Panel: To Infinity & Beyond: Where Will Technology Take us Next?

foreign [Music] [Applause] we have one more session here in this in this track room uh and it's a panel to take us to the Break um so uh I would like to invite to the stage for the last session of the day a panel to talk about um to infinity and beyond where will technology take us next now if you'd seen in the schedule that this was going to be hosted by Riley Anderson I'm afraid she's unable to be with us so I will be hosting this panel so um uh we uh we're sorry that we won't be able to

see you Riley but I will be very um pleased to uh have on stage with me uh Joanna from snack finger click uh stanislav from fuero games Alex from Red Light finance and Benjamin from solid bash so uh come to the stage please and uh take a seat and everyone here let's give them a round of applause for the last panel of the uh the morning now um I'm going to grab the other night there is yeah and then I'll stay at the uh at the podium so that there should be a enough mic so do we have four mics or four people how's that perfect and I'll use this one and then uh they're away so look thank you very much hello and welcome to the final panel of the morning session here on the tech trendsetters stage um we are going to be talking about where technology will take us next now it's been a really interesting morning people have covered Ai and web3 a little bit I'm sure we'll come back to some of that got a few questions to dive in here what I suggest we'll do to start with then

why don't we just get our panelists to introduce themselves and their background and and their own relationship with technology I'll start right down here then with Joanna we'll work our way around yeah let's tell everyone about yourself hi does this work yeah hi everyone so I'm uh Joe I'm the design director at Snapfinger click I've been in the industry for about 15 years now and uh mostly I've worked on multiplayer party games done a bit of mobile um but yeah apparently we make games that you can play on Twitch so you can stream them on Twitch type in the chat and and play along and that's what I'm currently doing amazing thank you um stands for further I'm the founder of fuero games which I founded like 10 years ago we developed both mobile and PC games one of our first was The Witcher bottle Arena Corporation with CE project red and now we are also launching our own games so I invite you to download them and play

right thank you Ben hi I'm Troy don't let that okay misleading this badge uh so my real name's Troy um I'm head of technology for uh solid bash um not going to do much time introducing myself you came here to be inspired about the future of tech and I hope you're prepared to be amazed great thank you hi my name is Alex I'm the chief technology officer at red light finance and red light Finance is all about Bridging the Gap between decentralization and real world utility especially in the game five space that's brilliant thank you range of experiences lots to talk about I'm going to start at that end again and we'll come right around um let's just take the temperature in a little bit what are the important game technologies that we should be letting people know about and talking about amongst ourselves there are so many there's so many let's let's pick a couple each so you can pick a couple I mean where do you choose from first right um VR is is slowly growing I talked about in the other panel very slow uh web3 technology is is rapidly

growing I would say in such a small amount of time that crypto has been alive uh that space alone I mean one year feels like a century um so especially with ownership digital ownership with personalization items and integrating that type of technology to allow users to have a further experience of their game and where they can go through on the next level and then just obviously from a hardware standpoint there's so many technologies that are advancing whether it comes microprocessors nanoprocessors gpus and stuff like that as well amazing yeah off to a great start story there's an I was also going to say VR yeah right right you beat me to it yeah um no like consumer prices are going to drop in that domain uh we're gonna start seeing a lot more people picking up that platform more devs are going to start getting into it we're looking at the same cusp that we saw at the early days of unity 3D where it had almost zero market share but devs were getting on board and creating experiences with it and then it just shot up out of nowhere um same thing's gonna happen on VR we're going to start seeing some platform

defining experiences that are really going to drive consumers to that platform and then more and more devs are going to be there as well making it more and more content great interesting so VR and the and the cost of of VL to the consumer that's great I'm excited for the generative Ai and how it's growing and how it will change I think not only our industry but probably the whole world because it's amazing what's the development during the last year or year and a half in this area and we can already see people starting to be using those Solutions actually in the game development for speeding up their game development creation or even I've read a post where a 13 year old using chat GPT created the text-based game so you can have you can become developers using those tools without having much of the knowledge of the industry at all so that's that's going to change a lot what's going to be happening during the next years yeah

