Video Gamers Podcast - Does AI Belong in Gaming? - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and John are all geared up and diving down the rabbit hole that is AI's place in gaming. Will it drastically affect the way video games are made? What place does AI have in the gaming industry, or is it already here to stay? Find out not only what games, but what people it may impact on our latest episode of the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’Jake, Gaius and Phelps Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, Patrick and PeopleWonder   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Community: ⁠https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz⁠ Follow us on Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠ Follow us on X: ⁠https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠ Subscribe to us on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠ Visit us on the web: ⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Follow us on Twitch: ⁠https://www.twitch.tv/videogamerspodcast⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. Video games are always evolving and with AI stepping into the arena, we're starting to wonder, is this the dawn of the robot uprising or just another clever tool in the dev toolbox What some call groundbreaking innovation others call the lazy man's code today We're diving into the world of AI and gaming from dynamic NPCs to AI generated quests But first some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh. And joining me, he's already built his Skyrim mod list entirely with chat GPT prompts,

and we're not even mad about it. It's Ryan. This is my favorite intro ever so far. Love it. All right. And joining us, he's the AI whisperer himself, but there's no playing it safe today Will he praise the machine overlords or keep waving the human made or bust flag? It's John that's fairly accurate actually like I'm all for this robot over

Get rid of this weak flesh man bring it on bring on the robot overlords So I have to disclose this to the listeners. In honor of today's episode, I fed a lot of our recent introductions into chat GPT and I said, Hey, I want you to write me an intro. And this intro was completely written by chat GPT with a little bit of like, you know, history on what some prior intros were that is so surprising That's right. Ryan. Did you know that? No, I mean it's it's it's so the fact that Ryan said that's my favorite intro. That's Interesting man. Yeah, I'm hearing way too much effort into writing these manually and I just need to let

Machines work man. Just the machines work, man. Just turn it all over, man. We're going to be out of jobs here pretty soon. Oh, man. Guys. Well, listen, number one. I'm very excited for this episode, man. We are going to be discussing AI in gaming today.

It's just a discussion about does it belong? How should it be regulated? What are your thoughts on it? You know what what do gamers generally tend to think about this? We just got hit with some recent news about the alters Getting in trouble over the use of some general generative AI and some of the like the flavor text that they had used on like a data tablet or something and You know, we don't shy away from tough topics, right? Like we, you know, we've always said, hey, we're gamers, we're opinionated,

we have our opinions. The three of us do not agree all the time. Thus Game Court sprung into existence. And while this does sound like it would make a great Game Court topic, I want us to actually just have a, like, an actual, honest, natural conversation about this, because I think there's a lot of benefit there

to people to kind of hear different viewpoints and just talk about this as a whole. And so I'm really, really excited about this to kind of just dive into this because this is a hot topic, man. I mean, we have interviewed, I think, four voice actors at this point, and they're all worried about the use of AI. And it putting them out of a job, man.

We're starting to see AI graphics. I mean, famously, I don't know if you guys remember the Coca-Cola Christmas commercial that was all AI made that was supposed to mimic. What an abomination that was. Terrible. I mean, so we all have opinions on this stuff, but it's coming, whether you like it or not, it's coming.

And we want to talk about how that is going to influence gaming and kind of our thoughts on that, but guys, one thing that is not AI driven at all are the awesome supporters of this podcast. And we have two people to thank today. Number one, coming in out of the blue, Casino Tarantino, signing up for Rare Status. Wanted to share some pictures of their fish tanks, their aquariums that they've got.

Ryan, I feel like this is like an instant buddy for you, because you are a huge fan of having your saltwater aquarium that you got. But Casino Tarantino, thank you so much for signing up to support this podcast. Immediately, cool guy. Yeah. Love the pictures and the stuff you've been sharing, man. Absolutely love that. And then guys, we've been talking about it. We have revamped a lot of our perks over on Patreon for supporters of the show. And we got our

first new legendary supporter. Now this person's been around for a long time And we have mad love and respect for people wonder I Want to say something very? Specific about this member of our discord so him him and I have actually had a lot of like offline Completely candid like phone calls like him, and I get on the phone, you know, at a fairly regular cadence. And he is just such a shining example of what it means to be able to have a opposing or

a different perspective than somebody else and still be able to be friends. Him and I have, in a lot of cases, different ideological sort of values, and we're able to have like nice, warm, intellectual debates about it, and at the end, just agree to disagree, and then talk about video games and have a good time. I appreciate this guy so much. I, like, seeing him pop up legendary, I was flattered and honored at the same time, man.

