Why Deepfakes Will Make You Play Video Games Instead of Movies
Why this should worry and excite you at the same time
I work in technology and, being a CTO, part of my responsibility is to keep the company up to date with what’s happening in the tech market, this gives me the reason to invest time in understanding what’s coming up, trying to predict what’s the next big thing. In my youth, I’ve spent my fair share of time playing video games, I was lucky enough to have an 8bit computer when I was 5, and I can clearly remember the day I told my parents that in the future they would have played video games on the TV instead of watching movies. I was 12 at the time and maybe a bit over-excited about the idea. Fast forward to my 44th birthday and I see the pieces of a puzzle coming together, and my childhood dream is coming true, despite it being very different from what I envisioned at the time.
I want to argue my view about what will happen in the next years through the following steps:
- provide a quick reality check about what video games are today;
- why AI plays a key role in the future of games;
- why games are a better business than movies;
- what I think will happen and why now;
If you are reading this you most probably know (or think to know) something about video games, but chances are that you are not aware of why AI is now ready to take over the game 😅
If you are a parent in your forties you are probably underestimating games
If you are, like the majority of people, not involved in game culture when you think about games you think about those super classic games (Super Mario Bros, Pac-man) or those annoying mobile games of the “last generation” (Farmville, Candy crush saga, etc)… but you would be missing a very crucial point…
Video games are not what they used to be
For over 40 years, games struggled to achieve a visual quality that would ease people’s immersion, which would make on-screen things more believable.
If you spent a few minutes on the video above, you would have guessed it: we are now able to create realistic characters out of video games. There are some excellent cases using real actors to provide the best acting out of the game:
Today’s best video games are long-lasting, immersive experiences that capture the player for their story, their emotions and where skill-based success is just a minor part, if present at all.
video games do not need to challenge the player on his/her hand-eye coordination anymore, they can now focus on his/her intelligence, quick decision making and understanding of the world he/she has been put into.
AI, including Deepfakes, is the key for better games
There are too many articles about the menace of the “superintelligence”, but as any professional involved in AI can tell you, we are still far away from that. What we can do today is much more interesting anyway… all the building blocks to create a game with self script-writing capabilities are there:
- AI-generated responses (chatbots) are becoming indistinguishable from real persons and their interaction with humans includes reactions such as perplexity and surprise. This opens up the chance to have Nonplayer characters (NPC) that converse with players, with their own personality, without the need to have pre-build questions that players submit to them;
- Video reenactment (Deepfakes) can drastically reduce the costs of game production. Deepfakes allows sampling of real actors’ expressions and features to generate real-time facial movements based on the chat-generated text. This means that the cost of producing a virtual character with, say, Scarlett Johansson acting will nor require to film her for tens of hours;
- Deepfakes can be applied to audio too. Again, this allows games to produce a voice acting to recite the lines that the “chatbot” generates;
The previous 3 technologies are available today, the combination of them enables game companies to create believable virtual characters that react to real human interaction with a given personality, objective, and charisma.
Should you be worried about the ability to create fake videos or audios?
Yes, you should, because regulations and counter-measures will be available too late: after the “fakes” are mass-produced and widely distributed. We are already there.
What can you do to defend yourself? The fact you are reading articles on Medium is part of the answer: you need to carefully choose your sources and be able to verify any news from different sources. This is the time where trusted publishers have a chance to be back in the game, but this speculation is due for another article.
Why games are a better investment than movies for content creators
I’ll focus on the business of making video games and making movies, without its implications about art, the quality of the entertainment and the technicalities behind those (still) very different industries.
Long-tail revenues: most video games can be sold as monthly subscriptions and they can be played over and over again because the playing experience is different all the time. A notable example is World of Warcraft, which revenues are estimated to be over 9B$ in its 16 years lifetime.
Immense network effect potential: e-sports, twitch and many other Internet-based interactions allow more people to become aware of a game and want to be part of it. This effect alone supports free-to-play models seen in popular franchises such as Fortnite or League of Legends, where just a fraction of transactions for “add ons” or e-sports rights management is more than enough to sustain the entire business.
Expanding the user base: this is where the Stadia bet is, in my opinion. If you don’t know what Stadia is, it’s basically YouTube where you can play games instead of videos. The value of Stadia is about opening top-quality games to anyone regardless of hardware ownership. It doesn’t matter if you have a PC, a Console, a Smartphone or a simple TV… game streaming will allow you to play your games on ANY device, greatly expanding the user-base.
Creating an AAA video game in 2020 is not cheaper than creating a Blockbuster but it can be way more lucrative. Avengers Endgame cost was about 356M$ with about 3B$ revenues. Grand Theft Auto 5 cost was about 265M$ with 6B$ revenues. Those are 2 extreme examples but you are free to make your own considerations by searching on Google, there’s plenty of data to support this.
My predictions: you will play
The game industry has been bigger than the movie industry for the past several years, but it still fails to provide the same carefree entertainment that a passive Movie or TV series watching session gives.
Instead of thinking about a game that is like a movie, I think it will be more realistic to approach a movie that is slightly interactive, like a game. What about being able to simply decide how to interact with the story by talking to characters instead of just watching? Or even just by watching in the direction you want the character to move. No joysticks or other devices required. I think this is bigger than VR, easier to achieve than VR and this is the interaction that will define the next years of entertainment. Technology enables new possibilities but, most notably, it also enables a massive cost reduction in creating immersive experiences.
Good video games can be re-played over time because they can change every time you play them. Game industry revenues are already higher than Movie’s one. Costs of creating a game will lower thanks to AI, revenues are skyrocketing… I don’t think investors are blind to this.
Yes, there are reasons to be scared about mixing reality with fake and not being able to easily distinguish them, but it will happen despite our worries anyway and it will be the greatest thing ever for entertainment.
