Bungie is apparently using or preparing to use generative AI on their current and future projects.
As reported by The Game Post, Bungie put up two job openings related to generative AI.
One of them already got filled. Ryan Valenza has listed his new job at Bungie as the Director of Machine Learning, after putting up the job opening weeks before.
Now, Bungie is looking for a Generative AI Lead Tools Engineer. Bungie provides this description of the job:
“As a Lead Tools Engineer in Bungie’s Central Technology organization, you will partner with area experts and drive the development of software that allows our tools and systems to interact with GenAI models.
In this role you will collaborate with teams across all of Bungie, empowering the studio’s developers and reducing toil by giving them access to powerful AI tools.“
Now, there has been a lot of FUD surrounding these new technologies. But the games industry is not exactly inexperienced when it comes to making AI, or generative technology. In fact, procedural generation is not particularly expensive to use; many indies use this technology to make their roguelike games, at different scales of game design and game budgets.
Of course, video games are dependent on AI at their core, as far back as Pong was being produced by Magnavox, alongside hundreds of copycats.
As Bungie argues in their job description their interest in generative AI is in ‘reducing toil’ for their workers. And its clear that there’s a lot of potential in using generative AI to reduce the amount of work game developers use.
Now, the common argument vs this from skeptics is that this work can reduce jobs. But we are at a point where the game industry seems to be getting more unstable, with game companies hiring too many employees for projects that could get cancelled.
So, let me explain a potential scenario. Generative AI could be used by these companies so that they don’t employ developers that have expendable jobs. This technology could do the kind of work that companies can expand or get rid of, as working conditions change.
On a more basic level, it could help them make game development faster. While we don’t know the specific scenarios Bungie plans to use the technology, as a company that’s actively working on a live service game, and assisting other companies, they likely already have a clear idea of what they will be using it for.