Just a great member of this community. You're gonna make me cry, man. Yeah. That was awesome. It is, we say this time and time again, it is a founding philosophy of this podcast that everybody is entitled to their opinion. Because somebody shares a different opinion than you

does not mean that you need to insult that person. It does not mean that you need to demean that person. It does not mean that you need to draw a line in the sand and say, well, I'm never going to talk to you because you hold this opinion. You know, it's okay. This is how we learn. This is how we evolve as people is to share these opinions with people that we don't necessarily agree with, man. And this whole like thing, you know, that's been born of the internet and social media, where if you have a different opinion than I do, that I need to slander you and insult you and make you feel bad for that is garbage, man. Stop doing that to people, you know? And it makes me really, really happy to hear you say that with people wonder. We see this in our community

as well. I mean, just the other day, a couple of our legendary members were having a discussion about a game and they didn't agree on it. And they said, you know, hey dude, I love the fact that we can disagree on this and still treat each other with respect and just have a disagreement. That's okay. That's like, that's how you learn, man.

So thank you to everybody out there that is willing to do that and not get upset and not just write people off because maybe they think differently than you, you know? And gamers are especially guilty of this dude where it's like, oh, you don't like this game? Well, you have, you know, you have garbage takes, you know? And then it's like, bro, I just, it's not my kind of game, man. Skill issue. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Skill issue. Oh my gosh, man. All right. So, so thank you to Casino Terrancino and People Wonder for supporting the show. If you would like to support this podcast and join the ranks of the people that make it possible, there's a link in the episode description that you can click and you can sign up within like three minutes. You can be signed up and getting some awesome perks

and supporting this podcast as well. So, all right, boys, let's get into this discussion, man. I honestly, here's the one caveat I have for this. I want us to be honest, right? Because I have some strong thoughts about AI. And the thing is, is that if people worry about the, oh, well, what's the right thing to say? What's not gonna get us in trouble?

Oh, well, then it's not genuine. And we have always been genuine about our thinking on something. So that's the one thing I ask in this is like, if you're for it, if you're against it, if you have concerns, just voice those, man. There's no right or wrong answer here. We're just talking about this as a whole.

John, you and I were talking a little bit before we got to recording and we were kind of diving in a little bit. And I think that at least the two of us, Ryan, I want you to chime in here, is that AI is coming. There's no avoiding it. You can't try to fight it and hope that it goes away.

I get the whole like, hey, times are changing. And maybe if we don't accept this, then it won't become a thing. It's coming. Whether you like it or not, AI will absolutely become a part of human life. Like that is my take on this. I do not think that any amount of stomping our feet or trying to, you know, get mad at the use of AI or shame people for AI, which is what we're seeing a lot of right now, is if, boy, if somebody sees that you used AI on the internet, you're

going to, you're going to hear it. Oh, I can't believe you used AI. We got, I, okay. I don't want to go on a tangent, but way back when, about two years ago, I used an AI generated background for a thumbnail for an episode. It was the most minor of things, dude. It was just a freaking thumbnail. And you guess what? Lo and behold, you know what one of the first comments was? Uh, AI generated slop unfollowing. And it's like, what? See ya. So Ryan, I know that's how John and I feel that it's coming. Do you, do you feel any differently on this? Like what's your take on that? Yeah, no, I agree with you guys. Um, it's, it's kinda like, you know, it's happening whether you want it or not.

I mean, the first kind of wave of this tech generation with PCs, and now those are even kind of out the wayside and everybody's got tablets for everything. So you know, whether you want it or not, I mean, it's going to roll through here. How it develops once it does remains to be seen, but there's no stopping it. It's too impactful, it's too, it's too revolutionary, like honestly. It's too good is the thing. Here's the reality, is that there are certain things

that AI just does better than people do. It codes better, it processes data better, and faster, it picks up on algorithms and idiosyncrasies. It is just flat out better than people. It's more efficient and man, I can imagine at the dawn of the industrial age when the automobiles Started coming around there were a lot of people who made horse carriages that were really really Example I was literally gonna use this example. What are you gonna do? It's here. What are you gonna do? This is the future it I I agree with you a hundred percent I literally was gonna use the horse and buggy analogy because the I with you 100%. I literally was going to use the horse and buggy analogy because the, I feel like the main pushback from people that are very anti AI is that it's going to take

jobs away from people. It is, it already is. Absolutely. Yes. That will absolutely happen. And I don't think anybody is arguing the fact that it's like, no, no, no, this isn't going to affect your job. Like it will absolutely affect people's jobs, dude. But is that the, is that the sole pushback? Is it the fact that people are so concerned that this is going to take jobs away from people that that is why they are fighting what they believe to be the good fight in the resistance to the use of AI? And if it is guys, this happens every day in every industry in the world, dude.

