About this episode

Mitch and Blake discuss the implications of large language model AI on the video game industry, including cost impacts and job displacement.

Mitch and Blake offer their thoughts about how to navigate the introduction and impact of large language model AI in the video game business. They begin by discussing their opinion that AI represents a significant technological innovation with potentially profoundly disruptive implications. Beyond even a simple technology innovation, AI is likely to be a paradigm-changing event, that calls into question many of the accepted methods and ideas underlying current game production and marketing. After discussing their intentions in recording this episode -- that this is very real and very threatening to the competitive positioning of western developers -- they introduce their thesis that AI is going to hollow out the middle of the game development cost stack, and in so doing, potentially put the middle tier of games under even more pressure than it's been under lately. It will reduce the costs of prototyping, but perhaps not the overall cost of development and go-to-market. And it will cost jobs, just as every previous paradigm change in gaming has done. After a brief interlude to discuss the often ill-considered backlashes against AI from inside the games business, they finish the…

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