I had the joy of heading to Dubrovnik, Croatia, this week for the Reboot Develop Blue event. It’s one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and I was able to moderate a panel poolside just a short distance from the sparkling Adriatic Sea.
My panel was about creativity at big and small companies and it featured Patrice Desilets, CEO and creative director of Panache Digital Games. He was the first employee at Ubisoft Montreal and was one of the pioneering creators behind titles like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Assassin’s Creed. He has lately been working on a new game and previously made Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.
My other panelist was Tim Browne, creative director at Avalanche Studios Group and he has 25 years of experience in making games. He has worked at Ubisoft, Codemasters, Activision Blizzard King and Avalanche Studios among others. Though his passion is on the creative side he has also found a keen interest in staff management and development having spent a lot of training in developing and improving those skills. Since 2021, he was also a partner in Bright Gambit, an indie support initiative. He has worked on a wide variety of games including the Assassin’s Creed series such as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.
Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar, wrote a very long book about where creativity comes from: Creativity Inc. He pondered how to make it happen in a corporate environment and who to trust when it came to making critical decisions about whether to go forward with films or to pivot to new ideas.
Reboot Develop Blue was full of inspiring talks about creativity. The other speakers included Christofer Sundberg, COO of Liquid Swords and the founder of Avalanche Studios, which went on to create original games like Just Cause. Another speaker was Brian Fargo, studio head of InXile Entertainment at Microsoft and the co-creator of games like The Bard’s Tale, Wasteland, Fallout and more.
And there was Matt Firor, studio head of ZeniMax Online Studios, creator of The Elder Scrolls Online; Osama Dorias of Brass Lion Entertainment; Jörg Tittel, director of RapidEyeMovers; Alyx Jones, founder of Silver Script Games; and Xalavier Nelson, studio head of Strange Scaffold, creator of 30 games including El Paso Elsewhere (which is now getting the film treatment).
Everybody had interesting takes on creativity. I happened to moderate just one of these talks. Here’s an edited transcript of our panel.
Patrice Desilets: I’ve been doing games for the last 26 years now. I was the very first Ubisoft employee back in 1997 in Montreal. I’m French-Canadian. My big games were Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as creative director and game designer. Then I came up with a little idea, when they asked me to do the sequel, called Assassin’s Creed. I’m the father of the Assassin’s Creed saga. I directed the first, second, and Brotherhood. Then I left. I joined THQ Montreal. That didn’t end well. It went bankrupt. I was bought back by Ubisoft and worked for them for another four months. Then I was kicked out again.
In 2014 I needed to do something else, so I started a company called Panache Digital Games in Montreal. We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary. We’ve shipped one game called Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, and we’re working on our second.
Tim Browne: I’m creative director at Avalanche Studios. Not quite as long in the industry. 25 years working on some games you may have played and some games you definitely haven’t played, that sort of thing. Some of the big games–much like Patrice, but not in the same capacity, I worked on Assassin’s Creed 3, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate as well. I worked at King as well. If you want to know about mobile development, come speak to me. I should say, I’m British, but I live in Stockholm now. I work for Avalanche Studios group, and I’m the co-founder of Bright Gambit, which is an indie games support initiative.
GamesBeat: We could spend a long time on this first question. How do you define creativity in your particular role? What is creativity? How do you find your muse?
Desilets: For me, creativity, the fundamental of it is problem-solving. I truly believe that it’s not because it says “creative” in my role that I’m the most creative person on the project. Yes, I’m a creative director. I try to direct the creativity of everyone. But everyone is creative, because everyone can solve problems. What’s great in the game industry, or maybe it’s weird–I feel like we’re pyromaniacs and firefighters at the same time. A programmer, an artist, even a producer, they all have to be creative in solving problems.
Then there are people like me that are more about thinking outside the box. Trying not to be normal. Maybe they’ve resolved some issues in their lives and they’re willing to take risks more easily than other people. That, for me, is creativity.
Browne: Following on from that, everyone on the team is creative. In fact, not just the developers. The company has to be creative to succeed. They have to take risks. Like you say, programmers–we create some of the problems that they have to solve, unfortunately. The solutions to those have to be creative. We had a great conversation earlier on talking about going to people and saying, “I have this great idea.” The worst that can happen is someone saying, “That can’t be done. Don’t do that.” It’s always the “Yes, and…” That’s the creative approach.
GamesBeat: We’re going to start out in a bit of a fun way here. What has been your most creative idea? Or what has been the most interesting creative idea that your team has come up with?