Like, you know, it used to be the humans assembled cars piece by piece by hand. And now we have factory assembly lines like that's not necessarily AI, but it is automation, you know, like food, the bag of Doritos that you're eating was not packed by human hand at this point, man. Did that put a hundred people out of work? Yeah, it probably did. Did it create a hundred jobs because now people have to know how to fix the robotics when they break? Like it probably did, you know, but do you think the main pushback is just simply the loss of jobs? I think that there's two. So certainly, yes, there's a loss of jobs, but it's also,

There's two. So certainly, yes, there's a loss of jobs, but it's also, I think, skewed heavily towards the type of jobs that AI seems to be putting out. The type of jobs that AI is suited for at this particular moment in time tend to be some of the more desirable, creatively slanted jobs. And those are the people that are most in danger. And I think part of what is a tough pill to swallow is that a lot of these jobs like being an artist, being a coder, things that people seek out,

being a video game designer, being a podcaster, are the things that are in the most immediate threat of being automated and pretty much outgunned by AI. I think that is what people are upset about is that it's not just that AI is going to put people out of work, but it's the types of jobs that people are going to lose because of it. It's a really interesting thing when I think of movies like Wall-E for instance, right? Wall-E is a great depiction of what potential future might look like except instead of just blanket software-based AI, it's robots and stuff. Most of what robots and

whatever technology is supplemented or supplanted in the future are these like labor type jobs. Like it does like the manual things for you. Well, right now in the state of AI, it does all of the fun stuff. It does it does it way, way better and way faster than we can. And honestly, I think you mentioned this earlier where people are saying, oh, that's AI generated slop. Is like AI's means of creativity is not all that different than humanity's. Like we are derivative, creative people, things by nature. We take influences and we create things from those influences and AI does the same thing.

But I think just to cut to the point here is that AI is doing all the cool stuff and we're still left doing the janitorial Work the electrical work, you know like and that sucks and right now That's what we got Yeah Yeah, I mean, you know Ryan I you know, I was cracking up but you use chat GPT to write your opening and closing statements for the last GameCourt episode. It's one of those things where there

are people that have adopted it, and there are people that have resisted it. And I can honestly see both sides of that, which is one, we were going to make this a GameCourt episode, but I think there's more benefit here to kind of talking about all sides of it versus just arguing, and maybe we'll still do one to be honest with you. But do you guys use AI in everyday life?

ChatGPT, Grok, I mean at this point, Siri is basically almost AI for Apple users, that kind of thing, but I mean, do you guys use it a good bit? I use it every day. Dang. What about you, Ryan? Not so much me, I'll use it here and there just kind of for the novelty of it. But it doesn't tend to be something that I gravitate to.

And I'm sure, just like we talked about earlier, it's going to be here whether we want it to or not. I've talked to a lot of people that really use it as a tool and they use it all the time for, just like any other tool, and it's very helpful for them. So I'm sure the more I have the necessity of it, then I'll use it. I use it for my diet, I use it for my exercises, I use it for planning trips, I use it for optimizing bill sequences,

I use it for this podcast, like creating podcast descriptions. It has helped to make me far more efficient in things that would have taken a lot of creative energy. And now I get to use that creative energy actually playing video games. Matt Walter I want to get into a little bit more of the gaming specific stuff, but a good analogy on this is like, you know, do people refuse to use calculators to do math because, you know, hey, I could do math in my head if I really wanted to take the time, I could write out this equation and solve it, or I could just have the calculator do it for me. Right? Like I kind of equate the use of AI towards

that where this is a tool that can speed things along for us and make us more efficient at what we do. And John, you touched on that with how you use it. I don't use it every day, but I do actually use it a decent bit because I make the thumbnails for our episodes a lot of times like the background. This episode, for instance, I used, I said, Hey, Grok, I need a, I want a background image of an AI looking character that looks kind of futuristic. And boom, it gave me this really cool AI figure, you know? But and you know, the thing is, dude, I can absolutely understand somebody's point of view that's like, well, guys, you could have paid an artist to do that.

Guys, it's a it's a YouTube thumbnail. Like there is not a situation in the world that exists where a podcast of our size is going to pay an artist to render out this thing and then go through the iterative process of that for a YouTube thumbnail that is going to be tiny and probably not really viewed by a whole lot of people anyway, you know? I have an excellent point on this exact thing right now. So you mentioned at the top of the show that we have revamped our Patreon perks.

