EA Looking to Use AI to Take User-Generated Content to the Next Level

Key Takeaways

EA showcases an AI-powered concept, allowing players to generate game content.
Generative AI can allow for quick creation of original game content using existing datasets.
EA aims to revolutionize user-generated content by leveraging generative AI for better player experience.

Electronic Arts has given investors a peek into how its future projects could enable players to deploy user-generated content by leveraging generative AI. The newly shared concept from EA shows players building their own game level, characters, and rules through simple prompts.

While AI has been a crucial part of games for a long time, generative AI is an emerging field of interest among game industry stakeholders. The allure of generative AI lies in its ability to create original content efficiently using the large datasets the generative AI models are trained on. In recent times, certain notable game companies like Square Enix have stated their interest in using this technology in games, with EA being the latest one to reiterate the same desire.

During EA’s Investor Day event on September 17, Chief Strategy Officer Mihir Vaidya showcased an early-stage concept of the publisher’s UGX program that involved two players creating an impromptu level in a sandbox game, using voice commands, in just a few minutes. The video, shared on Twitter by Geoff Keighley, shows the players creating an FPS game set on a map featuring a multi-level maze of cardboard boxes where the objective is to eliminate the opponent using a grenade. The concept not only allows the player to build an in-game map but also allows them to enhance it by making it more “complex” or “epic” as shown in the video. Moreover, players can generate different variations of characters and in-game items like weapons on command and then make their pick. They can also create their own game rules or ask the AI for suggestions on match types for scenarios like 1v1 combat. This concept gives a new insight into EA’s continued push towards imagining new ways to leverage user-generated game content.

EA Unveils Its AI-Powered Vision for User-Generated Content

Summarizing the video, Vaidya underlined how the technology could offer players to create game content “without any coding expertise” and “in real time.” They noted how the concept showed players “remixing existing elements,” including assets from other EA games, for things like characters, weapons, gameplay systems, and game logic. Stressing the importance of the company’s “massive proprietary data set,” the EA chief stated that its vast repositories of 3D assets, lines of code, gameplay hours, and telemetry events make this remixing of user prompts with content from existing titles possible. Further, Vaidya highlighted how the interaction between the two players in the concept video resulted in a “social game experience.” They added that EA expects UGX creators to leverage AI to “build in, around, and beyond EA’s foundations,” spawning projects that could possibly evolve into “chart-topping IPs.”

The use of generative AI in the game industry has been a controversial topic, especially when it comes to creative tasks. Its alleged use in popular games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has attracted heat, as developers worry about their jobs in an increasingly uncertain time for the layoff-hit industry. However, some major stakeholders appear to be shifting towards using the technology in one way or another, regardless of its divisive nature.