How AI Could Bring Halo and Other Classic Games Back to Life

Jonathan Lai 0:00 Grand Theft Auto VI is finally coming out next month. That game has been in production since, like, 2013, 2014. It's like a 12, 13-year development cycle.

Anish Acharya 0:09 Crazy.

Jonathan Lai 0:10 Games have long been one of the most complex products to create. But because you can have AI help fill the role of some of these specialized knowledge, we no longer need to be a professional.

Erik Torenberg 0:19 There is having an agent-

Jonathan Lai 0:21 Mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 0:21 ... sort of look at something and try to recreate a game from scratch. There's also kind of the meshing and the merging of two games-

Jonathan Lai 0:28 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 0:28 ... or two art styles.

Jonathan Lai 0:29 Multi-billion-dollar game franchises have been created using mods. Counter-Strike, for example, that was a Half-Life mod. League of Legends was inspired by Defense of the Ancients, Dota, which was itself a Warcraft III mod.

Anish Acharya 0:41 So imagine what the next 12-year game will look like.

Jonathan Lai 0:44 AI is now making it possible to build sort of niche games, like esoteric genres that previously would not have been economically viable.

Erik Torenberg 0:51 What's a game that each one of you has been thinking about making for years, and now you finally

Erik Torenberg 0:57 can?

Jonathan Lai 0:57 Um...

Erik Torenberg 1:00 It seems like there's just been this incredible shift in, in the gaming industry, and also what we're seeing from, from solo devs and just tinkerers. Tim Sweeney from Epic has come out and said a bunch of really interesting things about AI. The CEO of Xbox, Asha, has also come out-

Jonathan Lai 1:18 Mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 1:19 ... and, uh, sort of said that they're thinking a lot about the hardware and software interplay on, on Xbox.

Jonathan Lai 1:25 Mm-hmm.

Erik Torenberg 1:25 And it seems like, you know, there seems to be a tide shift, so-

Jonathan Lai 1:30 Yeah

Erik Torenberg 1:30 ... want to talk about that.

Jonathan Lai 1:32 Yeah. M- maybe I'll start off, and yeah, Anish, would love to hear your-

Anish Acharya 1:35 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 1:35 ... your thoughts, 'cause you, you've been building some games in your free time.

Anish Acharya 1:38 Yeah. Yes, I have. Yes.

Jonathan Lai 1:39 Um, so I feel like the big... There was, there was a big technology unlock about a month ago with, with Astra, um, because it was very, very good at directly using, um, very popular game development software. And so Astra was very good at using Blender. It could actually, like, work directly within Unreal and Unity. Um, and in previous, previous generations of models, they would just explain to the user, like, "Oh, you should go and, like, do this in Blender. You should do this in Unreal." But Astra actually could, like, operate the software for you, and that was a huge unlock. And so for the, for the first time, you could have a hobbyist, um, someone who's never actually built any games before, um, use Astra to draft a game design document, generate some concept art, move that concept art into Blender, have them build 3D models from it, like animate it, rig it-

Erik Torenberg 2:28 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 2:28 ... move it over to Unreal, and then basically, uh, add some music and sound files, which by the way, can also be generated, and then you can export that as a playable, and then you literally have a game that you've one-shot using Astra. And then the other thing that's been very valuable is that Astra can also, um, QA itself, and so it can take-

Anish Acharya 2:48 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 2:48 ... screencaps of the game, and then it can learn from its own output.

Erik Torenberg 2:52 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 2:52 "Oh, I need to fix this bug," or, "This doesn't look right." And so, um, that's why the initial prototypes that people are building on X are actually, like, surprisingly good, and so I think that was a huge technology unlock. Um, and I think that has a number of ramifications which we're starting to see in the games industry. And so the first, the first effect is that it's just dramatically shortening the time between idea and prototype. And so that's something that Tim Sweeney talks about, actually, as, um... in, in some of his Twitter posts, which is that, um, AI is now making it possible to build sort of niche games or sort of like, you know, s- like esoteric genres that previously would not have been economically viable. Um, but because it's shortening the time it takes to make a game, you can actually now just spit up a prototype of-

Erik Torenberg 3:40 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 3:40 ... a strange or weird game idea.

Erik Torenberg 3:42 Yep.

Jonathan Lai 3:42 Um, because it, it costs less money. It takes less time. Um, and I think that's actually huge for the games industry, 'cause I think one of the structural challenges in games is that it just takes a really long time to make these games, right?

Erik Torenberg 3:54 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 3:54 It's like, um... I think you and I were talking about this earlier, but, like, Grand Theft Auto VI is finally coming out next month.

Erik Torenberg 4:01 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 4:01 And, like, that game has been in production since, like, 2013, 2014. It's like a 12, 13-year development cycle.

Anish Acharya 4:09 Crazy.

Jonathan Lai 4:10 And I'm sure it's gonna be an amazing game, but, like, by any other software development standard, right, like taking 10-plus years to make, um, you know, HR software or CRM or ERP-

Erik Torenberg 4:20 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 4:20 ... it's, it's kinda, it's kind of insane, right?

Erik Torenberg 4:22 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 4:23 And so, um, shortening the time from idea to prototype, like let's see if we can get a 5 to 10-year dev cycle to, I don't know, like 2 to 5 years. You know, it's still gonna take some time, but I think it'll just enable the ga- game developers to take more risk, um, have more at bats, like take more experiments, and, and, and just generally just increase the richness and diversity of games that are created, which I think is really exciting.

Erik Torenberg 4:46 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 4:46 Yeah, I mean, to build on some of those comments, you know, it's interesting 'cause we've seen two sort of approaches emerge. So I actually think the first thing that really was applicable to gaming was the emergence of Three.js manipulation, and I think it was Opus 4.7, maybe it was Opus 4.8, but it just had this property, actually, which it was not designed to have in it, at least Anthropic said it did not, um, which was it was awesome at with Three.js-

Jonathan Lai 5:09 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 5:09 ... which is in-browser 3D. And it's interesting because the way that it does it, it sort of... it's laying things out almost on an element-by-element basis, like in a way that would be maddeningly mani- meticulous for a human. Um, so coding is sort of one path to game generation, and it felt like what Astra did really well, to your point, Jon, was tool use.

Jonathan Lai 5:29 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 5:29 You know, could use Blender and Blender in the cloud really, really effectively. So these are two, like, mega trends within models, one kind of emergent and one programmed, that are converging to drive a lot of the, um, the acceleration in sort of game development.

Jonathan Lai 5:43 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 5:43 You know, the, the thing, it's funny you say, like, 12 years to make HR software. Like, I think just the amount of time it takes is why there's so many sad stories in gaming. Like, think of all the game stories that are left untold, right? How many games were canceled three years into a six-year cycle-

Jonathan Lai 5:59 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 6:00 ... or five years into a six-year cycle-

Jonathan Lai 6:02 That's right

Anish Acharya 6:02 ... you know? And you have-

Jonathan Lai 6:02 The market has moved on, player tastes have changed, right? Yeah.

Anish Acharya 6:05 Totally. You go through these financial cycles, you go through these-

Jonathan Lai 6:08 That's right

Anish Acharya 6:08 ... creative cycles-

Jonathan Lai 6:09 Yep

Anish Acharya 6:09 ... you know, where the ideas that were creatively interesting three years ago now feel flat. So it's just so hard to work on something for 13 years and see it all the way through, and then have it be great. It's a miracle that it works at all.

Jonathan Lai 6:21 Yeah. No, for sure. And, and the other aspect of, um, these long development cycles, um, which a lot of people don't talk about, but I, I, I think has a very real impact on the industry, is that the long dev cycles, like, have a suffocating impact on just innovation.

Anish Acharya 6:34 Right.