Yep. Okay, so as a pilot of one of the perks that we have introduced for our legendary tier is that we are creating these custom artist-created avatars for everybody who's in the legendary Tier two sort of these things are awesome. By the way. Yeah exactly They were the original concept design was made by this artist named psycho sand who's been on the show who himself is That you know, he is a AI

You know, he's concerned about what AI is gonna do to his industry Very high-level artist by the way, he made a whole Katy Perry music video over COVID, et cetera, et cetera. But he made these initial concept design. Now I'm paying this other artist who I have worked with on previous projects before I went on the show here, an actual blood and the flesh artist to make these things. And so one of our, it was actually hypnotic pyro who we've talked about quite a few on here quite a few times. I was sending him kind of the request form like, Hey, here's kind of the things that you can customize about this avatar.

And so he used AI to send me an example of what he would want and in a moment he was able to put in like our examples and get something that was very convincingly drawn for an avatar like instantaneous so like for anybody who's saying you could pay an artist to do this, yeah, or I could for free get infinite iterations of this of an extremely high quality with infinite custom ability, lightning fast. I mean, it's just AI is going to be, it is arguably a superior artist to humanity. My wife and kids don't like you right now. John, I don't like saying it.

I don't like saying it, but it's here, baby. You know, here here is the the thing with that, right? Is my wife is an artist and many artists out there. You just bought from my listener. You bought an awesome piece of artwork, John, where he colored. It's like a marker It's awesome, dude It's so good

But we as humans will oh here. Yeah, if you've got a video I mean this thing is awesome big shout out to our community member member Lupo it this is like literally hand-drawn I thought it was a print but oh my god. It's that's what I was gonna talk about gorgeous, right? So when it comes to art, we value the original over the prints by a hundredfold, right? Because it's like hey, this was the original hand-drawn piece of art. The rest of these are printed off copies, right? I don't think that that will go away just because Mainstream use of AI artwork or AI generated artwork will come into play. You know, I think that people as humans, we will still value that, hey, this is an original creation.

We put value on the fact that this was handmade and hand-drawn. I just, it's been that way since art existed, dude. If you find an original painting, do you know what I mean? Like that thing is worth a fortune versus, oh, well, this is just a print from this artist. You know what? I am happy this is coming up because I was worried we were gonna have nothing to disagree about and I totally disagree with you Josh I

Like I value this piece of art because it just so happened to I had a crush on tank girl growing up The fact that this was available from somebody in our community, there was a very specific scenario where I would have bought this. But largely, I think art is a commodity, man. I hate paying for it. I hate it, whether it's original or not. Most of the time when I go through,

I live in a little tourist town up here in Poulsbo, Washington. And in our little downtown, there's lots of these craft shops where people sell their original art that's all catered to the area or whatever. And I look at these price tags, and even though I'm acquitting, I'm like, gosh, this person must have spent 20, 30, 40 hours

creating this custom piece and they want to charge 40 bucks or 400 bucks for it. I'm like, you know, what is that? Like they spent 40 hours on it. 400 bucks is 10 bucks an hour. Man, that's, that's pretty low. I still look at it and go, how dare they? Like I don't do it.

But trust me, I get it. Yeah. So my wife gets that she was selling artwork online and people would balk at the prices and then she's like this is gonna take Me 20 hours like to do what you're asking me to do will take me 20 hours if I charged you $10 an hour which is below minimum wage at this point You know what I mean? Like like that's 200 bucks of people are not paying $200 for this and then she's like well Sorry, then I'm not gonna make it for you right? But why would you like and this day in Asia and I say like Lupo?

I love you, and I love this piece of art But what I could do at this point now is I could take a picture of this feed it into chat chat Gbt take any movie game property or whatever I want and say hey create five different examples of this type of art But for Edward scissorhands or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Halo or whatever and it would do it pretty convincingly and even if it didn't I could do it as many times as I wanted for free. The problem there is that you're going to get into the authenticity part. People value authenticity for something. I'm not saying you do but I'm saying that there are especially in the art world there

are people that value the authenticity of something and the knowing that this was an original work by this artist. We gotta move on guys. We could discuss this forever, but like I said, we gotta get into the gaming aspect on this cause we're already going long. Are you guys for or against the use of AI in gaming? And I'll just leave it broad.