Browne: It’s so easy to say what you’re currently working on, that kind of thing. I do think some of the things we’re working on at the moment are. But looking back over my career, one problem that we focused on with Assassin’s Creed on the multiplayer game–it was people constantly saying, “You’re improving it to make it more accessible, but we want to play the original version.” Back on Black Flag, the team at Ubisoft Annecy came up with the idea to just put that power in the players’ hands, so that they could create the games they wanted to do. It’s kind of passing the buck, but to actually be able to do that–I think it was three trillion combinations of different game modes, things like that. It was a massive challenge, but a challenge that the team didn’t shy away from. It was about $20 out of $100 in terms of the total budget we had. It was quite an investment. But I look back and I’m proud of what the team did with that
Desilets: Mine is definitely the rewind in Sands of Time. It became the title of the game. It was, again, all about problem-solving. What was the problem? I had a problem in the first draft or prototype of Prince of Persia. We were dying a lot. It was part of the IP, of course. It’s challenging. There are booby traps and fights and big jumps. The very first Prince of Persia was a tough game. But it was breaking the flow a lot. You were dying all the time for multiple reasons, and respawning isn’t a very fun part of a game.
One night I just connected two dots, because I was watching a movie. I didn’t catch what a guy was saying, so I rewound back for about 30 seconds. Then I thought, “Why can’t we do that in the game?” It would be amazing to see the character fall down and then come back and restart from there. That changed my life. That flash is the reason why I’m in front of you talking about the flash. But without Martin Sevigny, the programmer I talked to the next morning–I proposed it to the team and he said yes. He just said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” With 32 megs of RAM. Take five megs, make sure that we record the game, every single frame, so you can do the rewind. Without Martin I’m not here talking about it. You need a team to be creative.
But again, we just had a problem. The game wasn’t fun. The flow was broken every 15 seconds. With the rewind feature, suddenly it worked.
GamesBeat: I’ll throw in a little context around what’s going on in the game industry lately. We see so many big companies working on sequels, or working on remakes. Maybe they’re investing in new IP, but they’re no longer launching brand new games and franchises. They’re sticking with the tried and true. Of course, the biggest game of 2025 is going to be Grand Theft Auto number six.
Venture capitalists came into the game industry in the last few years, the last five or so. Their mission was to fund a lot of game startups that could produce original titles. That was theoretically supposed to happen, but I wonder what became of that. That’s one part of my question. The other is, how do you see the opportunity for being creative in big companies and small companies?
Desilets: On the venture capital question, we need money to make games. There’s money out there, and eventually it cycles through. It will come back. I hope there’s confidence in us, that we’ll make money at the end of the cycle. That’s always been the question. Do we make money in the end?
As to the difference between big and small studios, where do you find it–personally, I’m the same guy I was at Ubisoft. I don’t really care. Just say what you have to say and push your team and dream. In the big teams it will be different. You’ll have to cope more with the political side of things. But the reality is, it’s all about you. How do you overcome your own personal fears and make the proposal? “I may have something.” The size of the team, I feel, is irrelevant.
This may sound weird, but in some ways it’s even tougher in smaller teams, because they’re all your friends. In big teams–I remember I had a discussion with a creative director, a former Ubisoft guy, who was on a big, big team. I don’t know how many thousands of people. But he said that was great, because he could cut a feature and not have to care, because he didn’t know the people working on it. On a smaller team you know everyone. You know their wives and kids and dogs. Every decision you make, there’s a little personal thing attached to it.
Are you creative and fearless, whatever the size of the team? That’s how it should be. But it’s a lot of work, a lot of personal work that you have to go through.
Browne: It’s interesting that you mention Grand Theft Auto VI. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge amount of creativity every time Rockstar does something. It’s not rinse and repeat. They’re just creating new stuff. There are some similarities, and people like similarity in that. But I wouldn’t say that there’s a problem in the creativity, particularly within that game. I’m certainly looking forward to it.
When we talk about small and large teams, that’s the thing. You can be a jack of all trades on a small team. You can have a lot of creative input. When you end up on a big team, you have a smaller scope to focus on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be just as creative. You have to be more creative in that place. What I do find in bigger teams–people working on something that isn’t game design want to have input on game design. On a smaller team it’s much easier to have an impact on the game design, to have your voice heard. It’s generally harder in bigger teams, like Ubisoft with 1,000 people working–at least when I was working there on Assassin’s Creed, it was harder to get your voice heard on some things.