Jonathan Lai 6:34 Because if you're, if you're a producer at a AAA game studio, and you know it's gonna take 10 years to ship a game and hundreds of millions of dollars, you're gonna be very conservative in what you green-light, right?

Anish Acharya 6:45 Interesting. Right.

Jonathan Lai 6:46 It's like you're gonna, you're gonna green-light sequels over new IP. I, I think we're on, like, the 20th Call of Duty installment. It's Grand-

Anish Acharya 6:53 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 6:53 ... Theft Auto VI, right?

Anish Acharya 6:54 Yes.

Jonathan Lai 6:55 It's not a new IP. Um, you're gonna skew toward genres that have established demand, right? Which is why we see so many first-person shooters, third-person shooters-

Anish Acharya 7:03 Right

Jonathan Lai 7:03 ... over some experimental genre. When you lower the bar for sort of, um, shipping a game, right? It's gonna take less time. It's gonna take five years instead of 10. Instead of hundreds of millions of dollars, it's gonna take, you know, t- tens of millions. It's, it's still gonna be expensive.

Anish Acharya 7:18 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 7:19 I think it just means that people can take more creative risk.

Anish Acharya 7:21 Totally.

Jonathan Lai 7:21 Right? Like, you can actually ship a new IP. You can take a bet on some, some game developers that have never actually shipped anything before, and you can green-light them and get them a budget to make something. And I, I think that's, I think that's a really exciting story for, for the games industry and, and actually is gonna unlock a lot of structural innovation.

Anish Acharya 7:38 Right. And then the other actually way to explore this new capability, though, is to increase ambition.

Jonathan Lai 7:43 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 7:43 So imagine what the next 12-year-old-- 12-year game will look like. Like, GTA VII, you know, you were talking today about how intricate the city is in GTA VI.

Erik Torenberg 7:52 Yeah, yeah. They have custom radio stations that they design because they pro- they were just like, "Well, we have a year and, you know, this team isn't doing anything. Let's just-

Anish Acharya 8:01 Yes

Erik Torenberg 8:01 ... record, you know, a bunch of radio stations," and stuff like that. But yeah.

Anish Acharya 8:04 It's incredible, right?

Erik Torenberg 8:05 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 8:05 So, but you imagine-

Jonathan Lai 8:06 Yeah

Anish Acharya 8:06 ... if they then spent 10 years with the current tools, forget about a city or even a world, you could build a universe with that level of detail. Why not?

Jonathan Lai 8:13 Yep.

Erik Torenberg 8:13 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 8:14 Yep.

Erik Torenberg 8:14 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 8:14 Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I think that's absolutely right. It's like, um, uh, just, like, expand the scope of games, the ambition of games. Take more creative risk. I think, um, I think AI can, can literally create an abundance era in games, you know, that, that wasn't previously possible, 'cause we can make games that have never been seen before. We can take more creative risk. Um, and, and another, another element that we haven't talked about that I think is equally important is that AI is also changing who can make games.

Erik Torenberg 8:43 Yep.

Anish Acharya 8:43 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 8:43 Because, um, games have long been one of the most complex products to create, right? It's a true multidisciplinary craft.

Erik Torenberg 8:51 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 8:51 Like, you need to know how to code, you need to know art, you need to know game design, you need to know, like, music and sound. Um, and so the execution floor for making a great game-

Erik Torenberg 9:02 Mm

Jonathan Lai 9:02 ... is just very high.

Anish Acharya 9:03 Interesting.

Jonathan Lai 9:03 Like, much more so than just snapping a great photo or, like, making a video-

Anish Acharya 9:07 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 9:07 ... which, which are hard, but I think it's just an, just a level of difference there. Um, but because you can have AI help fill the role of some of these specialized knowledge which you may not have-

Anish Acharya 9:18 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 9:18 ... I think you no longer need to be a professional. Like, you no longer need to have a full team of people that are all, like, you know, specialized in different roles. And instead, you can have AI kind of plug some of the gaps in your skills and knowledge. And I think that's democratizing game creation in a way that wasn't previously possible, um, that you can actually have someone with just an idea and some reference art work with Astra to sort of like iterate their way to a game prototype. And like, of course, it's, it's a prototype. It's not a fully playable game. Um, and then many people won't actually finish it. Like, they'll, they'll just make the first level or the scene-

Erik Torenberg 9:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 9:54 ... and then they'll drop out. But I think, like, some percentage of them will make it through, um, and then decide that they love game development. They actually want to turn this into a, a job itself, and I think we'll see an explosion in the number of game creators and, and I think-

Erik Torenberg 10:07 Hmm

Jonathan Lai 10:07 ... that's really exciting.

Erik Torenberg 10:08 You guys must talk to founders who are either creating tools for these kind of would-be AI-enabled game developers, or they're trying to, like, work on AI-developed games themselves. And, like, the thing that would seem the hardest thing to me would be just game balance and making something that's, like, actually fun and engaging.

Jonathan Lai 10:28 Mm-hmm.

Erik Torenberg 10:28 There seems to be this kind of... It's, it's an art, and it's a real... It's, it's something that does, I think, require human intuition-

Jonathan Lai 10:36 Mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 10:37 ... and human know-how and, um, kind of just, like, a, a different kind of creativity. Uh, what, what are you seeing there in terms of what AI can do?

Jonathan Lai 10:47 Yeah. So I think you hit it spot on. I think, um, and I think the AI model is not going to replace human taste and creative judgment. I think that is still really, really critical. Um, and then there's a, there's a saying in the games industry that the last 20% of the game is 80% of the work. Um, and that's where all the magic comes together that makes something fun, because the first, the first 80% you could say is just putting together a game that works.

Erik Torenberg 11:13 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 11:14 It's like, oh, okay, great. Like, like, you can start the game. You can... There's a character in it. It can shoot things. There's, like, monsters to shoot. Like-

Erik Torenberg 11:20 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 11:20 ... I think that's the first 80%. The last 20% is so critical. It's like, how does the world feel, right?

Erik Torenberg 11:26 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 11:26 Going back to your point in, like, a g- custom radio stations in Grand Theft Auto VI. Like, when you fire a gun, like, what is the sound of the gun? Like, the shotgun should sound different from the pistol. And then when you use the laser gun, there should be a recoil for that, and so on. Like, all the little details of, of, of what makes a magical experience, and I think that is gonna be the province of humans for the foreseeable future, right? It's like, how does something feel? What do players want? Like, how should this gun feel? Um, and so, uh, I, I think that's still gonna be- ... critical for, for human taste and judgment in the, in those situations.

Erik Torenberg 11:59 Yeah. Yeah. And, and like, like what is gonna make me wanna spend 1,000 hours playing, you know-

Jonathan Lai 12:05 Absolutely. Mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 12:05 ... Grand Theft Auto or playing, you know, Baldur's Gate 3, these, like, incredible games? Like, like I, I think it really is just this level A, of detail, but also, like, I think a sense of, like, consequence and depth to a world. And maybe, maybe that is something that LLMs can actually, like-

Jonathan Lai 12:25 Help extend?

Erik Torenberg 12:25 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jonathan Lai 12:27 What do you think, yeah?

Anish Acharya 12:27 Well, so, like, I, I agree. I don't know that it makes it trivial to create a really fun game, 'cause I think that's really hard, and it's an intersection of many things, some design, some serendipitous-

Jonathan Lai 12:38 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 12:38 ... some even cultural, some social, so there's many things that go into making a fun game. I do think, though, in this new era, sometimes creation is consumption.

Jonathan Lai 12:47 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 12:47 Like, the vast majority of games are ever gonna be played by one person, that is the creator, in the future. And that's okay, actually, 'cause I think that-

Jonathan Lai 12:54 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 12:54 ... there is, you know, programming or creating games for the output, for the artifact, and then there's doing those things as an activity.

