AI Can Unlock More Creativity in Video Games, Says Ex-EA Executive

It's a fascinating moment for the video game industry. Electronic Arts is cutting hundreds of jobs, shutting down Bioware, having been taken private. Microsoft is pushing Xbox further into movies, TV, theme parks. And in just three weeks, one of the most anticipated games ever, Grand Theft Auto six finally arrived. Few people have watched the industry evolve for as long as Bing Gordon. He helped build electronic arts, later became a lead event... Leading bench capitalist. He spent decades thinking about why some games and some products become a part of our lives. His new book is everybody wins, what games teach us about making products people love, and I'm delighted to say Bing's with us in Bloomberg Tech. Thanks, Amit. Thanks for having me. You... You're so welcome, Bing, and it's good to see you. The video games industry is in a in a massive moment. But, you know, without, being ignorant, what does that moment reflect to you? Well, let's see. So there's video games is a form of entertainment, and it's gonna be bigger than anybody believed it could be back in 1982 when we founded Electronic Arts. It's still the biggest form of entertainment in terms of dollars and hours. The the the business itself is going under a little bit of transformation as so many businesses are being transformed. And this book is a little bit about, what we learned over the years to make video games that sold and pleased people and then how to take those learnings to all kinds of other industries that can be gamified or game design thinking. And, you know, even a show like yours, needs to understand game design thinking because you're in the business of getting people to come back each day and to feel like winners and to feel that you like them. So, you know, and the book also covers a lot of the companies that you have to follow. So why, if we take the case study of Grand Theft Auto six, has there been this fanfare, this anticipation with every delay, massive disappointment, and everyone marking their calendar for that particular title? Some things are worth waiting for. My experience is most creative people, if they delay, things get worse. We're in the Moore's Law business. So if you miss by a year, your your your art and technology can feel old. And so it's... There's only a few creators in the game business who can take the extra time to make something great. Quality comes in layers, and so you need to build something, look at it, and then build something on top of it. Look at it. Look at look at something on top of it. And Sam Houser and the team have shown again and again and again and again and again that they can add new layers. I've worked with some others who are not so good at it, and some of it's state of mind, and some of it is motivation. And, you know, it it... It's really hard. It's kind of the Steve Jobs lesson. When everybody thinks they're done, you just get started. And so rock stars like that, when everybody else would have settled, they doubled down and then they doubled down again. It's it's kind of a miraculous state of mind, and, you know, hope people enjoy it as much as I'm going to. Luckily, it comes out right before Thanksgiving week in The US, which is a good time. Well, quite. I hope we're we're we're playing GTA instead of watching football games. As some of the NBA players have noted or for... And football players, you might see a dip in performance in that part of November. Three, four years ago, post Jack GBT moment, a lot of people came on the show and said AI is going to revolutionize game development. I don't know that we... We've actually seen that yet. Do you see it in your world with your venture capital hat on? It's it's kind of yes. Yes and no. The, you know, at a place like Duolingo or a place like Take Two, a place like Spotify, what AI can do is help you take on some of the ugly stuff that you can't get people to do. There's a concept called tech debt, which is you've got some code that's ten years old that's scruffy, and nobody wants to go in. No engineers wanna redo other people's code. It's an enormous motivational issue. But if you don't reformat your old code, you can't move very fast. So things slow down, slow down, slow down. So the first thing that's going on with AI is taking away those slowdowns, which are gonna show up in higher higher quality games. The second thing it can do is give you more shots on goals. So creative people try and try and try and try. The best creative people will come up with a 100 ideas in the time the normal people will come up with three. So with AI, you can come up with more ideas faster. You can test them faster. So we're gonna have higher quality around the edges because of AI. My dream with the AI is that I'm gonna be able to have a dinner again with my mother who's passed. I wanna go meet Abraham Lincoln the night before he gives his Gettysburg address. I've gone... I wanna travel through time and space and drama, and my my dream is that one day generative AI can create characters who who are as interesting as my favorite people. In that dream being, you would do this yourself. Right? Like, I think, again, you know, is... You're an active venture partner, but, like, this this world gets built by sort of, some new generation of nimble startup, or we are just talking about the studios, writing more code more quickly. I'm I'm trying to get a sense of, like, where the world gets built. It it... It's writing more and more quickly, but also going for more original things that at first look like, woah. That's kinda crazy. I've learned even as an investor, if people laugh at a company idea, sometimes they're basically telling you this is so unusual. It could really work. So you want... You wanna explore those novelties. You don't wanna shut off, exploration too soon. And, you know, I've been involved with games. I did did one game called Command and Conquer Generals with a guy named Mark Scags, and we had a rocket buggy, which was amazing. I said, you should keep working on that for two weeks, make it a whole game within itself. And a day later, he came back and said, but I can't. I've gotta finish all this art in only a year. I can't spend any more time on this. And that's kind of the enemy of quality when you can't spend any more time on it. There... I think I think that's highly important. The next thing is that game makers are all gonna become AI prompters. There's there's Yeah. Entropy when one person tries to convince another person of their vision. You know, drawing helps, music helps, body language helps, but it's even better yet if you can cut down the phone game in, entropy of going from person to person to person. So in an area of specialization, if the designer has to communicate to the programmer, has to communicate to the artist, has to communicate to the musician, You know, stuff stuff breaks down. So some teams get better and better and better through collaboration. Many don't.