But that’s also because if every voice has to be heard, the game is never going to come out. The release date isn’t going to change. But it’s always a tricky one. Jack of all trades on a small team, or be–you said something about being a sniper. Can you talk about that?
Creativity among an army of snipers
Desilets: In big teams you need an army of snipers. Everybody has one thing to do, and they’re really precise. They’re the best at doing shaders for snow. I’m not joking. They’re really good at that. You need somebody else to do the other shaders. On a smaller team you’re more like a shotgun. You might do all the shaders, and also a bit of game design, because you’re really good at this portion. I hire shotgun masters instead of snipers. That’s the analogy.
GamesBeat: On the creative process and how you get to the best ideas–we asked about your creative muse, but who’s your creative foil? Who is the person you argue with? Patrice, you’re both CEO and creative director. Do you argue with yourself? Your investors? In a smaller company, maybe the investors are running the show. But who’s the person you have to convince to go forward with your creative ideas?
Desilets: Personally, I need to convince my team. But it’s true that I have two hats. I’ve never been the sort of creative guy who says, “I’ve changed my mind…” The important part of game-making for me is to eventually ship a game. You have to ship it. It’s really important! Otherwise what’s the point? You have to finish the experience to get it to people. It’s always a co-creation, a video game. It’s us proposing stuff, and then the gamers are finishing the experience. They do what they want with it. You have to let it go. You have to ship it. Even if I have the two hats, there’s still a budget and time constraints and people.
I’m arguing with the team most of the time. Although I don’t know if “arguing” is the word. It’s a strong word in English. You have to test. I make sure, at the studio–you organize your work around making sure you can make decisions. But as a good leader, it’s important to listen. Often we think it’s about talking and selling, and it is, but you have to listen. Listen to the crowd. The first audience is your team. Trying to understand their problems with what you’re trying to make. I feel like people often don’t listen enough.
Browne: Once your game is out there, that isn’t always necessarily the end. Then you’re listening to the players. They’re not your foil, but they’re your biggest fans and your biggest critics at the same time.
From my experience, particularly at Avalanche, we have a group of creative directors. They’re my peers. They’re my collaborators and my foils. They’re constantly challenging me with my ideas, my suggestions, but they’re also supporting me as well. That’s the thing. It can’t be a constant fight all the time or it’s never going to work. You’ll never get on. That’s not going to be fun. Thankfully I have a separate CEO and studio manager to have as a foil in some ways. But normally it’s a collaborative experience with my peers.
Desilets: I have a new girlfriend, and she doesn’t play games at all. It’s been amazing because of that. She doesn’t know how to control a third-person camera. So I watch her play a lot. She was watching me play my game the other night, and she was asking questions. And I think, “But it’s so obvious!” Maybe it’s not? She’s my new muse on game-making. She has no clue how a UI works. Things like, you’re supposed to look at the health bar. That’s the core, right? To her it doesn’t exist.
GamesBeat: There’s that interesting contrast between what you experience with a controller in your hands and what someone looking over your shoulder sees. Parents often watch their kids and think, “That’s pretty horrifying, what’s happening there?” And the kid thinks, “I’m just solving a problem.” There are very different experiences you can have.
When you’re gearing up and looking to be inspired–maybe you don’t have an idea at the beginning. What is your process for being creative? It was very interesting to watch the Naughty Dog documentary about The Last of Us Part II. Neil Druckmann just goes up in front of the whole team and says, “This is what we’re going to do next.” From there he describes The Last of Us Part II. I thought that was interesting, but there had to be a lot of stuff that preceded that moment.
Browne: Where does creativity come from–it’s like asking, “What’s fun?” For me, I’m a big consumer of other games, a big consumer of movies, TV shows, that kind of thing. Books as well. Patrice talked about that idea of the rewind. It can come from anywhere. Most of my ideas come from being in the shower. It’s somewhat of a cliche, but I guess it’s something to do with early morning, well-rested, suddenly you think, “Oh, that would be cool.”
Desilets: There is a reason for that. It’s hot water on this side of the brain. No, it’s true! I have the same thing. I’ve read about it. Hot water hitting there opens up the doors.
Browne: And then it’s all about thinking ahead, trying to think ahead. Particularly in this day and age of triple-A. You can’t just have an idea for a cool game. Anyone can come up with an idea for a cool game. I suppose this is a bit with the foil as well. A lot of it is, you have to do so much around user research and that kind of thing. It’s a cool idea, but is it a cool idea for two people? Or is it a cool idea for millions of people? How many people want to play that?