Jonathan Lai 13:02 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 13:03 And it's actually very tranquil to make a game and to work on a game-

Jonathan Lai 13:07 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 13:07 ... and create, especially 'cause it has the art element.

Jonathan Lai 13:09 Nice.

Anish Acharya 13:09 Seeing the assets come to life.

Jonathan Lai 13:11 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 13:11 You know, seeing the characters say things you didn't program them to say. Like, I, I really do think-

Jonathan Lai 13:15 Yeah

Anish Acharya 13:15 ... there's a sort of zen gardening aspect to game creation-

Jonathan Lai 13:19 Yep

Anish Acharya 13:19 ... which will become increasingly popular.

Erik Torenberg 13:21 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 13:21 I think that's, I think that's such a great point, which is we're seeing that, um, you know, creation is play sometimes, right?

Anish Acharya 13:27 Yes.

Jonathan Lai 13:28 And like, you've seen that-

Anish Acharya 13:29 Yes

Jonathan Lai 13:29 ... from Minecraft, which is one of the e- the most successful and longest-running games of all time. Like, we've seen it even prior to video games in things like Legos, where people, like kids are just creating things for fun and sharing it with each other.

Anish Acharya 13:40 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 13:40 But I think that is definitely the case with, with AI today as well, which is just the act of creating something, bringing something to life, is itself fun. And then AI is just turbocharging what people can create.

Anish Acharya 13:52 That's right.

Jonathan Lai 13:52 And so you don't even know everything about code and art and 3D that to make something that you can be proud of-

Anish Acharya 13:58 Yes

Jonathan Lai 13:58 ... and, and have fun making.

Erik Torenberg 14:00 Um-

Anish Acharya 14:00 100%.

Erik Torenberg 14:01 Anish, you, you built this Habbo Hotel-themed kind of record shop.

Anish Acharya 14:06 Yeah, yeah. Yep, yep.

Erik Torenberg 14:06 What was, what was that process like?

Anish Acharya 14:09 Oh, well, it actually started with a conversation with a friend who's a DJ, and he was saying, "Oh, all the online record stores look the same. It's just a list of songs." And we were talking about how when we used to go record shopping in Toronto in the '90s, going to the record shop was like going to the barber shop, actually, 'cause you go there-

Jonathan Lai 14:25 [laughs]

Anish Acharya 14:26 ... it's filled with people. You can't not have five conversations.

Erik Torenberg 14:29 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 14:30 There's someone at the back who's playing tracks really loud. There's mixtapes for sale. There's raves being promoted. It just, the whole thing was like, it was a real social environment.

Erik Torenberg 14:38 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 14:38 So he said, "Hey, why can't shopping, record shopping online be like that?" So I thought, "Hey, that's cool. Let me try to actually create that."

Erik Torenberg 14:45 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 14:45 So this was, um, with Opus 5.5. I gave it a shot. I gave it just a couple Habbo Hotel reference art components-

Jonathan Lai 14:52 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 14:53 ... and it just, it super exceeded my expectations, 'cause not only did it generate the room, it also somehow grabbed all kinds of '90s music.

Erik Torenberg 15:01 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 15:01 Nice.

Anish Acharya 15:01 So it had a crate of R&B, a crate of dancehall, a crate of hip-hop-

Erik Torenberg 15:05 Nice

Anish Acharya 15:05 ... a crate of, like, soul. You could pick the track, you could just look through the tracks, put them on, then the DJ at the back would grab the record, put it on.

Jonathan Lai 15:13 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 15:13 People were dancing on the little... So it was, it very intricate, so it was this whole inspiration.

Erik Torenberg 15:17 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 15:17 And then from there I actually said, "Hey, what if I extended this and turned this into Queen Street in Toronto in the 1990s?"

Jonathan Lai 15:24 Okay.

Anish Acharya 15:24 So I turned it into a whole street. And the last touch, which actually I think was the, the most sort of science fiction thing that would never have been possible, was I made it so that every one of the other storefronts were something that another player could come and build out just through prompting.

Erik Torenberg 15:39 Nice.

Anish Acharya 15:39 But the interesting thing is that they could not just customize the art, they could customize the capabilities. So my son went in there and created this pet adoption center, um, except you could actually adopt the pets-

Jonathan Lai 15:50 Oh, really?

Anish Acharya 15:50 ... and they'll follow you around.

Erik Torenberg 15:52 Wow.

Anish Acharya 15:52 Now, of course, I didn't design this, like, animal following capability in, but the coding agent updated my game engine-

Jonathan Lai 15:58 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 15:58 ... to create that mechanic. So now, you know, in the past it was really inspirational to have procedural level generation.

Jonathan Lai 16:04 Uh-huh.

Erik Torenberg 16:04 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 16:05 But that's just dynamic content. Now we're talking about, like, dynamic abilities.

Jonathan Lai 16:09 Mm-hmm.

Erik Torenberg 16:09 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 16:09 It's like whole nother universe.

Jonathan Lai 16:10 Game mechanics, right.

Erik Torenberg 16:10 Wow.

Anish Acharya 16:11 Yes.

Jonathan Lai 16:12 And did, um, uh, has your son played, uh, Adopt Me from Roblox?

Jonathan Lai 16:16 'Cause that's-

Anish Acharya 16:17 No, no

Jonathan Lai 16:17 ... something like that.

Anish Acharya 16:18 Is it similar?

Jonathan Lai 16:18 It's one of, it's one of the most popular Roblox games.

Anish Acharya 16:20 Oh, maybe he has, and that's how he came up with it. I'm like, "This is so creative." [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 16:24 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 16:24 For sure, for sure. I think that's a great example. So, so my son has also recently got into game development using, using AI, and, um, it actually started because he wanted to play a game. It's called, uh, Ghost of Tsushima.

Erik Torenberg 16:36 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 16:36 It's a fantastic game, but you basically play a, a samurai in feudal Japan, which you can imagine is, like, very bloody and kind of violent.

Anish Acharya 16:45 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 16:45 And so we told him, "Actually, no, you're, you're eight. Like, you're, you're not playing this, like, bloody samurai game."

Anish Acharya 16:49 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 16:51 But he really wanted to play the game, and so he started talking to, you know, the, the ChatGPT and asking it about it, and then it, and then, and then somehow he discovered that he c- he could build a Minecraft mod of Ghost of Tsushima.

Anish Acharya 17:03 No way.

Jonathan Lai 17:04 And then he used GPT to basically deconstruct the game, 'cause there are all these, like, wikis online to break down how the mechanics work, how the boss battles work. Um, and then so, uh, yeah, so essentially Codex helped him build a Minecraft mod, which he installed, and then it's Ghost of Tsushima except as a Minecraft mod.

Anish Acharya 17:22 And it works?

Jonathan Lai 17:23 It works.

Anish Acharya 17:24 Wow.

Jonathan Lai 17:24 It's worked super well. He's been sharing it with his friends. And-

Erik Torenberg 17:26 Wow

Jonathan Lai 17:27 ... now at this point, he doesn't ask us to buy new games anymore. He's just like, "I, I wanna play this game. I'm gonna make it as a Minecraft mod." I think that's-

Erik Torenberg 17:34 [laughs]

Anish Acharya 17:35 What an inspiration.

Jonathan Lai 17:36 ... really inspiring.

Erik Torenberg 17:36 I-

Anish Acharya 17:37 Well, what I also love about that is that it says, you know, it illustrates a fact that as we think about how games get better, realism is not the only or even necessarily the most interesting-

Jonathan Lai 17:45 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 17:45 ... axis for improvement, right?

Erik Torenberg 17:47 Totally.

