Min-Liang Tan speaks during a conference at SXSW Sydney on October 16, 2024 in Sydney, Australia.
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Artificial intelligence is about to have a huge effect on the gaming industry and its billions of players, in accordance with Min-Liang Tan, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of gaming firm Razer.
From the ways by which games are developed to hacks for completing levels, Tan said the technology’s ramifications across the sector cannot be overstated.
“For us at Razer, the best way we see it’s that AI goes to completely disrupt the whole lot, or change the whole lot in gaming,” Tan told CNBC’s “Beyond the Valley” podcast.
Gaming plays a big role within the creative sector, with 3.6 billion players all over the world and annual revenue of nearly $189 billion, in accordance with research company Newzoo, which tracks data across mobile, console and PC games.
“Game developers will now find a way to make use of AI tools, and you then’ve got game publishers that may now distribute, market latest games with AI tools … For gamers, the AI tools will find a way to alter things, by way of the best way they play,” Tan told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at Singapore’s SWITCH conference.
Razer, known for its gaming gear like mice, headsets and keyboards, has developed Game Co-AI, a tool that uses computer vision to “watch” how a gamer plays and provides tips about solving quests or defeating enemies. The tool may also use data similar to public APIs, and a beta version of Game Co-AI will probably be available “later in 2025,” in accordance with Razer’s website.
The potential use of AI in esports — or competitive gaming — has sparked debate, nonetheless.
“We is not going to have AI running, I feel, during a game itself, but what about at the purpose of time of coaching?” Tan said. There’s an appetite amongst some esports players to make use of AI to assist coach future stars, Tan said. “There’s lots of excitement in respect of this. The opportunities are limitless.”
Together with helping players, AI may also find a way to detect and fix bugs when games are developed, in accordance with Tan.
Traditionally, game testing involved “a complete bunch of individuals sitting in a room,” playing games and identifying bugs one after the other, Tan said, in a process generally known as quality assurance or QA. Razer is developing an AI QA Companion, which might find and log bugs — and can soon also find a way to suggest bug fixes, he added.
“[QA] is about 20% to 30% of the [development] costs, it takes up about 30% of the time,” Tan said, adding that the brand new tool will automate the QA process, making human testers more practical and productive.
AI-created games?
Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of video game publisher Take-Two Interactive, which makes Grand Theft Auto, said on Tuesday that AI cannot rival human game developers.
When asked for his gaming predictions for a yr’s time, nonetheless, Tan said: “I feel we will probably be talking about among the latest, exciting games which were built with AI, and the way we see the longer term from that. Perhaps we’d see one or two major hit games.”
Developing a game often involves large teams and significant investment, but AI will allow smaller groups of individuals to achieve this, in accordance with Tan. Slightly than being a threat to jobs, AI can remove “tedious” tasks, he added. “The human creativity still must be there.”
The best way by which the gaming industry uses AI can have a wider impact beyond the sector, Tan said, suggesting that it could “spawn multiple other latest industries.”
“A whole lot of what’s happening within the tech industry was born from gaming, and I consider that lots of what’s going to occur for AI may also be born from AI gaming,” he said.
Razer was founded by Tan and Robert Krakoff in 2005, and the corporate became known for the Boomslang, a mouse — named after a deadly snake — designed specifically for gaming. “For a gamer, the mouse is the whole lot. It’s an extension of your arm,” Tan said. “The more precise your mouse is, the more likely you will find a way to get frags,” he said, referring to the “kills” made in first-person shooter games.
Headquartered in Singapore and Irvine, California, Tan said the corporate went global “in a short time” after it launched. Razer went public in 2017, listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, before going private again in 2022.