absolutely I I I knew someone was going to bring up AI it's been a topic that's funny enough a year ago no one was talking about although people were working in that space but there wasn't much but here this morning I've heard it in almost every talk someone's referred to what AI is going to do for their industry but but Joe yeah what do you want to bring up I want to talk about cloud gaming I think because for me that's that's going to be a massive shift I think that gaming is going to go on a very similar Journey for console PC based type games that mobile did so TV is going to become like mobile phones to people they're going to be so much more than just a television we're going to be able to bring games into everybody's homes to reach audiences that we couldn't before and I think it's also going to change the way we make games because we're not going to be held back by Hardware anymore we're always going to be at the Forefront of what's technically possible and that's really going to push what we can do in gaming yeah that's interesting cloud gaming is an absolutely an interesting one I think we've kind of hit all the uh the the big topics there we've covered the little bingo card of like web3 and VR and

metaverse and kind of AI and and uh and cloud gaming all of these Technologies I think we all agree that are super interesting but for me as a consumer I'm not a game developer or a publisher I'm a gamer um what's how are these going to affect the games I play you mentioned cost is an interesting thing as well let's start here again so Joe what's your what's my experience as a gamer going to be affected by these Technologies I think with cloud gaming that's the one I'm kind of championing at the moment the as a consumer I think the obvious thing is that a lot more people are going to become Gamers whether they associate themselves that as a label or not you know the the gamer label itself is kind of interesting because people don't tend to put a label on loving movies or loving right books so much you know you can get a movie bar for you know Bookworm or whatever but typically it's just an Entertainment form that most people engage with right it's like asking the question have you heard of music yeah you know what I mean exactly now everyone's okay my hobby is listening to music you know it's it's it's going to become something that's very accessible and mainstream to people

you know I've worked with stadia and obviously stadia hasn't worked out but I told a lot of people about stadia who I knew weren't Gamers and for them it really it blew their minds the fact that they could just access console quality games in their browser and not having to Shell out hundreds of pounds for a machine that can play it that was a real game changer for people that they can actually access this and you know gaming is so popular with people's kids lots of people my age you have kids talk to me and say oh my kids love games I don't know anything about it it's coming it's going to become this family entertainment and I think from a consumer's point of view it's just introducing it to a whole new audience that that are just waiting out there that we haven't reached yet for me that's really exciting especially the kind of games that I make which have always been traditionally for people who wouldn't necessarily call them Gamers I'm really excited about the prospect of this waiting audience out there yeah absolutely um we mentioned uh you you brought out the topic of AI but either with that or any of the topics the Technologies we've

discussed what's going to be the immediate impact on sure so for your experience or basically the players experience think about uh as a player what would you like to have in if you like a game what would you like to think of like you would like to play this game like for forever because you love this experience you get into this world and then you don't want to play like four or five ten hours or 40 you want to play like almost for forever so think now about AI that a what if it could be it could be generating new levels new enemies new stories new chapters and so on on its own so that's gonna be amazing on one end think about it that for the developers it will be easier to create more content for you as a player because the cost for them will drop down right that's one thing now the other part is there can be games that can be suited just for you let's say you wake up and today I'm in a mood I want

to play like I don't know a tennis game in the space where I fight zombie aliens right you write it down and in 30 seconds your game is starting and that's actually the game that you wanted to play and that's of course it's not tomorrow but we are talking here about the future and that can be actually the future that maybe there will be no game developers anymore that made me crazy but we'll see because there might be some crazy AI that's going to be actually developing the games the virtual worlds the experiences for you On Demand right in the style or visuals or the stories that you want to play so it's mind yeah I mean I'm kind of always mindful of that with like in on Star Trek when they go to the Holodeck and they go computer I want to be a Sherlock Holmes or whatever and it just happened um actually I mean I want to take the same question to you but does anyone want to anyone else want to chip in on

any of these topics we've mentioned cloud gaming or AI do you folks have a take on all of those topics I mean a little bit I agree with you on that front AI is going to play a major part inside of games generating content as players play giving them new kinds of challenges that they weren't going to expect right we've all played against those dumb AIS they don't adapt and as soon as you figure out how to break the pattern you've got the game conquered where's the challenge there's no more fun Factor right degenerative AI is going to keep fun factor in those long lasting games even longer so yeah it's going to be a real game changer for future experiences that's good we'll come back to talk about the effect of AI on development in a second but then Troy let's stay with you what's what do you take from VR as my experience as a gamer you mentioned price which is a big thing is there anything else about the Technologies we've discussed which the gamer will immediately get an advantage from so I've been tracking VR since the 90s oh wow all right so what about that yeah right all right so it was in the 90s let's be honest okay I have seen