Jonathan Lai 17:47 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 17:47 Just the fact that you can create a concept from two existing concepts, we were talking about this, that never would have existed-

Jonathan Lai 17:53 That's right

Anish Acharya 17:53 ... is extraordinary.

Erik Torenberg 17:54 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 17:54 That's right. Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 17:55 I think this is actually a good, a good transition to talk about decompilation.

Jonathan Lai 17:59 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 17:59 And, and-

Jonathan Lai 18:00 For sure

Erik Torenberg 18:00 ... that just really feels like a, a new trend. And it seems like they're kind of, they're different strains of decompilation. There is kind of having, having an agent ... sort of look at something and, and try to recreate a game from scratch. There's also kind of the meshing and the merging of two games-

Jonathan Lai 18:19 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 18:19 ... or two art styles.

Jonathan Lai 18:20 Modding, yeah.

Erik Torenberg 18:20 Um, and yeah, I just, I would love to kind of disentangle all of these different things-

Jonathan Lai 18:25 Yep

Erik Torenberg 18:25 ... that are going on right now.

Jonathan Lai 18:27 Yeah. So I'd highlight that there's two trends that are happening that are getting turbocharged by AI. So the first is that, you know, the games industry has long been driven by modding, and, and modding is the concept of, like, you take a game that you already love, and then you build, like, an add-on extension to it that changes the gameplay somehow. Um, [clears throat] and then it becomes its own game. It, it becomes its own genre. And historically, some of the biggest games in the, in the games industry have come from mods. And so, um, Counter-Strike, for example, which is a, a really big esports, that was a Half-Life mod. Um, League of Legends, um, which is one of the most successful MOBAs of all time, uh, was inspired by Defense of the Ancients, Dota, which was itself a, um, a Warcraft III mod. And then, um, my favorite one, like Fortnite and, and PUBG, um, were itself inspired by, um, a PlayerUnknown Battle Royale mod of, of ARMA. And so multi-billion-dollar game franchises have been created using mods. And so this is just-- this is the history of somehow some of the, the best and, and biggest games in the world have, have been created. And AI is making it really, really easy to mod games right now because, exactly like the way my son did, um, an ordinary player or someone who loves an IP or a game can basically point Astra to it and say, "Hey, like, make me Ghost of Tsushima, except add this," right? Like, add voxel-based crafting, add the relationship system from Animal Crossing, and then you can actually just make it and then see if it's fun.

Erik Torenberg 20:00 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 20:00 And, like, if it is fun, then other people start playing it, and it becomes like a genre in itself, and, and it kind of blows up in a big way. So, um... And, you know, and, and some part of this is, um, going back to, like, the creation loop. It's hard for someone to create something new using a blank canvas.

Erik Torenberg 20:15 Yep.

Jonathan Lai 20:15 So if you just put a text, like a text prompt in front of someone and say, "Hey, like, make me a game," like, you wouldn't know where to start, right? And so that's why working within the framework of an existing game that someone else has made and then just say, "Hey, like, add this thing, remix it with this other thing," I, I think it becomes very powerful 'cause it gives you a place to start and a place to remix from.

Erik Torenberg 20:35 Yep.

Jonathan Lai 20:35 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 20:36 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 20:37 Yeah, it's, it's interesting. So you mentioned modding. I think the two other areas that I've seen are one are sort of decompiling such that you have the source code and the assets.

Jonathan Lai 20:45 Yep.

Anish Acharya 20:45 And I think this gets really interesting for beloved but old games. You know, you take games like-

Jonathan Lai 20:51 Retro games, yeah

Anish Acharya 20:51 ... Knights of the Old Republic, for example, which of course BioWare is-

Jonathan Lai 20:54 It's taken

Anish Acharya 20:54 ... out of business.

Jonathan Lai 20:55 Yeah, that's right

Anish Acharya 20:55 And, you know, BioWare is never gonna make another Knights of the Old Republic game. And-

Jonathan Lai 20:58 That's right

Anish Acharya 20:58 ... you think about extending it or forking it, like, that's really cool. And then the, the third maybe most futuristic one I've seen, and there's this guy Blendy who's been doing a lot of these amazing things on X, B-L-E-N-D-I, um, where he'll take the assets from two existing games-

Jonathan Lai 21:13 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 21:13 ... and then combine them into a third game.

Erik Torenberg 21:15 Hmm.

Anish Acharya 21:16 You know, which is just a totally outer space concept-

Erik Torenberg 21:18 Yeah

Anish Acharya 21:18 ... but it works, and some of the games are really fun.

Erik Torenberg 21:20 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 21:20 Yeah. I was gonna say on the, um, on the, on the, uh, the retro games front, um, I think what sparked the, uh, the Xbox Labs announcement when Asha talked about, um, wanting to support, you know, AI and sort of like new, new frontiers of, of development was specifically that, um, there was just so many community projects popping up that were taking Halo, like the original, I think it was like the 2001, like, Xbox game.

Anish Acharya 21:45 Classic.

Jonathan Lai 21:46 And then they were decompiling and recompiling it for like modern, like modern sort of, uh, platforms. And so, um, I think there were four community projects that I heard of that made Halo a playable web GPU game. And so you can just basically play Halo in, in the web now, right? And, um, it's, it's really incredible that... And it's going back to what you were saying earlier about Three.js, right? Like, I think 3D on, on, on the web has never been, like, more powerful or more accessible. And so, um, I think Xbox has likely seen things like this happen, and they're saying, "Hey, like, we used to have whole teams that would just take a Windows game and, you know, port it over to, to, to the iOS ecosystem."

Anish Acharya 22:28 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 22:28 Um, or take old games that are defunct and then sort of like try to remaster it. But now AI can help a lot with those efforts, and you're basically taking an established IP, and you're exposing it to a new audience, like kids today that have never gr- that have grown up, and they've never actually had a chance to play Knights of the Old Republic.

Anish Acharya 22:44 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 22:44 But now they can.

Anish Acharya 22:45 That's right. That's right. And potentially on a console or on a PC-

Jonathan Lai 22:48 Yep, that's right

Anish Acharya 22:49 ... or with a, a device that's relevant to them.

Jonathan Lai 22:51 Yep.

Anish Acharya 22:51 Yeah, I think it's really cool, really cool. I also think that there's genres of games that have really high production cost or have historically had, you know, where you simply don't get the ROI. Like, you know, people love RTS games.

Jonathan Lai 23:03 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 23:03 Everybody has been obsessed with RTS.

Jonathan Lai 23:05 Great example.

Anish Acharya 23:05 There's been so many efforts to make a great iPad RTS. [laughs] And like-

Jonathan Lai 23:09 Yeah

Anish Acharya 23:09 ... we've never really, really gotten one, and you know, now I think we're gonna see this complete renaissance of genres like RTS.

Jonathan Lai 23:16 So true. It's what I'm... Yeah, I, I think Tim Sweeney talked about this as well. It's what I'm personally really excited about. I, I love this really niche genre of games called job simulators. [laughing]

Erik Torenberg 23:27 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 23:28 And they're-- It's such a strange concept. It's like you basically play a day in the life of a particular job, and it's, it's typically not a glamorous job, right? Like, you're, you're not like the president or something.

Erik Torenberg 23:39 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 23:39 Um, the one that I, the one that I played most recently is, um, uh, this train conductor simulator.

Erik Torenberg 23:45 Oh my gosh, amazing.

Jonathan Lai 23:46 Where you can basically be c- a conductor of, um, subways and trains in various cities around the world. And so, um, I've been a, like a JR, like a Tokyo subway conductor. It's exactly as it sounds. It's not glamorous at all.