I’m trying to work my crystal ball about what’s going to be fun in the future. From a creativity point of view, it’s just a question of the current trends. That’s going to be old in a couple of years. It’s trying to predict future trends. It’s looking at the way the market’s going. These are very dry and dull kinds of things. But it’s also looking at what might be a hot topic in modern media. It’s trying to cater to an attention span that’s increasingly going down to zero. It’s so hard. TikTok, I just don’t get TikTok, but I understand today’s kids do. That’s really tough as well.
Desilets: It’s like Wayne Gretzky said. You have to go where the puck is going to be, not where it is. Personally, I think about games almost every single second of my life. What I mean by that, I tend to analyze life as a game, because it is. It’s just that eventually you die for real. Playing with pipes in Prince of Persia is because there were pipes in the office. I’m like, “What if?” Ancestors is like reading a book about evolution and realizing, “That’s an RPG.” Stealing from that. Assassin’s Creed is all about people. Being in a crowd at a Montreal Canadiens game, trying to get to the concessions to buy a beer. I’m maneuvering around people. That’s kind of fun.
My muse, how I get my ideas, is just trying to transpose real life into games. Stuff that I like that isn’t out there in the game industry yet. I read a lot of historical stuff. For me history is like a fantasy world. I did a talk a couple of years ago about the fact that we’re all mutants. We complain about stuff that’s amazing. Yesterday I was complaining that I was jet lagged. I’d just arrived from Montreal on a plane and I was complaining. For our ancestors 100 years ago, that’s teleportation. You get in a tube and seven hours later you’re on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. My ancestors from France took three months on a boat to get to Montreal. If they survived.
I just feel like we’re totally disconnected. Just reading a book about history for me is like Final Fantasy, if you think about it. I dig in looking for stuff that’s not out there yet. We did a game in Jerusalem. You’re not supposed to do that. We did a game about the Italian Renaissance. There are a lot of real, human, adult subjects out there that you can tap into, and then you’ll be alone. When you’re alone in this field, eventually you’ll find your audience, your public. That’s my point of view.
GamesBeat: What, for you, is the fine line between creativity and inspiration, and then doing something derivative, something that maybe isn’t as interesting as an original work? There are only so many kinds of shooter games, maybe, that can possibly exist, but we’re still coming up with lots of them. What do you see that’s good and bad in the industry on the creative side?
Browne: To the point about shooters, that’s an interesting way of looking at it. Someone, two years ago, I don’t know the exact story, but they were washing their patio or washing their car and thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a game about power-washing things?” Power Wash Simulator isn’t exactly a shooter, but from that perspective–I wanted to come back on the question of, is there a finite number of shooters? Probably, but there’s always people always coming up with new ideas. Thinking about different ways to approach things.
GamesBeat: Is it frustrating to see things get copied out in the market?
Browne: It depends. If something is copied and it’s not a good copy, or it’s not adding–I don’t know. There will always be things, and not just within games–there are constant lawsuits about people copying music. What is a copy and what isn’t? If it’s inspired by something, if it’s creating something new and fun to play, there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s the difference between an homage and a blatant copy, I suppose?
Desilets: Everything is a remix. Nothing comes out of a total epiphany. It just doesn’t work like that, at all, ever. Our brain is about taking information and saving it for us so we can use it to survive. We’re big apes in the end. If you say, “I’m not going to copy fire, I’m going to do something else,” you’re going to die. There’s nothing wrong with remixing stuff. Returnal is an amazing example of reusing things to create something new. You shouldn’t be ashamed of doing another amazingly good shooter. If it’s well-crafted, it just takes that one little twist.
GamesBeat: That takes us to the subject of AI and how it can affect creativity. What do you think is going to happen in the wake of these big changes across tech and games?
Browne: Obviously a super loaded question. AI should be seen as a tool. It shouldn’t be there to replace things. But it can make our lives a lot easier. I’m not here to say we should use AI for everything, but to make a process faster, to help generate some inspiration, that’s good. To replace someone, to replace a concept artist, that’s a terrible idea. I don’t believe that AI is going to be able to be used in that way, and I don’t believe it should be, personally.
I don’t think AI is killing creativity, because you have to be creative to use the prompts. The point of using AI to speed up processes–I honestly think we’re not going to get rid of it. We should embrace it. But we shouldn’t use it to replace people’s jobs, absolutely not.
