Ken Williams

Today, at 4pm west coast time, 7pm east coast, Roberta will be live in chat on YouTube while we premiere a one hour video of here playing our game Colossal Cave. After the video she will go live on YouTube to answer questions about anything; the game, the Sierra days, our boating, or whatever anyone wants to ask. It should be fun! @colossalcave" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@colossalcave

@LukaschikGleb I don’t know. Some days I think yes, and other days I think not. To build a market competitive game is a serious commitment of time and money. My guess is - I’m retired.

@caboken Is there any update on your desire to develop a new game, or you've finished with that?

I just posted a new blog (vlog) entry on youtube. There's a lot in this update! It starts with a test of the stabilizers in rough-ish seas, and then Roberta (and the pups) show how the interior is finally starting to take form. Lastly, there is a brief tour of the engine room followed by a breakdown of the two major issues that currently have us stuck waiting on repairs. youtube.com/watch?v=QvIA6M…

@PawelHomenko Thank you!

@caboken Great video :) boat looks amazing :)

@PawelHomenko Thank you!

@caboken Great video :)

I just posted a new blog (or is it vlog) entry on youtube. It is announcing that we are nearing completion of a nearly one year effort to buy and refit an older boat. For the last third of the video I go completely off topic and talk about how I'm using AI and how I see it impacting the job market. Some of you who aren't into boats might find that interesting. youtu.be/yv7KqVwKwds

Thank you! Unfortunately, stabilizers are not optional. In rough seas, they are a lifesaver. I always worry that they will fail and a wave will push us over. In reality we would be safe except in the kinds of seas I know to avoid. However, it would be dangerous and very uncomfortable. Snagging nets and crab pots on the props tends to be a bigger problem than the stabilizer fins. I've had several problems with ropes, nets and even a chain, wrapped around the props. Maybe I've been lucky, but we've cruised around 60,000 miles without snagging anything on the fins. I damaged one on a rock once, but so far nothing that stopped us moving.

@caboken Boat - Could the stabilizers become an irritant if they keep getting caught up with thigs underwater ? is there a way to shed / eject them in an emergency ? AI - We survived a near wipe out (pandemic). In the long run we'll adapt. Love your video blogs. Do more ! 🌈

Here's something with AI that blew me away yesterday. Probably everyone else knew about this, but it was the first time for me. I had a zoom call with my boat crew and noticed that zoom had an AI option. I had no idea what it was, but turned it on, and then forgot I did. Within a minute of the call ending I received an incredible summary from Zoom of the call. It had done text to speech, and produced an action item list, summary of all we talked about, etc. It was wrong in a few places, but how it was able to keep up with everyone's discussion, including the crappy connections and accents, I do not know. Hardware investments in new technology are dangerous. Imagine all the investments in cable tv, or vsat (satellite) communications before starlink, or even hard wired telephone networks. Lots of companies are investing billions to power AI, and five years from now Nvidia will come up with some quantum computer that obsoletes all the investment. Hardware is a dangerous business.

@caboken Great video, Ken! I also lean on AI for all kinds of questions, especially when exploring concepts... However, increasing compute is now yielding diminishing returns. If I could short data center construction, I'd go all in.

For fun, Roberta asked ChatGPT to give her ideas for a King's Quest 9 game. One simple request, and back came a full design that really wasn't bad. It had a plot, puzzles, characters, scoring. It needed fleshed out, and wasn't perfect, but she was shocked. We are living in some crazy times.

@YoungantheRetro ROFL!

@caboken Ha! Im into both! …. Wait thats came out wrong.

I shouldn’t say this, but it’s an AI image that was sent to me by a friend. AI is starting to be very hard to spot. Roberta said she doesn’t think it looks like her though…

Heading out trick or treating!

@EstoriaGame Thank you!

@caboken On a side note, I grew up on Sierra games and wanted more than anything to work there, but I graduated high school in 1996, which was a little too late. Thank you and Roberta for a lifetime of great games that have inspired imagination, empathy, creativity, morality, and more!

I'm starting to think about what I might do next as a game. Realistically, the answer is probably "nothing". I'm very happily retired and not sure I'd want to tackle a big project. That said, I'm very curious how AI can change games. I'm early in my research and trying to understand how (from a code perspective) game development in an AI powered world works. Specifically, I'm trying to understand the business model. Anyway .. for those of you who are thinking similar thoughts, this is my conversation with ChatGPT.... chatgpt.com/share/68b067e9… Probably the most interesting part of the chat is the comment that 7% of games on Steam are already using some AI. I seriously doubt that, but it does show that things are changing much more rapidly than I had imagined. There are lots of cultural, financial, legal, and other issues here. We are in uncharted territory!

@colin99 Me too!

@caboken That was fantastic. I bounce things off chapgpt alot now and the responses usually are good (I'm hoping the AI isn't taking that as criticism!). I miss games like monkey Island and the Sierra games

@ORequester Agreed! I doubt it will happen. The brands might be evolved into new games (A King's Quest 9 for example), but remakes aren't typically profitable, plus today's players don't seem impressed by old style games. It's a tough sell.

@caboken So many Sierra games could be remade, or be given a sequel, with AI controlling dialogue responses. I haven’t seen that in a game yet. Mostly AI seems to be a lazy way for developers to render certain graphics.

Agreed. I'm not sure how the future plays out. My sense is that the art, music, and even software industries are in deep trouble as a result of AI. We're already seeing softness in the job market for all three and its going to get a lot worse. It's sad, and like nuclear bombs, the world probably would have been better if never invented. There are some unsolvable problems, and technology evolution seems to be one of them. People who have jobs repairing typewriters, people who make polaroid film, people who develop 35mm film, have all watched technology take away their jobs. I'm a great fan of jobs. But, I don't know how one goes about stopping technology evolution. I'm not sure it is possible.

@caboken I will say that AI voice acting and AI generated art leaves bad tastes in the mouths of many. Too many talented artists are being ripped off by those models and not given jobs by developers using them and many would volunteer for the chance to work with you!

@pelo88 Agreed. My focus with this particular effort was to try to understand the business side of AI.

@caboken The term AI is often equivocated with fuzzy logic and procedural generation. Both of those have been in use for decades powering the Tokyo subways to be the most on time trains in the world and Minecraft respectively. "AI" for content can be that simple for unique experiences.

@bdelgado94 An interesting thought .. most PCs have graphics cards, and there is a lot of horsepower there that could be tapped. I've never experimented with one, but suspect it wouldn't be strong enough to do much with it.

@caboken It's also possible to run small AI models on the PC locally (e.g. llama.cpp / Ollama, etc) using GPU/CPU/NPU. In theory, users could choose/provide a downloaded model and there are various options depending on the hardware capabilities.

@TwoForDinnerTFD It's confusing how one would define, "An AI game". Is a game an AI game if you use AI to generate the music? to generate the voices (text to speech)? To generate dialog in realtime for NPCs? Real time translation? I'm not sure what an AI game is...

@caboken At this point there's still the issue of copyrightability of AI works. What proportion of used AI would taint the entire project is unclear. This uncertainty has led Steam if I am not mistaken to reject AI games. You're required to own the material or be licensed.

@teddybearVR I’m looking at the wingman site and not sure what all it does .. I’ll figure it out.

@caboken Hi, first of all don’t trust ChatGPT for any facts. But cool to see a legendary dev interested in cutting edge. Watch some videos about Mantella and Herika for Skyrim and Fallout on YouTube. And wingman-ai.com