I wanted to narrow it down for a second there, but I would like to just say blanket statement first. Are you for or against the use of AI in game development? I'm for it for the same reasons that I was for the advent of CG in movies, even though it was uncomfortable at first, it has absolutely increased the quality of cinema. Ryan, what about you? I am an advocate for no use of computers in game development as well, because it makes

it far too easy. It's way too easy. Exactly. No, I think it's... Yeah, I mean, it's not... Whether I say anything, it doesn't matter because it's going to be in games and it's going to be widely used, but I am, I am personally like, I recognize it and I'm, I'm fine with, with the use of it.

How about you Josh? Are you? Cause you almost sound like you're kind of against it, but you don't want to say you're against it. No, I'm not. It's just hesitated there is why. It's not, it's not that I'm against it, but it's just I'm curious where it will go. And like, what... Is it going to be used as an enhancement, or is it going to be used

as like a replacement to just be lazy and just pump out these generics, you know, slop, if you will? Or is we going to still have that innovation? So I don't know, because we don't know what it's going to look like yet. It'll probably be one and then the other. There are these videos that are online right now that are all created from audio prompts. I think we've talked about it on the show before where it's like a point of view of like a stormtrooper recording himself.

I love these videos. Oh yeah. I love these videos so much. Bigfoot. And Bigfoot, right. But they're completely convincing pieces of cinematic art that are done by by text prompt and like that's we're already there in five years, man We're not gonna need artists anymore any any one of us three is gonna be able to text prompt a game and say hey use Halo is an inspiration, but make it with smurfs. I want a you know fully realized

but make it with smurfs. I want a fully realized first person shooter with X levels that last to X, and it'll interpret what we're saying and be able to produce it at that point. Are you guys familiar with the holodeck from Star Trek? Yes, yes, love it. Yeah, everybody's nodding. Dude, that's the like,

that's probably a good 50 years in the future kind of thing because we're talking holograms and stuff like that. But I mean, but legitimately like the hollow deck is the create the scenario. Let me, let me play it, let me experience it kind of thing. And I think we'll get to a world where that happens with AI and VR and that kind of thing. But I'll answer my own question. I am for the use of AI in in game development. I do think that that needs to come with a few caveats.

I think that, you know, we recently saw, and I'm not trying to throw them under the bus, but with Bungie, with the theft of art that was used by one of their artists for a lot of like the poster designs and just a lot of the graphical look, like that was just straight up theft of artwork. And you can argue that AI does the exact same thing.

And I'm not trying to argue that situation. So I do think that we do need to have some caveats to say, hey, you know, if you're generating art, you should know where the inspiration for this art is coming from. If you are using voices like where where is this coming from? Do you have the permission of the person whose voice you're mimicking? I can tell you guys right now, because we have looked into this previously,

is that this entire episode could be made with AI. If we put in the script and the arguments, there are very few people out there that would be able to tell the difference in our voices or the inflections by making an AI a full actual episode. I have seen cutting edge voice technology through my industry where you would not know. And I'm talking family members, guys. I'm talking people that you have known your entire life that it has gotten to the point

now where you cannot tell. Where it's like, it used to be, you would never say something in this cadence or with this inflection or something like that. And two years ago, it was like, oh, I can totally tell. I can't tell anymore, guys. This is that good. It's actually happening. There's a lot of fraud that's going on right now.

Like, instead of the, you know, whatever it is, the Prince, the Saudi Prince, Saudi Prince that used to stay near the email, now the thing that's happening is that people will use AI to replicate the voice of people's employers and then have that employer contact somebody, the imposter employer contacts somebody and ask them to buy a bunch of gift cards

or run a check draw or a money transfer or something along those lines. And it's indistinguishable. They just did this on Joe Rogan. Again, like Joe Rogan, who's in the, obviously many, many orders of magnitude higher than we are, but on his episode, they played one of these sort of synthetic episodes where AI replicated him and some guests, some dead guests,

and pulled off a really convincing episode. It is here, you know? Yeah. Yeah, this happened to my nephew. My brother-in-law, Andy, got a phone call from his son, and it was AI generated, and it was his son in distress saying that he had just been in a car accident, and the cops were there and it was trying

To get Andy to like wire money To his son, but it was AI voiced and it sounded close enough Even though it was his like it was crying and hysterical and things like that. But yeah, it's it's getting crazy so You know, we all agree that we're okay with the use of it in gaming Is there a line that you draw in the sand? When you say guys, I'm okay with this, but I don't think we should use it for voiceover work I don't think we should use it for artwork or graphics. Like is that do you draw that line?

