might be time to look at other platforms like the Steam Machine

Can’t wait until an AI game studio releases a game.

@4fold No chance AI will reduce the cost of games for the consumer. Will absolutely reduce development costs, but that's not getting passed down to the consumer lol. Just shareholders.

@Oram77 I could get a bunch of child labour kiddos to make my shoes for a year, that'd help me massively. Doesn't mean it's a great idea

@Gremio108 Comparing AI to child labour....

You don't have to sell it to me, I already wasn't going to play anyway.

Mobile + MMO = No go.

> Live service games exist
> Gamers: Live service games is garbage!

> Sony invested on live service games
> Gamers: Sony you dumb! We want single players!

> Horizon Steel Frontier, a live service game, didn't release on PS5
> Gamers: F* you Sony, why you abandon PS5?! We want to play this game! PS is doooommmm!

> Steel Frontier used AI to help with coding and art
> Gamers: Holy Smeagol! This is blasphemy! Disgusting! We don't want to play it!

Gamers are funny creatures 🤣

@SeanOhOgain
https://www.vice.com/en/article/steam-ceo-says-game-devs-who-dont-know-how-to-use-ai-will-struggle/
Think you should read this.

I can’t get behind AI art. I can get behind it as a coding tool, I use it everyday at work as a developer and it’s a game changer, but AI art is where I have to draw the line.

@Oram77 I wasn't comparing AI to child labour, as you well know.

I was making the point that just because the beneficiary claims something is helpful, that doesn't make it true

@AdamNovice It’s not the live service that’s the real issue. It’s releasing something like this and having the double whammy of “Oh, this PS property isn’t on PS, is that a problem?” and “Oh hell yeah, we AI’d the heck out of this game with AI!”

@Oram77 Because you asked: The extensive usage of generative AI demands an insane amount of energy and water and is simply extremely bad for the environment. And that impact on the climate and the water shortage is first and foremost felt in countries or regions you probably don't live in. So, yeah, it costs lifes or makes it at least a lot harder for many people. The child labor comparison therefore is not too far fetched, regarding the ethical implications.
Also, the whole hype about AI is pushed by big companies, because in the end it's meant to spare them the costs for as many actual human employees as possible.
The "it helps them"-argument doesn't have any weight (and it's also quite the opposite in the long term). It's not helping them with essential stuff for their life. It just makes things faster, easier and cheaper in videogame development. But that's a small outcome for all the problems it causes. And why do we act like people haven't been making games without the use of genAI for like five decades, now? Nobody tells them how big and expensive their games have to be. They decide that all by themselfs.

@Migoshuro Again please read the interview with Gabe Newall and his thoughts on AI.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/steam-ceo-says-game-devs-who-dont-know-how-to-use-ai-will-struggle/

Also can also not pretend that the majority of studios have been using AI assistance for like the last 5 years?

@Migoshuro WELL SAID. 🙏❤️

On the silver lining side, at least they were up front about it. I hate getting excited about a game only to find out it was plagued with AI art. It’s exhausting lately having to research every purchase about where your money is ending up and what you’re ultimately supporting.

If used well sure, but most times it isn't.

Also it's a mobile games (mobile games can be good they just chose not to be) so subpar game design incoming.

What a waste of the IP which has more depth then this project had thought put into it.

If you expect your software to be developed with 0 AI usage nowadays, you don't understand the transformation that is happening/has arguably already happened throughout software development around the globe.

It's everywhere, people, whether you like it or not. Vote with your wallet, you are free to, but sooner rather than later software developed with 0 AI will be as rare as brand new NES carts.

If you don't like AI in your software, go grab yourself a rotary phone, a paper map, and get your pen and paper ready to be writing letters to your friends. It's everywhere, y'all. Simple as.

• someone in software development at a company where its usage is literally mandatory

I said it a million times before but expect EVERY Chinese and Korean game to be ALL-IN on AI. It's how they get games out so fast.

With Japan anticipate at least 30-40% of games are using it in some shape or form. Western devs are getting the most push back so I'm not sure how it's going over there but Microsoft and EA are all in.

No interest in AI slop.

I'm not going to play the game so I don't exactly have a horse in the race but AI art is so disappointing overall. I love collecting artbooks but seeing the results of Mortal Kombat's recent Flawless Victory put me off making a purchase. They used AI to upscale the sprites and frankly it looks butchered.

The original HZD artbook.

Forbidden West.

AI just can't compare to the actual heart and soul that has gone into so many Playstation games. Real artists with real vision.

Generative AI for arts etc.? or like the common AI for enemy, npc to control their behavior, attack etc?