Erik Torenberg 24:00 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 24:01 You show up for work, you have a timetable to make, you gotta drive this train, and you gotta stop at every stop along the way and pick up passengers, and you gotta do it perfectly, where if you're, like, late on, like, you know, stopping, like the last, like the last car doesn't make it in, so not everyone can make it on the train, and you get your, your paycheck is docked. Or like-

Anish Acharya 24:19 Wow

Jonathan Lai 24:20 ... you know, for, for that. And so it's like such a-- it's a niche genre. Like, I can't imagine that many people wanna be train conductors.

Anish Acharya 24:27 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 24:28 But if they are now, like-

Anish Acharya 24:29 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 24:29 ... you can make games like this, right? And people like me who really love it-

Anish Acharya 24:33 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 24:33 ... will pay, will pay a lot of money to, to play these games, right? And so-

Anish Acharya 24:36 Is it fun?

Jonathan Lai 24:38 I, I find it really fun. [laughing]

Anish Acharya 24:40 [laughing]

Erik Torenberg 24:40 You know, it's funny. If you, if you look at like old computing magazines, and you look-

Jonathan Lai 24:44 Mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 24:44 ... at like the rankings of, of top software, number one is usually like VisiCalc, and number two is like Flight Sim-- like Microsoft Flight Simulator, like-

Jonathan Lai 24:53 That's right. That's right

Erik Torenberg 24:53 ... early flights and games. And like, like I actually think like simulator as a genre just really has a hold on people.

Jonathan Lai 25:01 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 25:01 People, people love sims.

Jonathan Lai 25:03 That's right. That's right.

Erik Torenberg 25:04 Um, it's-- Yeah, it's just an evergreen kinda, kinda game.

Jonathan Lai 25:09 And, and maybe there's like a particular type of job that resonates for various people.

Erik Torenberg 25:14 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 25:14 But like maybe you never had a chance to discover it because the simulator genre just wasn't that big.

Anish Acharya 25:18 That's right.

Jonathan Lai 25:18 But now you can act-- You can, you can role play a day in the life of almost any job in the world that you, that you can envision, right? Like, wouldn't that be really cool?

Erik Torenberg 25:28 Feces simulator.

Anish Acharya 25:28 Did you guys ever play Untitled Goose Game?

Erik Torenberg 25:31 Oh, I, I, I know about this game.

Anish Acharya 25:34 [laughing]

Erik Torenberg 25:34 I know about this game. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Lai 25:36 It's, it's a, it's a goose simulation game.

Anish Acharya 25:37 That's right. That's right.

Erik Torenberg 25:37 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 25:38 I was gonna say-

Jonathan Lai 25:38 You pretend to be a goose, and you go around and create havoc

Anish Acharya 25:39 ... I actually enjoyed it.

Erik Torenberg 25:40 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 25:40 So maybe I am into the sim genre. You know, yeah, Mischievous Goose.

Erik Torenberg 25:43 It was, it was really big during the pandemic.

Jonathan Lai 25:46 That's the job I always wanted.

Erik Torenberg 25:46 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 25:46 That's right. [laughing] Goose. I don't know what that says about me. [laughing]

Jonathan Lai 25:50 Chaos

Jonathan Lai 25:51 agent.

Erik Torenberg 25:51 Actually, going, going back and kinda like merging the conversation about RTS games, like one thing that I've seen are kind of like agent orchestration schemes that look like-

Jonathan Lai 26:01 Oh, yeah

Erik Torenberg 26:01 ... classic RT. Like, there's-

Jonathan Lai 26:03 Mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 26:03 ... the Age of Empires skin-

Jonathan Lai 26:05 Copy, copies, yeah

Erik Torenberg 26:05 ... over your like agent orchestration.

Anish Acharya 26:08 Yes, yes. There's a Minecraft one too.

Erik Torenberg 26:09 Yeah, yeah. There-

Anish Acharya 26:11 All the different structures or different quad code instances.

Erik Torenberg 26:13 Exactly. Exact-

Jonathan Lai 26:14 Mm-hmm.

Erik Torenberg 26:14 What do you, what do you guys think of those? Is that, is that like a, a toy kind of rendering? Is that kind of just an extension of the fact that, you know, it does kind of feel like a game to be managing your agents like that? Or is that... Like, like is that the start of a new sort of genre of simulator?

Anish Acharya 26:35 I mean, I think it could be. You know-

Erik Torenberg 26:36 Yeah

Anish Acharya 26:36 ... like being the general manager of a line of business at any company, at Credit Karma or Google or wherever else, is it is a sort of sim, you know?

Erik Torenberg 26:45 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 26:46 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 26:46 You're sort of working with all these teams who-- and you have a limited amount of control, and you have incomplete, imperfect information, and then you have market forces.

Jonathan Lai 26:54 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 26:55 So I don't know that it's that different. I actually think that now you can trivially create these really ambitious interfaces. Uh, so in that world, you might do that, and it might actually be optimal, whereas in the old world, the cost was so high-

Jonathan Lai 27:07 That's right

Anish Acharya 27:07 ... it just was insane.

Jonathan Lai 27:08 It didn't make sense to manage it.

Anish Acharya 27:08 It made no sense, you know? Yeah, that's right.

Erik Torenberg 27:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 27:10 Sure. I think it's, um... I think one thing that the, the, the GUIs, the graphical user interfaces that are inspired by games being used for agent management makes me think of is that, um, the average consumer finds agent orchestration to be n-n-non-intuitive, right? Like work-working from a command line, trying to manage your agents, you know, if you-- using the primarily text-based interface, that is non-intuitive. And so I, I do agree that there will probably be a more mass market visual interface-

Erik Torenberg 27:43 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 27:43 ... that an everyday consumer can use to manage like a collection of agents.

Erik Torenberg 27:47 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 27:48 Um, and so, um, and whether it looks like StarCraft or Age of Empires or Factorio-

Erik Torenberg 27:52 [chuckles]

Jonathan Lai 27:52 ... that, that I'm less sure of-

Erik Torenberg 27:54 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 27:54 ... the exact implementation.

Erik Torenberg 27:55 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 27:55 But it does feel like we're early in sort of like figuring out user interfaces for primarily agentic workflows.

Erik Torenberg 28:02 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 28:03 Yeah. So Jon, one thing I'm really curious to hear from you on, obviously Tim and Asha have come out, you know, really supporting the kind of community around-

Jonathan Lai 28:09 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 28:10 ... AI-developed games, which is awesome. But do you think that their companies and ecosystems-

Jonathan Lai 28:14 [clears throat] Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 28:15 ... are set up to really capture the value from this trend, or do you think that they're currently in an awkward position today knowing that they need to change?

Jonathan Lai 28:24 Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think, um, I mean, if you just take modding as an example, historically, the original owners of IP-

Anish Acharya 28:32 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 28:33 ... have not benefited that much from the mods that have been created on top of their IP, right? And so I think the original creators of, of Dota didn't really benefit that much from League of Legends when that was created. I, I'm not sure if the original Half-Life developers o-own that much from, from Counter-Strike. And so I think there is a gap in terms of business models that need to be figured out in terms... Sort of if you ha- if you're really embracing AI as like a remixing, modding, decompilation, recompilation engine for-- that empower your player base with, like how do you as a company benefit from that sort of commercially, right?

Anish Acharya 29:09 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 29:09 And, um, I think, I think folks are still early in that. Like I've heard, you know, I've heard talk of folks like trying to figure out if there's like a, a revenue share or royalty that can go back to the company, and-

Anish Acharya 29:20 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 29:20 ... um, therefore you're powering like creators. But, you know, I, I think there's, there's, there's a lot to be figured out there still. Um-

Anish Acharya 29:28 I mean, the strongest form in my mind is Minecraft, you know? Like Minecraft-

Jonathan Lai 29:31 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 29:31 ... really benefits from the mods ecosystem.