I think everything that we do as humans is ultimately derivative Like, you know, if you were to say I love this take John honestly Like I I love this take because it's very true. Yeah know if you were to say I love this take John honestly like I Love this take because it's very true. Yeah, if you were to say like a Band called Trivium right? I don't know if any anybody listens to hurt of them I don't know there, but if you were to say like we'll just use them hypothetically. Hey Trivium. Who are some of your? Inspirations you know who are some of your influences. Oh, well you know we really liked, we really liked Slayer back in the day and we really liked Metallica. Like, you know what, if you listen to your music, you can absolutely hear those influences. Do they have to list them as influences every single? No, man. That's what we do. It's monkey

see monkey do. That is how that is how evolution works. We go. Oh, that looks cool I'm gonna do that, but maybe I'll do it a little bit different. That's more or less what AI is doing it's interpreting human art and behavior and creating variations of it, which is not different than what we do I I think that we are going to be in a society where I think that we are going to be in a society where technology has advanced beyond the point where we can really protect this stuff reasonably anymore. That genie is out of the bottle. It's like the internet, man.

When the internet came around, everybody was worried about different things, and there's a lot of really bad stuff on the internet. But you just kind of go like, hey, don't go to these parts of the internet, and then you don't have to worry about it kind of thing. Right. And it's like at some point you have to teach people some just make good decisions, man,

and have some self-restraint and don't do things that are harmful to other people, you know, or things like that. But you're not stopping this from occurring. Like honestly, that's the biggest thing. If we were going to talk about any kind of regulation at all, and this kind of transcends gaming in my opinion, is that I do think that there probably needs to be something that is says like this was AI generated, you know, because what's going to happen is sooner or later, we're going to have world leaders and politicians that are having AI generated videos of them assassinating somebody

or saying things that aren't them, you know what I mean? And we're going to be in a minority report situation. It's already happening though. I don't know if you guys remember this, but there were recently some riots or there was some civil unrest in California. And I got tricked by this for the first time. It was really surprised.

I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw this video of a guy standing with an American flag on top of his car and there was like a fully realized riot going on around him. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea that things were as bad as this down there. And then it was like, wait a minute, something looks just a hair off. That guy's got seven fingers. It wasn't even that AI is getting AI is queuing up on that But there was just something that was just a hair off and then like several comments through I saw Somebody mentioned that it was AI and then I was able to pick it up, but this is already happening. It's already happening Yeah, so I want to touch again on if we all think that it is okay And it is going to be used in gaming and we can't stop it, you know, we talked about Ryan, is there a line in the

sand for you as far as the use of AI and gaming goes? It's hard because I hate lines in the sand because society changes, things change, like where would you would you draw that and then is that line just gonna be ever-changing? Is it gonna shift as society shifts? Those are so hard for me. I don't know, man. I don't know if you can. Like how are you gonna control that?

Like John said, I think the genie's out of the bag and whether you want to or not is irrelevant. I agree. It is inevitable. Like Thanos, it is inevitable. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter.

You can draw whatever line in the scene you want. Those lines are meaningless. It is inevitable. Let me ask you guys another question here. So the gaming industry as a whole is larger than the movie industry and the music industry combined. Combined. That's wild. Now we see the amount of CGI in movies and you know, John says he likes the, I've seen some pretty bad CGI

But we're gonna get this with AI too, right? There's gonna be really good uses of AI and there's gonna be really slop uses of AI So I think that you know as people will be discerning on on that result if if there was a game that was 100% AI generated, everything in the game was just made using AI, and that game was released to the public as a free to play game, and it was fantastic. It was so much fun. Do you think that would change people's minds?

Probably. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I would think so. And again, I think that we're laying the rails for that already. People are finding these AI-generated Stormtrooper, Sasquatch things humorous. They get a lot of traffic online and people are replicating it. Let me ask you guys this real quick. Let's just take a hypothetical example, right?

Marvel Rivals, one of the biggest games to come out in the last few years, one of the most successful games to come out in the last few years. There is a world where Marvel Rivals could absolutely be generated by AI. The chat and all of the people that you are playing against, I mean, Marvel Rivals is famous for its AI,

the bot matches, right? Now think about this, like we can tell they're bot matches, but what if you couldn't tell they were bot matches, guys? What if Marvel Rivals was in fact an AI generated game with nary a single other person, unless you invited your teammates to play on your team with you, or we're doing custom matches like we do with our community nights,

where you don't know that you're just playing against bots. You think you're playing against other people, team with you or we're doing custom matches like we do with our community nights where you don't know that you're just playing against bots. You think you're playing against other people, you type something in chat, somebody responds because let's be honest, the language models for AI are through the roof right now. All they gotta do is say your mama back. Right? Exactly. But that's my point, right?