@4fold you really don't have any clue how AI works. It doesn't behave like a human, in fact it doesn't have any clue what it's doing.

For example you want to generate an artwork fo a chair. The AI knows what a chair looks like, because it's trained on thousands of images involving chairs, but doesn't know what a chair is used for and how it functions.
While a human knows a chair has 4 limbs and needs a stable underground to function, the AI is clueless and often generates chairs with 2 limbs, floating above the ground and other weird things.

That lack of understanding is why AI art is so weird and offputting, all the elements from the prompt are there, but nothing makes sense.

Y r people surprised this company is literally getting rid of people and making themselves an ai company 1st

When this is out, I'll be playing that other game from tencent.

To hell with AI!

@dBackLash
You are describing young AI, or a very young human. Of course context and complexity takes time to learn but machines, usually, can learn faster and have already improved beyond what you describe.

@PuppetMaster I keep forgetting gamers are all one person, thanks for the reminder

@Attheendwearrive Glad i can help 🤣

Horizon MMO. A game by Ted Faro.

@Oram77 I've read it, even before commenting on you. But I don't really think Gabe's statement here adds anything meaningful to the conversation.

And just because AI (which is also a buzz-word, investors love now, so that it's tacked on systems, nobody would have called them like that six years ago) is used already in the last few years, doesn't mean, we shouldn't keep on pushing against it.

And for people, who say it's inevitable, like new tech always seems to be: It's simply unsustainable. It can't be used like now or in even much greater capacity for much longer, because it will wreck nature and the economy and will very likely lead to the next worldwide financial crisis very fast. And for what? To save some time on producing movies or videogames?

Scratch what I said before, won't be touching this with a 100ft pole.

"We basically just don't want you to play it lol"

As a preface, I’m not at all educated in software development, nor am I an artist or a creative.

But in my understanding the term “AI” is really too general to convey what’s really going on. I would think any kind of machine learning could be and has been called “AI.” In which case, hasn’t it been used for many, many years? I think there’s a reflexive bias against the buzzword “AI” now.

From search engines like Google to automated recommendation from things like Netflix or Spotify (“oh, you like x, y, and z so you should check out a, b, and c”). All social media platforms, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc all have AI based algorithms to feed content. Virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa. Autonomous vehicles (safer than humans apparently), automated farming, robotic vacuum cleaners or lawn mowers… I mean, it pervades almost every aspect of our lives at this point and has taken away countless human jobs in the last few decades. But we as a society can’t live without these conveniences at this point. Who would give up Google, YouTube, or even at this point ChatGPT?

When something becomes useful and common enough we just stop labeling it as AI, especially now because the term has such a negative connotation. It’s like many aspects of our behavior where we choose buzzwords and then attach negativity to it when the real discussion should be more nuanced. Generalizing these types of things often makes people draw unfair conclusions.

I’m not advocating for whatever’s going on here at NCSoft; I simply don’t know or understand enough about the processes. But it seems clear that there may be something lost in translation, as well as the fact that culturally the usage of “AI” (both the term and the application of generating art procedurally) is not perceived with as much negativity in Korea/E Asia. In the above quote it almost sounds like the developer is bragging about how much AI they use, so perhaps it carries a positive meaning in Asia as being cutting edge, progressive, or cool in some way.

I guess all I’m saying is that we probably need to be a little less hypocritical, generally speaking, and also develop alternate ways to communicate what we really mean by “AI.”

@4fold No, AI literally can't learn context. There is no intelligence in AI, it's just pasting together pieces of human works from it's database.

I could say a lot about a heavily AI assisted live service game but I think I can sum it up with, "Eew. No."

@dBackLash
You overestimate humans. They paste together their own experiences to adapt past work also. They just aren’t consciously aware of it most of the time.

@4fold This has to be satire right 😅

@dBackLash
It’s really not. Obviously AI is not yet close to the complexity of the human brain in many ways, but the ignorant concept that humans are some kind of divine beings capable of magical non neural network creativity from non experiential sources is founded in our very real ignorance of how the brain actually works and the simple fact that consciousness is a fake veneer disguising pretty deterministic cause and effect.

And no I don’t want get into a debate about the constantly changing ideas in emergent thinking. Bottom line is, I believe humans use what they experience in life in pretty much the same way AI uses a database, so this hand wringing and moralising about it seems tiresome to me.

That’s not to say I don’t think that, if something is pulled and used in an obviously copied way wholesale, that copyright or intellectual property rights shouldn’t kick in, but if it’s not obvious, or used in a way that is outside the context of the original art, then I also believes those laws currently over-reach (and if companies like Nintendo had their way that will actually get worse).