Game Dev

Steam updates store page rules again

Last week Steam announced changes to the store page rules, mainly to do with links. I wrote about that in the last Game Dev Report.

And now they have made even more changes based on feedback, it's always a great sign to see they are listening to developers.

Now you can highlight related games that you make, that was one of the ways people were using links so now there is a proper way to do it. You can select games from the same publisher or developer or franchise.

Second update, you can now select a particular DLC to highlight at the top of the list.

Game Dev

AI Game Engine replacing devs? Not really

Google has published a really fascinating paper on something called GameNGen.

Some people are reporting this as an AI Game Engine that is capable of running DOOM. I received an email from a viewer very concerned that this kind of tech is going to replace game devs.

However that is really not the case, this isn't really a Game Engine. It did not generate any code or logic, instead it's really just generating images and video.

It's an insanely impressive piece of tech, it's amazing how it can have memory of 3 seconds (where usually these algorithms have no memory) and it can seemingly simulate all the interactions like firing bullets, taking damage, opening doors and so on.

It's impressive how it can actually do all that in a consistent manner, very impressive tech. But there's no code behind it running any logic, it's all just generating video.

And the way it learned is by watching tons of players play DOOM, that's how it learned what a door looks like and what happens when the player interacts with a door.

At one point it has a fun hallucination at 0:56 in the video. The player goes into a pit of poison, then it looks behind and the world has completely changed. That’s the limitation with the memory only lasting a few seconds, it does not remember what was there before since, again, it’s just generating video.

So no it is not replacing game developers since you still needed the developers to make the game for the AI to learn from. Don't be concerned thinking that you're going to be replaced by this tool.

Gaming

Valve’s next game officially shown

One of the worst kept secrets in gaming for these past few months has been Deadlock, Valve's next game which has been in a closed beta for a while.

The player count has been steadily growing even as Valve has not officially mentioned it at all. Then in mid-August they started opening it to quite a lot more people, recently it hit a peak of 145k concurrent players which puts it on the Top 10 of the entirety of Steam.

They have now recognized the existence of the game with an official Steam page, although it's pretty barebones.

Interestingly enough they are actually breaking their own rules, the store page has no screenshots, just a teaser trailer and a very vague description.

However there are now videos on YouTube talking about the game. It's a Third-Person Shooter MOBA, it has a lot of verticality, a map with 4 lanes, plenty of hero characters each with their own unique abilities.

People are saying it feels very familiar and very unique, it takes elements from something like Overwatch mixed with DOTA.