While the generative AI technology for NPCs (non-player characters) demonstrated at GDC 2024 by Inworld is very exciting for its potential applications in games, one of the main drawbacks is the cost associated with it. The simulation currently has to run on Inworld's servers, which comes at a price.
In our big interview with Inworld GM of Labs Nathan Yu, we asked how they're planning to overcome such a big hurdle. Yu was confident that costs would go down significantly, especially when applied to a large-scale game.
Moving forward, the costs are going to go down significantly; we all understand that. But even then, it's the design, right? Do you really need all secondary NPCs to be hyper-intelligent? Maybe not; maybe we use smaller models there, but for the core companion character, there is a value added.
But I'm not too concerned. I think if we give it another couple of months, the conversation will be different as soon as we see viable, profitable use cases being deployed.
I do see experiences where players will be contributing to the cost directly because there's like a premium upsell there that makes sense for them. I do see other examples where it doesn't make sense. Players are purchasing a flat game cost for $59.99 or other and it'll be fully maintained just through other monetization structures, or it's already amortized over time.
As we get to scale for AAA titles, costs will go down so that it's no longer variable. If we've got millions of users, there's lots of techniques that can be leveraged to drive down costs there.
One way to reduce costs would be to run the generative AI technology locally on the device used. Would that work for Inworld? The answer was positive.
Yes. we'll definitely get there. We saw a lot of exciting announcements even at GTC for dedicated hardware in the future for AI versus rendering.
Today, there's a lot of questions, like, if we do move to on devices, will that impact graphics rendering? That becomes a nonstarter conversation for a lot of studios. But at Inworld we do support hybrid as well. Some services could run locally, some services run on cloud inferencing and that can short-term optimize costs and latency. But in the future, I think we can all agree that it's going to get there. It's gonna run locally, offline, on devices like consoles. It's just a matter of time. I'm excited to see that as well.
We'll continue to follow the implementation of Inworld technology in games and game making tools very closely. Stay tuned on Wccftech for more on the subject.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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