the people falling out of chairs out of things then projectile vomiting across the floor um I have also done that so it is not a fun experience nor do you want any sort of PR around that when you're trying to do a consumer product there are very few technologies that actually make your Gamers sick if they get it exactly and VR would be one of those kinds of platforms and that was a real struggle back in the day right it was very price prohibitive simulation sickness was a real issue there has been an amazing amount of r d being done out of the military out of other private Industries and they're starting to find the ways of keeping that simulation sickness down so like Gamers can spend more than an hour in there without getting physically sick we've also found out ways to make movement work without making people physically sick we're now learning more and more about what those capabilities and what those technical constraints are and what the opportunities are and now that the industry has figured that out that's why I'm saying like we're going to start seeing those platform defining experiences that don't make people sick that they're able to experience for a long period of time because as you said people want a game and um and that's one of the other

prohibitives like Natures about VR which are starting to disappear from that industry interesting and again I will I will bring the conversation around I don't see that but just sticking with that for a moment because that's interesting there the metaverse is another word that I hear all the time this year which maybe I didn't hear before and that's maybe got VR once again into the public Consciousness through news programs talking about what Zuckerberg's been been saying and so on I mean do we think the metaverse is going to change gaming um we we will see that the ultimate answer but I'm sure uh that that's going to be growing probably the next years but that's that's going to be combined with like the First Technology getting in like think about we are wait still waiting for the iPhone of VR let's say right so we really so it's going to be a super easy way to onboard for the people to get in and and experience it that will be also reasonably priced so it will be out there to the people right so

that's that's first thing um I think that AI can also help with driving the costs of the development of the stuff as well because then you don't need to develop every or create every tree every element and the object and then so on and animation Etc because things of that will be will be automatically generated so that's one part of that what I would add additionally outside of VR is also AR or there's like mixed real reality right because I think it before we get deep that that's my vision but before we get deep into the VR maybe AR will or the mixed reality will play a bigger role because uh I don't know there are some rumors about Apple glass and so on Etc so maybe there will be this way where we can experience the way where we are and the reality we are here but some have some additional features that will allow us to easily navigate through it right so there will

be definitely changes coming and so I'm I'm that that's like being in the industry it's being a little bit afraid because that's what happens right we have every let's say 10 years such as crazy change that basically turns the whole industry up and down so that's potentially something that will be coming with new goggles glasses or whatever it's going to be where suddenly there's going to be be popping up a new crazy big Market Etc and then additionally I think that with those Ai and those worlds Etc the web free will even become more important because then if you're going to be spending even more time within those games if you're going to be gaining stuff you're going to be collecting it Etc then you will be willing even more to own it to be able to do something with it maybe sell to give away present a gift Etc so that's something that I think that there will be the the survival like the the coming

back of the web free in even bigger when it's going to be the having the possibility to be more useful you you have the usability actually I think that's a really good point and you mentioned there all of these Technologies Technologies converge when we start talking about the potential so Alex that's a great segue back to what you're saying you you kicked us off talking about Technologies and obviously red light works in the in the the blockchain space in the weather space tell us a little bit about that what's your take on how web3 is going to come back and be big for the gamers this year sure so web3 is very interesting because currently at it at its very current state web 3 is difficult because from the traditional user experience they have to learn this entire new system yeah gas uh the education on maintaining a certain amount of a token to pay for a transaction in order to interact with the game so that way you can maybe possibly sell something it doesn't make sense for that dude that's watching an advertisement on YouTube for a game right they just want to play the game

that's where what we're trying to change is we're trying to make that user experience seamless so they can just click download on the game and not necessarily have to interact with an entire ecosystem of cryptography and gas and all of that stuff but still maintain that user ownership of the nfts that they have whether it be skins whether that be different types of in-game abilities or anything like that and then you already technically see this just not on a web 3 level if you look at steam the biggest platform for PC games they're an nft marketplace with extra steps they are if you play CS go they have skins for all of their guns and all of that stuff technically speaking that could be integrated into a blockchain within 10 minutes realistically but they don't want to do that because of the that super barrier and knowledge entry to the web 3 space yeah absolutely absolutely and and so is your sort of suggestion and solution for that the like the the wallet it just happens in the background