So what if we have all been playing Marvel Rivals this whole time, and it is not a massive multiplayer game, and you are just playing against AI, but you have been none the wiser for it. Does that diminish the amount of fun and enjoyment that you have gotten from Marvel Rivals? I wouldn't say it would diminish it at all, but I think I would personally be upset, because at that point then,

you are intentionally not disclosing that. You are trying to deceive and portray a different thing. Take the deception part away, because I'm with you 100% and I think that's where gamers would really get upset. But take the deception part away. If you found out that Marvel Rivals was actually a single player game that was just relying on AI for all of your competitive matches and the other team and the skill levels and all that stuff.

Deception aside, how would you feel? I feel weird. Right? But it's theoretically possible. And the reason I bring this up is because this could be the future guys. We could be playing games that we think are online multiplayer experiences that are actually just AI driven bots that are doing a good enough job to replicate human behavior and chat to where you feel like you were playing an online game and you have no idea that you are not actually experiencing

an online game at that point. That's not that far away guys. That's blowing my mind right now thinking about that. Well the language models exist. ChatGPT wrote this intro. It was the, it's like every other intro I've ever read. Could you tell while I was reading it that that wasn't like me coming up with that? No, not at all, man.

I mean, that's, that's the issue, man. It's like, this is not that far away. Now I think that, I think that people get worried that the deception will be there. And I think that is a very, very valid concern at that point. I'm sure there will be. I mean, I think there will be. And I think this is why with this news article about the alters that like people got upset because they're like, well, you're supposed to tell us guys.

But when it becomes mainstream, do they still have to tell us? Well, and here's the other thing. Are you guys familiar with the Turing test by any chance? Yeah. Yeah, so it was like in the 40s or 50s this guy created a test that was designed to basically determine the efficacy or legitimacy of AI, you know, like, and basically the summary is that if you cannot tell if something is human or not Does it matter? Like well, this is Blade Runner. Well, right from late, right?

like so for instance if you're playing Marvel rivals against a bunch of AI bots and Those bots are convincingly human Then does it matter why why is the AI any? less human, then does it matter? Why is the AI any less sentient or valid than the human? But if I'm playing multiplayer, there's a reason I got online and I went to multiplayer to play with people, but I want to play with actual people. I can play with bots when I just go to my bot lobby or run my own custom games.

You say that because the bots are inferior. Exactly. No, no, cause you can set the difficulty, you can set the difficulty on them higher if you want. So, you know, if I want to play with the inferior, I just play with you, Josh. Ha ha, shots fired. Fair.

But if those bots were indistinguishably human, what does it matter? Like, it's not- Does it diminish the experience to youishably human, what does it matter? Does it diminish the experience to you? To me, it does. Now it's like, we're not just talking about how does it play, but how does it interact? It's not going to be that far off. It's probably here already where bots can emulate certain types of human personality

archetypes and be able to talk trash to you or sympathize with you. You know, I mean, like, but in an infinite number of variables and if it's indistinguishably human, I, you know, I can't think of any reason why that intelligence, even though it's artificial or electronic or whatever, is any less valid than a human intelligence. I'm kind of with you on this, John. And the thing is, I use this Marvel Rivals example because we... I'm kind of in my not Marvel Rivals phase right now. Me too.

But the point is that would it have diminished the fun and the memories and the experience that you had playing Marvel Rivals? Learning Thor and I was playing Cap and we were the Smash Bros, you know what I mean? And all that stuff still exists, right? Like we had a great time with all that, but if it was just all AI control, does it diminish the experience at all?

Because I say it doesn't. We had a great time, man. We play games to have fun and escapism. And if that's the result that we get, does it actually matter at that point? Yeah, but you're, you keep saying we, because that was us together and we were real life flesh and blood people that we had these experiences together. That's different. I think just playing solo with, with bots would just be, I mean, it's a single player game at that point.

And it's, you know, if they're trying to emulate and mimic the online just be I mean it's a single-player game at that point and it's you know if they're trying to emulate and mimic the online experience I get it but it just knowing it to me would never feel genuine. How do you feel about like R2D2 and C3PO? How do you feel about WALL-E? How do you feel about data? I think they're awesome. Yeah, right. They're not real. Well, OK, exactly. But you empathize with them very much the same way that, man, honestly, some of these movies like C-3PO, I feel sorry for them because he interacts like human, but they use a slave more or less. I don't know.