Erik Torenberg 29:34 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 29:34 But it's interesting 'cause we've interchangeably used the works rem- the words remix and extend.

Jonathan Lai 29:40 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 29:40 But I actually think that, you know, all of the additions that extend the core game and maybe share a core foundation of community-

Jonathan Lai 29:47 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 29:47 ... plus a base game-

Jonathan Lai 29:49 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 29:49 ... that actually really benefits the IP owner.

Jonathan Lai 29:52 Yep.

Anish Acharya 29:52 Whereas when you're forking the game, there is no benefit. In fact, you might even be splitting the community.

Jonathan Lai 29:56 That's right. That's right. Yeah, and I think it goes back to something which, um, I know you and I have talked about, um, separately, which is, um, h-how do you create new forms of distribution-

Anish Acharya 30:06 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 30:06 ... for the next generation of AI, AI games or games that are created using AI, right? And I think today, like many of these games are still going through traditional distribution channels, right?

Anish Acharya 30:17 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 30:17 They're, they're being posted on Steam ... on the App Store and, you know, they're, you know, if, if you're making something in Roblox, it's still within the Roblox ecosystem. And I, I think there is an opportunity for a company out there to also create a distribution platform-

Anish Acharya 30:30 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 30:30 ... which natively harnesses and empowers all these AI game creators that are making stuff. And then, um, and it doesn't really exist today be- because of the fact that all the games are going through traditional channels.

Anish Acharya 30:42 Right.

Jonathan Lai 30:42 Right.

Anish Acharya 30:43 Well, you should check out Spawn, actually. Now, Spawn, we're not investors, but I'm a huge fan of what they're doing. It's Jacob and team, and they've created this sort of shared community plus game generation platform. Um, and what you do is you work with this embodied agent named Savi. So she's in all the games with you.

Jonathan Lai 31:00 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 31:00 She can, like, not only take bug reports in the platform, but she can modify the g- the game while you're in it.

Jonathan Lai 31:06 Like a co-pilot, yeah.

Anish Acharya 31:07 Yeah, that's right. And then you, um, and she can create portals for you, so you can kind of step into other games.

Jonathan Lai 31:13 Yep.

Erik Torenberg 31:13 Hmm.

Anish Acharya 31:13 And you can bring other players-

Jonathan Lai 31:14 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 31:14 ... with you. Every game is multiplayer by default with the same community.

Jonathan Lai 31:18 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 31:19 So it's, it's early, but it's the most impressive, ambitious effort I've seen at doing something like this, and I'm sure there'll be more.

Jonathan Lai 31:25 Yeah. No, I think that's, um, I think that's exciting, and yeah, I'm, I'm a fan of Jacob, and I've, I've been following the, the, the company for a while. I, I think, um, I think the broader opportunity for, hey, like, how do you create a community that basically persists between games, right?

Erik Torenberg 31:41 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 31:41 And so you're not just, h- here's a couple of people to play this game and a couple of people to play this game-

Erik Torenberg 31:46 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 31:46 ... and they're not interconnected. I, I think that is a, a huge opportunity, right? And I think Minecraft and Roblox are great examples of this, where once you're inside the Roblox ecosystem, if you ever get bored of one game, like you've beaten the game-

Anish Acharya 31:58 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 31:58 ... well, there's like hundreds of thousands, if not millions more sort of experiences that you can participate in, right? And-

Anish Acharya 32:04 But can you-

Jonathan Lai 32:04 I think that's-

Anish Acharya 32:05 Can you contrast the two, Jon? 'Cause here's one thing I've noticed. Like, Roblox, all the games are extremely different, so it feels like the kind of core shared game, if you even call it that, is actually pretty thin.

Jonathan Lai 32:16 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 32:16 Whereas in Minecraft, the core shared game is very rich. Do you think you need to have a really rich game, or is it... 'Cause it feels like the pure sort of portal-based worlds-

Jonathan Lai 32:25 Yeah

Anish Acharya 32:25 ... without a shared core gaming mechanic are harder to get off the ground, or is that not true?

Jonathan Lai 32:32 I think having a c- I think the benefit of a, of a Minecraft model where it's more centralized, right? Like, everyone starts off playing the same game.

Anish Acharya 32:42 Uh-huh.

Jonathan Lai 32:43 And then to your point, you're forking, you're modding it, you're making, you're making it your own-

Anish Acharya 32:47 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 32:47 ... when you, um, create, create y- create your Minecraft mods. I think the benefit of that is that everyone has a shared sort of experience, and you're familiar with the IP, and you're kind of departing from that. And so, like, the Minecraft mods are almost like fan fiction, right? Like-

Anish Acharya 33:01 Hmm

Jonathan Lai 33:01 ... but everyone's, like, watched the same Game of Thrones series, right? And so they know who Daenerys and Jon Snow-

Anish Acharya 33:06 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 33:06 ... and what the Watch is and, you know, and so on and so forth. And Minecraft has a lot of that shared culture, right? Like the Enderman and, like, the dragons and, you know. Um, and that feels very different from a more decentralized approach, which is what I would characterize Roblox as.

Anish Acharya 33:21 Yes.

Jonathan Lai 33:21 Right? Like, 'cause people can enter the Roblox ecosystem from any game.

Anish Acharya 33:25 Yes.

Jonathan Lai 33:25 Right? Like, I mentioned-

Anish Acharya 33:26 That's right

Jonathan Lai 33:26 ... Adopt Me earlier, like Jailbreak. There, there's, there's a bunch of other games, like Brookhaven. Um, and then you have a very different experience, and then you have to learn, like, where to go from there and how to be a creator. But both approaches are, are totally viable, right? Like, but, um, I do think, um, yeah, I, I, I do think it's just a philosophical difference in terms of, like, how you wanna extend, uh, the game and harness the community.

Anish Acharya 33:50 And both can work.

Jonathan Lai 33:51 Yeah, both can work, for sure.

Erik Torenberg 33:53 Uh, going back to our discussion about studios and publishers, what do you, what do you think they're the most excited by, and what do you think they're the most worried by right now?

Anish Acharya 34:04 I mean, I think getting their costs down-

Jonathan Lai 34:06 Yeah

Anish Acharya 34:07 ... having [laughs] like, uh, has gotta be super exciting.

Erik Torenberg 34:09 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 34:10 And just being able to create, you know, more IP with less financial risk-

Erik Torenberg 34:15 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 34:15 Yeah. That's right

Anish Acharya 34:15 ... seems to be hugely exciting. Look, for a lot of these studios, you know, I think even the studios, they kind of live and die by winning the right to develop a game for a publisher-

Jonathan Lai 34:24 Mm-hmm

Anish Acharya 34:24 ... and then if the game doesn't do well, they may not get it again. So you have hundreds of people that are overworked like crazy.

Erik Torenberg 34:30 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 34:30 It's gotta be one of the worst qualities of life-

Jonathan Lai 34:32 Yeah

Anish Acharya 34:32 ... just being in that industry. I mean, people do it anyway because they love it.

Erik Torenberg 34:36 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 34:36 Um, but it's tough, you know? So I, I think that just the quality of life of the average person in the industry, and then honestly, the quality of the business should go way, way up.

Jonathan Lai 34:44 Yep. Yep.

Anish Acharya 34:45 I think maybe what is worrisome to them is, I'm guessing that, you know, Xbox, I, I guess Microsoft owns Minecraft, but they wish they had an asset like that that was closer to a network and a social product than a pure entertainment product.

Erik Torenberg 35:00 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 35:00 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 35:00 I'm sure Fortnite, despite being the most beloved game in the world five years ago, like, it's not really discussed as much.

Jonathan Lai 35:06 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 35:06 So I think there's this holy grail, what you call, Jon, a never-ending game or a forever game, but it's so hard to get there, and maybe with these technologies, they'll have a better shot.

