00:00Hey, it's great to be here.
00:02You might have seen like some exciting news came out about
00:05work that our teams are doing on the world human
00:08action model.
00:09So Katia and Dom Katia from our Microsoft Research team.
00:12Dom from Ninja Theory. We're here to talk about this
00:16interesting work and how it impacts our kind of future
00:19in research or future in game development.
00:22It's also interesting note that this model was just published
00:26on Azure Foundry.
00:27The weights for the model were just published on Hugging
00:30Face.
00:31Because we want to make sure that the industry of
00:34creators and researchers are able to engage with this work
00:37and we can all learn together.
00:39We definitely look at this work as a unique opportunity
00:42to kind of leverage the intersection of art and science,
00:46which is what video games are to grow with the
00:48creator community.
00:49That's what these tools are about.
00:52We think there's a really unique opportunity to use technology
00:55to enable creators to do things that they've never done
00:58before.
00:59We have a great great opportunity with two teams that
01:02happen to be frankly right next to each other in
01:04Cambridge in the UK in our game studios and Microsoft
01:07Research,
01:08and it's been awesome to see the collaboration with between
01:11those two teams.
01:12So what I'm going to ask is I want to
01:14have Katia talk about how they see this technology in
01:17the work that they've done.
01:19Absolutely thank you so much.
01:21Phil and Dom fantastic to be here and reflect on
01:24the work that is coming out today.
01:26A key to this work from the very beginning was
01:29to try and understand how we can really ground the
01:33development of generative AI models in an actual understanding of
01:38what users need.
01:39In this case, what are the kinds of model capabilities
01:43that would be needed in order to really empower creatives
01:47to allow to let them explore ideas more quickly,
01:51more deeply than they might be able to do with
01:55traditional tools.
01:57And so in this work we grounded our generative AI model
02:01development in a user study with 27 game creatives and
02:06we were able to tease out that aspects like iterative
02:10tweaking and divergent thinking,
02:13which have already been well established in the computer supported
02:19creativity research. Those continue to be really key when creatives
02:24want to engage with these types of models,
02:27but often they're an afterthought in model development.
02:31So we turned that on its head.
02:33We started from those capabilities and then try to really
02:38systematically push on the model capabilities that might be needed
02:43in order to support tweaking,
02:45and rapid interaction. And so that is how we developed
02:49WAM and focus specifically on those model capabilities of consistency,
02:54diversity and persistency. And you can read a lot more in
02:57the research publication and the demo videos associated with that.
03:02I'll tell you one of the things that I get
03:04excited about.
03:05You know, one of the things we care a lot
03:08about at Xbox is game preservation,
03:10and I think about an opportunity to have models learn
03:13old games, games that were maybe tied to unique pieces
03:17of hardware,
03:18where that engine on that hardware is kind of time
03:20will erode the amount of hardware that's out there that
03:24can actually play a game.
03:25But you could imagine a world where from gameplay data
03:28and video that a model could learn old games and
03:31really make them portable to any platform where these models
03:34could run.
03:35I think that's really exciting.
03:37We talked about game preservation as an activity for us
03:40and this these models and their ability to learn old
03:43games and their ability to learn completely how a
03:46game plays without the necessity of the original engine running on
03:49the original hardware,
03:50I think opens up a ton of opportunity,
03:52but the fact that this is research that was done
03:55on top of bleeding edge for Ninja Theory.
03:57Dom, why don't you talk about how bleeding with the
04:00role that bleeding edge plays and how you as a
04:03creator think about this technology?
04:05Yeah, thanks Phil. Yeah,
04:06so as you mentioned, catchier and catches team and our
04:09team here in Ninja Theory.
04:11We happen to be in the same city in Cambridge
04:13in the UK.
04:14We're just down the road from each other,
04:16so when we joined Xbox Game Studios we were introduced to
04:19catcher and we started to think about how could we collaborate
04:23and we've been working together now for a few years
04:26and catcher asked if they could use bleeding edge as
04:29a multiplayer catalog title as a test bed for their
04:32research and for this technology.
04:34We were happy for them to do that and what we
04:37are looking at today is really the fruits of the
04:40work that catcher and the team have done and I
04:43think for us as a as a game creator,
04:45the thing that I'm always really interested in is how
04:49can we help our teams do more?
04:51How can we help them to push their creative ambitions
04:54and their creativity even further?
04:56So. Technology like this for me and I think for
05:00our students,
05:01I think it's a great opportunity to be able to
05:04use technology like this for me and I think for
05:07our studio here at Ninja Theory is not about using
05:11AI to generate content,
05:13but it's actually about creating workflows and approaches that allow
05:18our team here of 100 creative experts to do more
05:21to go further to iterate quicker to ideate quicker to
05:25bring their what's the ideas in their heads to life
05:29in a tangible form for other people to use.
05:32So, you know, although this is technology that we haven't
05:36used in the creation of our games and we don't
05:40intend to use this technology for the creation of content,
05:43I think the interesting aspect for us that is exciting
05:47is how can we use technology like this to make
05:51the process of making games quicker and easier for our
05:54talented team so that they can really focus on the
05:58things that they're passionate about?
06:00So they can really focus on the thing that I
06:03think is really special about games,
06:06which is that human creativity.
06:08Games to me are really creators.
06:13Using the medium of games to talk to their audience
06:17to communicate through the medium of interactivity,
06:20and that is core to game creation for me.
06:22So what's important with this is that we have the
06:26human creativity,
06:27but through this technology we can empower them to
06:30do more and push their own dreams further than
06:33they have been before.
06:35Yeah, like we're always thinking about how do we
06:37put tools in the hands of creators so that they
06:40can create things that they haven't been able to
06:43create before.
06:44I know you and the team will continue to make
06:47progress.
06:47We obviously have game developers conference coming up.
06:50It's always a unique opportunity for us to talk
06:52about more of the innovation that's happening between our
06:56creative teams,
06:57our platform teams and our research teams,
06:59which we will get to show next.
07:01But congrats again on all of the progress.
07:04Really, really exciting.
07:05Some thanks so much and thanks for the fantastic collaboration.