I feel terrible about it. But I empathize with that intelligence the same I would any human. Yeah than I feel. I don't know, I feel terrible about it, but I empathize with that intelligence the same I would any human. Yeah, I agree. All right, guys, we're quickly running out of time. I wanna touch on one other thing very quickly. Do you think that AI can actually help us make better video games?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I mean, is this, so there's a world where, let's say the two years from now, right? Cause we've already talked about this and we've covered some of this in previous episodes where they're starting to use these AI NPCs, right? Where they react to the questions that you ask

or the things that you've done in the game. And they're not just scripted Bethesda where you have four choices, right? And it's like, so now NPCs are gonna get much more lifelike in how they interact with you and the things that you can do in a game. Well, that heightens the immersion level at that point,

right? So, you know, the question is, will this make for better video games? Because we always reference AI slop, right? Like that's the thing, like people wanna say, oh, this AI slop and you know, this and that. I don't trust chat GPT very much at all because we have seen time and time again, that they make a lot of mistakes, like a lot of mistakes, dude. And so the kind of, you know,

the, the, for people that use AI a lot is take it with a grain of salt because it can't get a lot of things right. You know, we have put this to the test with my job with like fantasy football stats and things like that, where it just gets it So wrong dude, like so wrong and you're like, okay. Well, you can't really trust it So we reference AI slop all the time and I think that that's fair But the question is through the use of AI Do you think that we can get the best video games that we have ever experienced? I would first state that however wrong AI is, humans are wrong that much more.

I think that the reason like AI, if you think about it, and this isn't even if you think about it, this is the reality of the situation. AI is very, very, very advanced predictive text. Predictive text is based on human input. Any errors that AI is making are ultimately human in nature. But I digress. I think not only is AI going to help us make better video games, but it's going to help us make more personal, tailored experiences based on the user.

Like, it is going to be that much easier for me, more personal tailored experiences based on the user. It is going to be that much easier for me, John, to have my perfect gaming experience based on my own particular tastes and flavors. Yep. Yeah, give me Remnant 3. Just give me Remnant 3. Yeah, but like Remnant 3 with you in it,

and EDM music, and, uh, and, and. Oh gosh. Oh yeah. Don't get him started. Oh, I'm loving this. Yeah, and, and cookies. With a giant skill tree. Yes.

And different builds and stuff. Exactly. Yes. And progression? Oh my god. Put it in me. Put it in me. I was thinking about this.

How cool would it be with, with the AI and development to where you have, you know, where you have your sidekick within the game, the guy that's running with you through this whole campaign you're running on, but every experience is through AI and it's tailored towards your play. So your buddy that's playing the same exact game with the same sidekick has a totally different relationship with them throughout the game that you have, but it's it's so advanced with this AI that It's you know, it's more genuine and it's real and you feel connection Like that would be something that I think would be really cool

You know how like fable has the good side like bad side type thing Like can you imagine if like they actually responded to you and they're like ryan I like what are you doing dude? Like we can't do and they start like making you feel guilty about it. And they'll do that sometimes in like Starfield, you know, in those types of games. But it's like, you know, that's a scripted response

at that point, but it's like, this is why I can't really play a bad guy in a video game. Cause I get like conscious guilt. Me too. Where I'm like, I know this isn't real, but like, I can't be a jerk to people. Me too. All right, listen everybody. I, we could talk about this subject for hours

We would love to talk with you the listeners about this more and kind of get your thoughts and ideas on this You know leave a comment on this episode about what you think about AI and game We'll have a pull-up as well on Spotify. Yeah, we'll have a pull-up, but then also come join our community I guarantee when this episode releases, we're going to have a lot of discussions going on. And you know, I'll touch on this again. It's okay to have different opinions. If you are completely against the use of AI in anything gaming related, I'd love to hear about it.

You know, like I say, we support it. I do have some reservations. It doesn't mean that, you know, this is every thought that I've ever had on AI and the same with John and Ryan, but these are the thoughts that we can cram into a 40 minute episode for you But if you'd like to talk about it some more, that's why we have the most awesome gaming community on the planet There's a link in the episode description. So click that link come talk to us. Let's chat about it Let's have some fun and some great discussion on this as well Let's have some fun and some great discussion on this as well. Again, thank you to Casino Tarantino and People Wonder for supporting the show, along with

everybody else out there that supports this podcast and makes conversations like this possible, man. It's really fun to be able to talk about this stuff. It's fun to be able to talk about how this affects gaming, what some outlooks and things like that are, and predictions and things like that as well. So that is going to do it for this episode, everybody until next time, happy gaming. See you to the loom, it bruised.