There are going to be ways of using it in games to make things more fun. You might create limitless conversation options in games, things like that. Making certain dynamic experiences could be a lot of fun with AI, if done in the right way, without removing the purpose of a mission designer. Those crafted experiences still need to be there. Otherwise it’s not going to be fun. That would be my impression.
Desilets: If I put my CEO hat on, the last couple of years, the last two years, I’ve had to deal with AI coming into the studio. I had to deal with the personal effects. Some people said, “Why am I here, then?” Really. They were struggling with their personal journey, I would say. That, for me, is the real challenge. I think you’re right. There is a personal aspect, a spice that we as human beings put in with our experiences, what we like and don’t like. That can’t be replaced by AI. It’s another tool. Deep down we need meaning between ourselves when we play a game. It can’t be explained.
The other day, though, I asked for 75 different variations of a character. Boom, I had it in 20 minutes. Drawing them would take a lot longer. If I want something very precise, I’d rather talk to people than to prompts. But it’s there and it’s not going away. That’s for sure.
GamesBeat: One of the most interesting books that’s come out on the subject was Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar. One thing he mentions there is the creative brain trust that Pixar had. They were the decision-makers. They would tackle problems like, “Is this movie coming out the way we wanted it to? Does it have to be rebooted? Is there a major change in direction that we need to make?” In your own processes, how do you address those kinds of decisions? Who are the people in the brain trust that have to be involved in those big decisions?
Desilets: I have the two hats, so I’m stuck. I have the final say inside Panache. But I talk to my team often, if not all them. I play the game with them. We try to have as many team meetings as possible where I don’t just go to one side and think about stuff and come back and say, “This is what the game is.” I’m always brainstorming with them.
I organize my week around that idea. Last Friday there was a play session. The team stopped and played the game. Then they came back with a bunch of comments on their experiences. Tuesday morning I do the review where I play the game in front of everyone and say what I like and don’t like. We can argue. “It’s this. It’s that. Have you thought about this?” Again, I’m trying not to be in a creative silo. As much as possible, this is how I try to do it.
Browne: It works for Pixar. It works for some. I’ve had the privilege of working in the U.K., in France, and in Sweden. Working in Sweden is quite different. There’s a lot more design by committee. There are good points and bad points to that. It depends on the size of the committee. I’ve been on teams where the whole team has a say, or wants a say, and it’s great. I want to hear what everyone wants to say. But there has to be a small group of people who make that decision. They have to stand by that decision and own that decision. That’s where the brain trust comes from. We haven’t done that, enacted that in any of the companies I’ve worked in. You could argue about a group of game directors on one of the big Assassin’s Creed games, maybe. But there are still other people who are pulling strings, making some of the decisions.
It would be great to work out a way of doing that, but a huge amount of trust is needed there. Not just from investors or the CEO, but also from the team. To do that you have to build up that trust. You have to deliver things. These days now, so often a game gets launched, and unless it’s a live game, sometimes that team is scattered to the winds. Then you have to build that trust again. That’s one of the bonuses of working on live games. But not all teams work well on live games. They can do a game in development and launch a game, but that’s not necessarily the best team to work as a live team as well.
GamesBeat: Something else that came up in Catmull’s book: how do you build a creative culture in your team?
Desilets: For me it’s pretty clear. I’m always the same guy, all the time. This is how I can cope with being the Assassin’s Creed dude. I don’t care, but it opens doors. I try to show everyone that you can be who you are and not be afraid. When you name your company Panache, it’s right there. I think naming your company is important. It’s the culture, somehow. To me it’s to have panache, to be different. It’s digital and it’s games. I’m not doing multimedia.
The leaders must represent the culture, share it, and try to change people’s minds a bit. Not too much, because you want to change yourself as well. But that’s how I did it at Panache. Represent the culture as much as possible.
Browne: Further from what I was saying before, you have to build up trust with the team. The team needs to trust you and you need to trust the team. When people bring forward ideas you listen to them. You feedback on them. If you don’t use those ideas, you explain why. What you don’t want to do is shoot down ideas, and then that billion-dollar idea doesn’t come forward later because there’s no trust.
Building a creative culture–circling back to what we started with, everyone is creative. The programmers, the artists. The finance people are creative about problem-solving and getting around taxes. Getting that creative culture, like Patrice said–the leaders need to set a good example, but it isn’t just about the leaders. It’s a team mentality. It has to be a collaborative experience, from a small team to a multinational team.