a person doesn't have to jump through all those things about setting up the hash key or whatever yeah so through red light for example we have what's called RNs which is red light naming service which translates your username and replaces your wallet ID with that username so as if you were just signing up for a game normally you have your your display name or your username that would act as your wallet address so if you wanted to buy an nft off me or me send something to you it would be as me as just typing in your username simple as that and then integrating that with zero gas is very essential because blockchains like ethereum for example or polygon they're starting to get in through this game five space but they still have that issue of hey we have to pay five dollars in order to do a transaction with this game which I mean try to explain that to somebody who's like a 13 year old who's trying to play a nice fun game on their mobile phone it's kind of hard that's interesting I'd like to before we move on to another topic well we've got a little time okay anyone else's take on the web free space because it's it does have you know of course some kind of high uh sort of uh

you know lots of strong opinions from people doesn't it like you know there are people who are absolutely committed to it and people who are afraid of the barriers to entry and then some people are just ideologically don't like it I mean have you been playing with nfts or you know are you going to do anything in web gaming from uh from your studio probably not it's not really something that that fits with the type of games that we make um and to be honest with you it's it's not a big interest of mine but it's been interesting to watch unfold you know the last I've gone through a lot of Trends and I can remember for example when free to play came along and that that was a big that was a big shake up to the industry and I remember the impact that it had you know virtually in such a short space of time it was like overnight you know we went from I worked for a console developer at the time who went literally from one day to another we've got to get jump on this and it and it changed the whole industry and it's it's you know the biggest games that exist today are using the free to play model and are doing very well you know so

my feeling is that I don't think web3's had quite the same impact I haven't seen it infiltrate the industry in quite the same way so I don't know but it doesn't need to necessarily to stick around and be successful I think VR is a good example of that you know it was a big thing it was really exciting lots of people got very much behind it and it's got a big following it's been very successful but it hasn't dominated the industry hasn't taken over things and I suspect that web3 will be the same it will have a home and it will have a place but I don't think it's going to change every game out there you know but it's interesting the comparison with free to play it does seem to create the same strong emotions in some people who are immediately committed to it and some people are very very hesitant um since we're you know we're against the clock I'd like to sort of shift back to talking about AI like we said it's been a huge topic huge topic this morning on stage um as well as the experience for the gamer that we've just discussed what the potentials are quite exciting it also has the potential to change how we make games as well and how it's going to change the studios one of our talks

earlier on an absolutely fascinating one said they've replaced their entire art stuff with AI and I'm sure that causes some uh yeah some some deep constellation but on the other hand they were also saying that they still need human writers to work with things maybe that isn't everyone's experience the reason I want to jump in here and talk about what's going to happen what what the current generation of AI is going to do for the developers and Publishers in the room what's going to do for businesses sure so last year I started mentoring also some early Founders and startups and one of those one of those teams they basically during December they were able to create like a game from scratch to to to release on like um Google Alpha within two weeks where all of the art that they had inside were was generated with AI so that's pretty crazy in short and half of the story which was also generated

with the use of AI so basically I think the future will change a lot right because there will be well in terms of artists it will be tough because hey the AI can create something way much quicker than you would be doing it in turn by your hand on your own Etc sure it's it's it would be your your art your you would put your ideas into that but the thing is it still would take you like one two weeks maybe to create like a masterpiece with the AI you can have like four ideas within 30 seconds and you can iterate it uh 10 times let's say and then you find something that's basically this around the same quality or maybe even better if you're like a starting artist Etc which means that a we people who will

have to get away from their egos right because it's oh I'm an artist Etc it's like the world is changing so I can use this AI as a tool to help me to show off my ideas my creativity faster there to the users to the players Etc use it as a tool don't see it as like an enemy right that's going to take my job away Etc it's more something that's going to allow me to deliver 10 times more than I would be doing normally right another tool for efficiency and kind of automation does anyone else want to LEAP in there again everyone's got so hot okay we'll go we'll go uh Alex Ben Alex Troy and then Joe yesterday yes uh so I think if AI gets developed enough to the sense where it could be to the point where it's replacing artists artists would be then replaced by storytellers so you'd have this Advanced Storyteller that maybe has an artistic background that it's able to describe to the AI exactly what they're looking for that would probably take them five to ten

