Randy Pitchford
Randy Pitchford's bait-and-switch
Randy Pitchford is a professional magician. He deceives for fun.
Latest
Investing
Two gaming stocks for the AI era
Roblox because it's embracing AI. Nintendo because it's not.
Why AI voice audio is gaming's double-edged sword
Of all the ways generative AI could reshape game development, voice audio may be the most immediately useful, and the most explosive. In-game speech sits in a strange middle ground. It is both a hardcore production process and a live performance. A battle bark, shopkeeper greeting, quest reminder or
Opinion
Gaming's stupid argument about limitless smarts
Ironically, given this is all about intelligence, the games industry's argument about generative AI has become oddly stupid. On one side are the evangelists, who treat every new model demo as proof that production costs are about to collapse and creativity is about to explode. On the other
UGC
S&box vs UGC AI slop
More than two decades after Garry's Mod first turned physics-play into a generation's modding language, Facepunch Studios has shipped its long-awaited successor. s&box launched on Steam on 28 April to a "Mixed" reception, which is unsurprising for a project that
Ubisoft
Better together: Ubisoft's AI Teammates
Ubisoft has spent years talking about generative AI. With Teammates, it is now showing what that looks like in a game. The project, formally a R&D experiment, is a first-person shooter in which players interact with three AI-powered NPCs using their voice. It is the most
Supercell
Supercell bets on AI founders
While much of the games industry remains cautious about AI, Supercell is planting a flag. The Finnish mobile giant behind Clash of Clans and Brawl Stars has been running an AI Innovation Lab, a 9-week incubator designed specifically for founders building at the intersection of AI and games. The
Game Development
Game engines' AI adoption
The rise of AI-assisted coding tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot has already transformed how many developers write software. But what about game developers — and the specialized engines they rely on? Unity, Unreal Engine, and Godot are all moving to embed AI directly into their workflows. Here's
Game Development
The $22 billion AI gaming windfall that doesn't add up
Morgan Stanley published a note on Tuesday that has been widely picked up. In this, the bank argues that advanced AI tools could cut video game development costs by 44%, unlocking about $22 billion in annual profits. The report is directionally interesting, but the number is not to be trusted.
Game Development
Tencent ramps genAI world building with HY-World 2.0
Tencent's HY-World 2.0 matters because it is trying to solve a more useful problem than most recent world model demos. Instead of generating a video that looks interactive for a minute and then disappears, it aims to generate or reconstruct a persistent 3D scene from text,
Panic draws a line
Panic's new Playdate policy on generative AI is striking not because it solves the industry's AI dilemma, but because it refuses to pretend the dilemma can be solved cleanly. The Portland studio behind the Playdate handheld has updated its Catalog rules to ban generative AI in
While pros prevaricate, Roblox kids build the future
The games industry has spent the past two years having a theatrical argument about AI. Studio heads hedge. Artists post denunciations. Unions draw moral red lines. Steam users review bomb, while there's blood all over in the Subreddits. The whole debate keeps getting dragged back to the same