Question: You mentioned personality. Taking an example of something like Blizzard and World of Warcraft, how important is it to keep a healthy and open communication with the community, especially with a project as big as that is? To keep the trust of the community and keep them coming back.
Desilets: That’s a new team member, the community. You have to listen to them. You have to explain some things. They don’t know. Let’s be real. We love them, but they don’t know. Every day on my team we say, “If only they knew how tough this is.” Even among ourselves, we say to each other, “Why don’t you do this?” “Well, it’s because of this.” Sometimes the community will tell you, “Just do this,” and they don’t know how tough that is, how many pieces are needed to put together that puzzle.
Listening to the community–again, see it as another team member. The end users are the co-creators of the experience you’re trying to make. You need to explain to them just like you would to the other team members. You can’t please everyone. Some people don’t like the Beatles. Some people won’t like the decisions you make. That’s life.
Question: I wanted to ask about using AI NPCs in triple-A games. It seems that it’s a new thing. From one side, a lot of people want to have it, because they get bored with NPCs that only say a few things. But from another side, it seems that the triple-A studios are the last that are going to use this, because they’re afraid of breaking the immersiveness of their storytelling. How do you think we can solve this kind of problem?
Browne: I don’t think there’s a want in the industry to just use AI on everything. It’s a big buzzword at the moment. AI has been around for tens of years, but this deep learning, machine learning, which is being called AI all the time, that’s the thing that’s constantly on the news right now. Using it as a tool to make a game, absolutely. Using it as a tool to make content for our games, I think we have to be more careful with it.
The end result, players may get even more interesting experiences. But it might become a more dull one as well. You can’t control it as well. You still need mission designers, narrative designers, to make that crafted experience, to enact those emotions. I’m not sure, other than disgust you might feel from AI behaving quite badly–I’m not sure you’d get that. Certainly not at the moment. AI is not going to replace creativity, or I don’t think it will. It will make processes faster, but I really don’t see it.
Desilets: It’s like motion capture. I’m an old monkey. I’m turning 50 in two weeks. Motion capture around 2000, we said, “We’re gonna do mocap on everything! It’s going to be awesome! So much faster!” Then we realized it has to come back. We need to clean it up. That’s a process. We lost some control, so we went back to keyframing animation. “For this scene I really need this hand there and this foot here.” It didn’t replace traditional animation in the entire industry. We use mocap and also keyframe, at least at my studio.
I feel like AI is the same thing in the end. It will be one of the many tools we have to create better experiences for you and for us. But it is, right now, the buzzword. VR was a buzzword a few years ago. There’s always a buzzword and we think that’s it, until the next one.
GamesBeat: It’s interesting to look at where AI technology is at right now. We have large language models, and they’re dumping encyclopedias into these language models. One result is the perception that they’re intelligent. They can have conversations now. You can put that into a game character and it will seem like they can have a conversation with you. But if your character is a blacksmith, you don’t necessarily want an entire encyclopedia in them. You want things that a blacksmith might know, that they would want to talk about. You’d still have more than a few things that they could say, but you wouldn’t have an endless amount.
The question is, if you reduce the LLM down to just so much information, is the net result going to be an intelligent conversational character? Or does it become just a big pile of data about blacksmithing, and you don’t get an interesting conversation? These things have to be solved, and I don’t think we’re there yet. I haven’t seen a demo of an interesting blacksmith yet.
Desilets: And what would be the goal of having a four-hour conversation with a blacksmith? I don’t want to talk to the blacksmith that much. I want to go on my adventure. We’ve done tests on how many answers a player wants to hear before they move on. It’s three or four. Your brain says, “Okay, done, move on.”
We’re talking about creativity. That’s what we have here. Two homo sapiens sapiens having a conversation, trying to find ideas and solutions. Now we have a blacksmith. We all dream of that blacksmith now. It’s beautiful. We had a moment. You can say you were there at Reboot 2024, the last question of that panel. We all saw a blacksmith talking to you for four hours. Mic drop.
Question: You could convince that blacksmith to go and fight with you. And then convince others, and maybe you start a riot in the town.
Desilets: Yes! If you have the system that connects to that discussion, where you have NPCs that can follow you! Which AI doesn’t do. See the point? You have one conversation, you have another idea, boom, that’s another folder.
Browne: Another $20 million.
Desilets: But you’re totally right. It could happen like that. For sure, it’s an opportunity. AI is an opportunity. It’s a tool, and eventually we’ll do amazing stuff with it.
Disclosure: The organizers of Reboot paid my way to Dubrovnik, where I moderated three sessions.