"I saw you arguing with a guard at the market yesterday. You'd better be careful. Word has already spread among the townspeople."An in-game NPC remembers a user's past actions and strikes up a conversation. Without a set script, Generative AI learns from the user's play data in real time and produces lines. In "逆水寒," serviced by NetEase, Inc., if a user lies to an NPC, it gets angry, and if a user sows discord, NPCs declare a breakup, implementing a "living world."
"The next mission is in a desert terrain, so engine overheating is a concern. How about reducing armor and reinforcing the cooling system?"When the user said into the mic, "Plan the next operation strategy," the mechanic NPC "Yoonri" analyzed the situation and offered an answer. It is a scene from the robot action game "Mecha BREAK," which uses NVIDIA's ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) technology. Instead of choosing text options, an era has opened where strategies are discussed by voice as if talking with a person.
In-game NPCs (non-player characters) that used to repeat only prewritten lines are evolving rapidly. "Interactive NPCs" equipped with Generative AI have appeared, recognizing situations and freely conversing with users. Global big tech corporations such as Google and NVIDIA see the technology as a next-generation growth field and are moving to tap the global game market, estimated at about $190 billion (about 274 trillion won).
On the 18th, market research firm SNS Insider projected that the "AI-based game dialogue" market will grow at an average annual rate of 22.72% from $1.59 billion (about 2.29 trillion won) last year to $8.17 billion (about 11.78 trillion won) by 2033. The "NPC generation AI" market, which automatically generates NPC appearance and behavior, is also growing quickly. The Business Research Company (TBRC) analyzed that this market will grow from $1.41 billion (about 2.034 trillion won) last year to $5.51 billion (about 7.94 trillion won) by 2029.
These changes are affecting the entire game development structure. Traditional NPCs repeated identical responses based on prewritten scripts, but recently a method has been introduced where AI recognizes in-game situations and user choices to generate lines and adjust behavior. With the combination of world models and Natural Language Processing (NLP), NPCs can break out of fixed scenarios and respond dynamically.
Global big tech corporations are also accelerating efforts to secure related technologies. DeepMind unveiled the "Genie 3" model, in which AI directly constructs a three-dimensional virtual environment, and NVIDIA is pursuing the implementation of AI-based NPCs and game characters through its autonomous agent technology "ACE." The industry also notes that with AI adoption, the time required to write NPC lines and compose scenarios could be reduced by about 30% to 50%.
Debate over AI use continues. Recently, the Indie Game Award (IGA) canceled the game of the year (GOTY) award for "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33." The organizers reversed the decision, taking issue with the fact that the game's developer, Sandfall Interactive, partially used Generative AI during production.
The developer explained that AI was used only within a limited scope such as early texture work, and that the final output was made by humans. However, the organizers upheld the cancellation, citing that AI use during production was not sufficiently disclosed.
A game industry official said, "To shoulder development costs that have skyrocketed astronomically, efficiency through AI is not a choice but a matter of survival," adding, "The current controversy is not much different from the growing pains the industry endured when photography or CG technology was first introduced."