minutes and the AI can generate it in 30 seconds whereas on an artistic standpoint I that might have taken weeks or hours upon hours of development creating that content editing it perfecting it whereas an AI can do that in literally seconds and they would transition to this storytelling mode where they're able to take what their vision is and artistic write it down have an AI generate that if we can get AI to that point and we're already seeing examples of this for example mid-journey is a fantastic example of taking a sentence and making something fantastic yeah absolutely true so I was going to say like most world-class organizations who are doing engineering have been using generative AI for decades okay I've been using it since 2005 to great effect the last project where we use generative AI it was for a military command and control system I'm not going to go into the details though but I will tell what the results were so we created a product for the military that was for like a command Control software there was an existing product on the market that I think it was like

if I remember the metrics was about 50 to 60 developers over four years to make two developers six months wow right and ours did all of the command and control options and theirs only did 25 of them wow and it like it is a massive Game Changer and so when we delivered that to them I remember the commander of the Warfare Center calling me up super super excited because we just delivered them a Time six Force multiplier yeah and that is again if anyone knows military Theory that's a really big multiplier yeah you put your finger in there to a degree it's about doing a lot of a lot of what we do just doing it doing it faster well you know that it's assistance in programming and all those kind of things those options have been there for a while and that's that's amazing Joe do you have a take on AI and its role in game development yeah I mean I think I think I largely agree with what's been said already I think it's it's a tool in Your Arsenal yeah and there's a lot of excitement about chat GPT and about mid-journey um but I think there are so many tools that have come along in development you

know we were told in the not by the 90s we'll only have to work four hours a day because technology is going to improve our lives so much but that's just not true we'll just keep pushing ourselves to do more and then we'll be building these tools that that do stuff that used to be hard if you look at animation and everything used to have to be hand drawn frame by frame and now the quality of Animation is that they focused on other things that used to be hard things like hair and stuff like that that it's just we're just going to find other places to put ourselves into to keep improving I I'm not sure if these you know chat GPT and mid-journey are these big game changes necessarily they're really exciting so I think they brought something to the public Consciousness very quickly very in a very accessible way but I think something like Unity was a bigger Game Changer in terms of speeding up development making development more accessible for people that that was a huge shift because suddenly everyone can be a Game Dev and they really have been right you know you've got those little Indies that have made breakout hits that would not have been possible before that so I think

anything that can help people develop games you know to actually add something to them and get that more accessible is a good thing I don't think it's going to take all our jobs though I think it's just the nature of what we do will will change right exactly and just another tool and you're right I think a lot of the the generative AI at the moment is getting the headlines because it's a nice novelty to be able to generate a picture and show it on the news or something but but actually you know it's used as a tool to have on a second screen debugging code for you or something is great right um you know we're kind of out of time I've got a flashing light here and I know that the people in the audience still want to have uh lunch we could probably talk on this I think we've covered most of the Hot Topic areas uh we could we could talk a lot further so what I'm going to suggest is that we um see if there's any questions from the audience maybe we'll take one or two questions and if if not we'll break you guys can get your go and get your lunch and we'll take from there do we have any questions from the audience one of the uh one one there and one there we'll take these two questions however I have all the mics I think oh you got no there is one there is one thanks so Samantha will bring you a mic we've got a a question here and then and then one down here with the unity teacher so I think there was a in that row there there we

go okay hi sorry I just wanted to maybe dig in a little bit more about how AI you guys see AI affecting the the industry because I think we kind of touched on it where a lot of people talk about it's going to ruin the industry we're not going to have people it would be really good to get perspective on what everybody's opinion is on that because I think it really is an opinion kind of type of scenario so I think I mentioned earlier um it depends how you how you personally see that right because you can see it as an enemy something that you have to fight against because it does your job way much faster Etc right but you can think of it as a tool that helps you to do your job twice faster and maybe even better than you did it before so I think it's an uh uh personal aspect but on the other hand it's like you can have your own opinion but the World's Gonna Change so at some

