Using AI Tools in your Game Development Workflow

Character development for Chief Emoji Officer. Some of these were made with DALL-E, some were made with a homegrown AI software I trained on some drawings I already had.

This is a crosspost from our game development blog at Bodeville. Check out more of our dev logs there!

What Are AI Tools Good For?

A major part of making games is concepting. It takes me quite some time to figure out what I want something to look like, so I gather many different resources and go back and forth with Bo on what fits for the game.

We use Midjourney and ChatGPT often in pre-production and concepting. I’ve stopped using DALL-E because the dataset it’s trained on is too close to clip art and the breadth of style just isn’t there. I speculate it was trained on Shutterstock cartoons because I often get images like this:

Images from DALL-E

These are from Shutterstock.

Midjourney is great for different styles and adjusting colors. It’s not so great at taking the same character and making different poses. But it’s close enough to convey an idea and a mood.

Here’s a short storyboard of an intro for a new game we’re making:

We use ChatGPT in production in order to brainstorm ideas, do copy editing, or come up with names for things, places, and characters.

A spreadsheet of some names for a new game we’re making.

Shipping AI Content

We think using tools like these for brainstorming and coming up with names or concepts is okay as long as you’re adding your own style and the work isn’t largely copy and pasted. Everything we make is custom fit to the game through curating and editing when it comes to text, and hand drawing and iterating for images.

Reasons for not shipping AI content:

• I am unclear on the legal repercussions. What happens if laws change and it’s illegal to have that content in your work in the future?
• I have an ethical dilemma on taking something I didn’t make, and I don’t know where the source data is coming from, and monetizing it.
• It’s not easy to make styles cohesive with generated content. The entire game’s content and UI needs to all match up.
• You don’t actually have a source file that you can edit, and many times in games you need to be able to adjust sizing on the fly across devices, or you may want to do something more specific, like parallax or other effects using the image.

The Future of AI in Game Development

Some technologies were AI before it was commonplace. For instance, message automation or spell check. These tools are just another tool at your disposal, that you have to learn the ins and outs of and figure out workarounds when it doesn’t quite fit your needs.

Using tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and ChatGPT have significantly improved our workflow on a team of two. We now have the brainpower of many for brainstorms, and are able to just get something on paper fast without writer’s block. It has increased the speed at which we can convey ideas and get to crafting a new experience.

Tools like these will blur the lines between roles and people will need to adapt and adjust how they identify themselves as an artist/designer/producer/engineer, and simply contribute to the project.

How do you use AI tools in your workflow?