Erik Torenberg 35:15 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 35:16 Yeah. Yeah, so, um, in my conversations with game developers, I would say, in general, they're all using AI already. I, I think it's, AI has become table stakes in terms of just, like, tools that you use to basically be more productive, right? And so they're using AI to generate game design docs, to, to generate concept art, to quickly iterating on a, on an idea and go to prototype. As I mentioned earlier, it's like shortening that, that, the distance and time between an initial idea and prototype. I think everyone's, like, universally, like, really excited about that. Um, I think, I think of that as sort of like wave one of AI adoption amongst sort of game studios.

Erik Torenberg 35:53 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 35:54 I think the next wave, which is what, um, Anish is alluding to, that's even more excited, exciting, is how do you make AI to create, like, new types of gameplay, like new game mechanics, new game genres that don't exist today-

Erik Torenberg 36:04 Yeah

Jonathan Lai 36:05 ... but could massively expand the market for games, right? So you're not just making GTA VI but, like, faster and cheaper. You're making a new type of game, right, that couldn't exist before.

Erik Torenberg 36:15 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 36:15 And, um, I think the, I think the, the, the article I wrote, um, uh, earlier on the concept of the never-ending game, it's, you know, it's something that I'm personally passionate about, I, I'd love to see happen. But, um, the holy grail for an MMO is A game which infinitely sort of adapts itself to what the players want, right?

Erik Torenberg 36:35 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 36:35 So if you land in a beach in an, in an MMO, and then you're supposed to go to the forest, 'cause that's how the game starts. But, you know, maybe you, you really love the ocean, and you decide to stay on the beach, and you build a ship, and you, like, sail off into the ocean. Like, the MMO today couldn't, like, handle that because it's-

Erik Torenberg 36:50 Right

Jonathan Lai 36:50 ... scripted linearly.

Erik Torenberg 36:52 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 36:52 It expects you to go into the forest, and maybe there's a thing that happens that sets you up on a, on a quest. But in an adaptive MMO, one that, you know, maybe is built using, like, world models, for example, like, you could literally generate an entire quest line for someone who really likes the ocean. And like, now there's pirates that are attacking you. There's, like, a nautical, you know, warfare element, et cetera.

Erik Torenberg 37:14 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 37:14 Um, and then, uh, I feel like sometimes these discussions always go, go into science fiction, but, um, y- you remember in Ender's Game, they had the concept of the mind game?

Erik Torenberg 37:23 Mm.

Anish Acharya 37:23 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 37:24 And it's that the game is just adapting to what Ender wants to do at any given moment in time.

Anish Acharya 37:28 Mm-hmm.

Erik Torenberg 37:29 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 37:29 So, um, and I think it's, it's possible that we'll see our own version of the mind game at some point.

Erik Torenberg 37:35 Hmm.

Jonathan Lai 37:35 And I think that would be the game that, like, like, I've-- like, you can't stop playing because it, it adapts itself to whatever you want to do at any given moment in time.

Anish Acharya 37:44 I mean, perhaps we're playing it at this moment.

Erik Torenberg 37:45 Yeah, exactly. [laughing]

Jonathan Lai 37:48 [laughing] The Matrix, right?

Erik Torenberg 37:50 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 37:50 Well, or yeah, or Ender's Game itself, right?

Jonathan Lai 37:53 Oh, yeah. That's right.

Anish Acharya 37:53 The story is that he's in the game.

Erik Torenberg 37:55 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 37:56 That's right.

Erik Torenberg 37:57 Um, what, what games do you guys have the most amount of hours in?

Anish Acharya 38:02 Well, for me, I've played Witcher 3.

Jonathan Lai 38:05 That's a good one.

Anish Acharya 38:06 Um, completed it twice.

Erik Torenberg 38:07 Nice.

Jonathan Lai 38:07 Nice.

Anish Acharya 38:08 About half completed a bunch of times.

Erik Torenberg 38:10 Nice.

Anish Acharya 38:10 And I just absolutely love it. Um, my-- the other game that I actually adore is Dune 2000.

Erik Torenberg 38:16 Oh, I know.

Anish Acharya 38:16 That was my favorite RTS growing up.

Erik Torenberg 38:18 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 38:18 It's so, so good, and actually, somebody had already ported it over to play on Mac, and it's as good as it ever was.

Jonathan Lai 38:25 That's awesome.

Anish Acharya 38:25 So for RTS fans, if you haven't played that, I highly recommend Dune 2000.

Jonathan Lai 38:29 Yeah. I am, um... I've probably put thousands of hours into League of Legends.

Erik Torenberg 38:35 Hmm.

Jonathan Lai 38:35 And so, um, I think, uh, s- some of my best friends and friendships have been made in that game, and so I think that has to be probably my, my most played game. Um, and then probably closely behind that is, uh, StarCraft.

Erik Torenberg 38:49 Nice.

Jonathan Lai 38:49 So I've played all of the, all of the versions-

Erik Torenberg 38:51 Hmm

Jonathan Lai 38:51 ... you know, back to Brood War to StarCraft II and so on, and it's a classic example of a game which the audience for hardcore RTS is just windowed over time 'cause it's such a, such a hard, hard genre to play. Like, it matters how, like, what your APM is. Like, you can't play competitively without feeling bad about yourself 'cause, like, everyone, uh, everyone else is playing is, like, so much faster and better at the game than me. Um, there is not a lot of developers that are trying to make, like, new and modern RTS games, um, be- you know, because the audience size doesn't support it if you just look at it from a pure, like, market size and analysis. But with AI, like, I'm excited to see an explosion in RTS games, right?

Erik Torenberg 39:30 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 39:31 And I, I will be playing as many of them as I can.

Erik Torenberg 39:33 Nice, nice. I'm a, I'm a big Crusader Kings 3 fan, which isn't-

Jonathan Lai 39:38 Mm

Erik Torenberg 39:38 ... which isn't really RTS, but it is, like, it's, it's-

Jonathan Lai 39:41 It's hardcore, yeah

Erik Torenberg 39:42 ... I, I, it's really... It's like I would... I, I describe it to people who don't know about it as, like, The Sims mixed with Age of Empires. It's like-

Jonathan Lai 39:49 Oh.

Erik Torenberg 39:49 'Cause you-

Jonathan Lai 39:50 Yeah

Erik Torenberg 39:50 ... you get, like, kind of personality management, but-

Jonathan Lai 39:53 It's like relationships, politics.

Erik Torenberg 39:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But then you also get kind of this over, this grand, like, over world of, like, managing your, your dynasty and your realm and stuff like that, so it's so deep. Um-

Anish Acharya 40:06 Wow.

Erik Torenberg 40:06 Yeah. Anyway, to, to close this out, um, what's a game that each one of you has been thinking about making for years and, and now you finally can?

Anish Acharya 40:17 Hmm. I mean, I, I can go quickly.

Jonathan Lai 40:20 Yeah, go for it.

Anish Acharya 40:20 So I, I grew up, um, running a bulletin board system, which tells you what my age is. Um, so pre-internet, people would dial in, and BBSs were famous for having these async multiplayer games because only one person could phone in at a time. So you'd play your turns, you'd phone up, connect, play your turns, log off, the next day play your next turns, and see everyone else's turns at the same time.

Erik Torenberg 40:42 Oh, cool.

Anish Acharya 40:42 So there's a whole genre of amazing, um, async multiplayer games, including two written by one of the earliest employees at Google. This was when he was still at Stanford. His name is Amit Patel. So he made a game called Barren Realms Elite and a game called Solar Realms Elite.

Erik Torenberg 40:56 Hmm.