moment you're gonna stay alone with that opinion and well the only thing that's gonna be there for you is either adapt or die right kind of I think so I guess is happening is the thing I would do it does someone else can take that yeah so I my point on this one would be like it's not going to replace anyone's jobs it's going to augment your jobs you're still gonna have to learn the fundamentals of your craft if you're an artist you know you have to do the fundamentals you gotta do the pen and paper parts you've got to build up your your craft and then AI is going to augment you if you're a programmer you're going to need to know how to code you're going to have to understand the engineering involved you're the design you're going to understand those architectural patterns and design patterns that we use in gaming because as great as AI is it will lie to you and this is the term I like to use until Engineers sometimes it's wrong and if you're not smart enough to know that right you're screwed yeah yeah yeah it's sorry this is I was I was experimenting with the Jack gbt getting

it to summarize some popular movies for me and it the description of what Superman was about was completely wrong and I thought if someone was using this to someone it had to think like apparent apparently he yeah I won't even go he kills someone over Niagara Falls I think it was conflating a lot of different stories but yeah you have to know you have to see the movie for yourself to know what the things does anyone else want to sleep in there yeah I think you know it's it's I don't like as everyone else has said it's not going to replace your job and I think right as it stands right now what is being produced by these tools it might be doing it quicker than a human but it's not doing it better than a human it's it's not producing something that was beyond the concept of Our Own brains you know and for us to keep pushing and keep going further and keep being creative and doing more and doing better it's still on us yeah it's not psychic because it's not it's not going to be there not yet uh do you wanna I mean AI is great it's a great tool to use to start your journey I mean if you're looking for something as inspiration it's fantastic

plug in a few words you get something you can start on that journey and there's no reason why a qualified artists like you say who has the fundamentals can't utilize that and change it as it's going and utilize it as a true tool and what it is just to help you with your journey and what you're trying to do for your job yeah absolutely perfect thank you let's um let's grab them I can the unity t-shirt that was the was the last question and we'll take your your question and then we'll we'll wrap up I think so thank you yeah oh yeah um for Joe mainly because you brought it up I'd love to hear the other sorts as well obviously with stadia shutting down rest in peace um what do you think about kind of the future of the front ends for cloud gaming you know we've got the tech what does the business model look like going forward how do you get those players to see your games on things like TVs you know is it going to be continuing with things like Game Pass where it hooks into that library or GeForce now or it's pulling from Steam you know is it individual games on App Stores is it something else future it's a very good question and yeah it's hard it's hard to predict for

sure but I think gaming has always had this advantage to be able to look at the other media that's kind of gone on that Journey before you know music movies TV um I think it's a big risk actually to to gaming um of all the exciting things that cloud gaming brings it from a business point of view is risky because how do you make money from it if we're going to move to a say subscription-based service which is what movies and TV seem to be doing in music you know there's always that fear of well how am I going to make money at this price as I understand it Netflix has never been profitable Spotify has never been profitable so what does that mean for us and the future but at the same time I feel it's inevitable that it will go on that same Journey that it will be there will be a bunch of different people with their own subscription Services very much like Netflix and Disney plus and HBO and all of those getting the games on the different the different ones and how people will make money from it I'm

not sure but they might you know we might see as we have seen with movies and and music a lot of investment in it I think it's going to become I think it is going to become big for a long time before it becomes problematic so we'll have to watch and see what happens with movies and music I think and see if how that goes but yeah it's a I know people are nervous about the idea of things like only getting paid based on how many minutes people have played your game and stuff like that and and that may really fundamentally change the way we make games there may be certain types of games that just aren't viable anymore and that would be sad but I've gone through that myself I used to work on the buzz games and they just didn't mesh with internet because we made you know the Music Quiz the movie quiz as soon as PS3 came along and you could access things online that became irrelevant it just didn't fit anymore you had to do it another way so yeah we will adapt and we will we will learn that yeah I suspect it's going towards a subscription-based

service that you know everyone can kind of access a library of things interesting does anyone else want to leaping on cloud gaming in that case let's leave it there so you folks can get your get your lunch thank you very much for your questions uh Round of Applause please for Alex Troy [Music] [Applause]