Anish Acharya 40:56 Unfortunately, he lost the source code for Solar Realms Elite-

Jonathan Lai 40:59 Oh, my goodness

Anish Acharya 40:59 ... which is the better of the two.

Erik Torenberg 41:01 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 41:01 Um, but he has a game design doc, and he have an, he has an EXE.

Erik Torenberg 41:04 Mm.

Jonathan Lai 41:04 Mm-hmm.

Anish Acharya 41:05 So I've, for every genre of the models, I've tried, like, "Hey, can you recreate the game?"

Erik Torenberg 41:10 Oh.

Anish Acharya 41:10 And it has not been able to do it.

Erik Torenberg 41:11 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 41:11 And I, like, now have a, what feels like a faithful recreation running on my computer.

Erik Torenberg 41:16 Wow.

Jonathan Lai 41:17 That's incredible.

Erik Torenberg 41:17 Wow, wow, wow.

Anish Acharya 41:18 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 41:18 That's a great story.

Erik Torenberg 41:20 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 41:20 I think maybe something, uh, along a similar vein for me is I'm, I'm a big, um, Civilization player, and I think the original Civ II has generated some of my, like, most endearing sort of childhood memories. It's, like, the 16-bit, like, Windows version of, of Civ that you needed floppy disk in order to play. Uh, it's, it's not playable today anymore. It, you know, it's a 16-bit executable. Um, but I would love to recreate that game on, on modern, to the, like, on modern hard-hardware stack.

Erik Torenberg 41:48 Nice.

Jonathan Lai 41:48 Um, and then, you know, I, I've also long thought about, like, what does Civ look like with agents?

Erik Torenberg 41:55 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 41:55 Right?

Anish Acharya 41:55 Mm.

Jonathan Lai 41:56 Because, um, the fantasy of the game is that you are supposed to be the ruler of an empire.

Erik Torenberg 42:01 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 42:01 You know, and like, um, but that fantasy sort of breaks down over the course of Civ, where you're micromanaging, like, literally every unit in your empire.

Erik Torenberg 42:10 Yeah. [clears throat]

Jonathan Lai 42:11 But, you know, at some point in time, you could imagine, hey, what if there was Civ where every unit was a, was an agent?

Erik Torenberg 42:16 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Lai 42:17 And they had their own sort of, like, agenda and goals, and then you as the ruler of the empire, you're sort of setting strategy, and then you're trying to influence your subjects to go in the direction that you want them to, right? And you can't just- Have them do exactly what you want. You have to kind of like cajole and sort of like influence and set policies

Erik Torenberg 42:37 John, I have amazing, I have amazing news for you. This is Crusader Kings III.

Jonathan Lai 42:40 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 42:41 This, this game exists.

Jonathan Lai 42:42 Okay.

Erik Torenberg 42:42 This game exists and, and doesn't use, you know-

Jonathan Lai 42:46 Maybe we can just, yeah

Erik Torenberg 42:46 ... like frontier, frontier AI at all.

Jonathan Lai 42:48 Is that true?

Erik Torenberg 42:48 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 42:49 It's the same game? [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 42:49 I, I mean, yeah, yeah, pretty much. I mean, you do, you have to manage, like, schemes-

Jonathan Lai 42:54 Okay

Erik Torenberg 42:54 ... and like, you know, different people's personalities and their opinion of you, and like sometimes people won't do what you want because-

Jonathan Lai 43:02 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Erik Torenberg 43:02 ... their opinion of you is too low. Like-

Jonathan Lai 43:05 Mm

Erik Torenberg 43:05 ... there are different way, like, like if you wanna, you know, conquer a realm or conquer, you know, a different territory, there are so many different ways you can do it. Uh-

Jonathan Lai 43:14 That's exciting

Erik Torenberg 43:14 ... you can, like, murder people who are, like, ahead of you-

Jonathan Lai 43:17 Wow, okay

Erik Torenberg 43:17 ... in succession. Like it's, it's-

Jonathan Lai 43:19 Bring up the policy

Erik Torenberg 43:19 ... super de- It's like, yeah, it's, it's, it's... I think, like, it, it actually feels the closest to me, like, a kind of, you know, never-ending and endless game like you were talking about before in terms of, like, what will this feel like when it is super deep and super realistic, and you get, like, way, way, way more permutations of choices. So yeah, you should, you should definitely check it out. During the pandemic, um, I, I got COVID in, like, the end of 2020, and I started teaching myself C#, and I started making, like, a, like, sort of Japanese-style dating sim-

Jonathan Lai 43:57 Oh

Erik Torenberg 43:57 ... with Unity.

Jonathan Lai 43:57 That's really popular these days.

Erik Torenberg 43:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah. C- well-

Jonathan Lai 44:00 Yeah

Erik Torenberg 44:00 ... 'cause it was right around, like, Unity's IPO, and so I was just kinda like curious about, you know-

Jonathan Lai 44:06 Unity

Erik Torenberg 44:06 ... Unity and, like, how it worked and, like, how easy it was. It was like... I mean, I didn't, I... Like, it was basically like branching dialogue trees, so it wasn't really, like, that advanced in terms of programming, and I, like, didn't really get that far. There was, like, some basic unit, like, like, kind of, like, managing health and, like, thirst and stuff like that.

Jonathan Lai 44:26 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 44:26 But it was, uh-

Jonathan Lai 44:28 I, I actually think the dating... We're, we're going off on a tangent now-

Erik Torenberg 44:30 [laughs]

Jonathan Lai 44:31 ... but, be- because you brought it up, I think the dating sims genre-

Erik Torenberg 44:34 Oh, God

Jonathan Lai 44:34 ... is actually ripe for AI agents.

Erik Torenberg 44:37 Yes. Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 44:37 Um, so there, there's a genre called otome games, which are basically, you know, dating sims for women to basically, um, go on dates with, um, with, with, like, men of different personalities and archetypes and so on. Um, and there's a game called Love and Deep Space, which is made by a Chinese developer, that is blowing up. I mean, it's doing hu- hundreds of millions in, in, in revenue. Um, but the challenge is that it's, it takes a lot of time and work to create the content because the expansion packs for the games are basically characters, right? There's a new, there's a new guy that you can date, and then that is an update for the game.

Erik Torenberg 45:12 Mm.

Jonathan Lai 45:13 I mean, they have to build out this, like, rich backstory. Like, this guy, like, you know, likes cats and, like, walks on the beach but, like, is terrified of heights, et cetera. And there's like, y- you, you kinda have to discover all of this. Um, but there's no reason why they can't be agents in the future.

Erik Torenberg 45:26 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 45:26 Like, these are people that-

Erik Torenberg 45:27 Mm-hmm

Jonathan Lai 45:28 ... have their own personalities. They have their lore that's kind of encoded into their, y- you know, in- in- into their, like, database, and they're, um, reacting to you in real time as you're having conversations with them. They know about your day. I, I think there's... I think the dating sim genre is, like, wide open right now and ripe for disruption for, for AI.

Erik Torenberg 45:46 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 45:47 Um-

Anish Acharya 45:47 Amazing.

Erik Torenberg 45:47 Amazing. Fun, fun note to end on. [laughs]

Anish Acharya 45:49 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 45:50 For sure.

Erik Torenberg 45:50 Fun note to end on. Thank you guys so much for joining.

Anish Acharya 45:53 Thank you.

Jonathan Lai 45:53 My pleasure.

Anish Acharya 45:53 Super fun. Thanks, John.

Jonathan Lai 45:54 Yeah, this was great.

Anish Acharya 45:54 That was cool.

Jonathan Lai 45:55 Yeah.

Anish Acharya 45:55 Yeah, first of many, huh?

Erik Torenberg 45:56 Yeah.

Jonathan Lai 45:56 Yeah.