@inbook{99b2ea355f664ff3ab9c55cdfd0c6fe0,
title = "Generative AI and the Technological Imaginary of Game Design",
abstract = "The chapter explores the emergence of AI-driven tools within the digital game industry, investigating the shift from experimental applications like NVIDIA{\textquoteright}s GameGAN to production-ready tools like Ludo AI and its impact on the contemporary {\textquoteleft}technological imaginary{\textquoteright} of digital gaming. Game-making, particularly the creation of procedural complexity from a few, simple rules, has repeatedly been characterized as a magic trick, which is not fully rationalizable; the work of Jennifer Whitson shows how even game designers often view their software tools as {\textquoteleft}agential,{\textquoteright} {\textquoteleft}so complex as to be fully unknowable,{\textquoteright} and thus, {\textquoteleft}magical.{\textquoteright} The infusion of machine learning into these tools, from pre-production over asset creation to playtesting, is transforming both practitioners{\textquoteright} and players{\textquoteright} assumptions regarding game design, raising questions of authorship and neoliberally informed conceptions of creativity, changing workflows, and equitable working conditions that can be inferred from the already-observable cultural and aesthetic implications of AI in visual design work. The chapter analyzes these hopes, fears, and expectations as part of a broader {\textquoteleft}technological imaginary{\textquoteright} of game-making through a diachronic framing analysis incorporating academic and industry publications as well as {\textquoteleft}software affordances{\textquoteright} of available tools. The material corpus comprises early academic visions of AI in game design and first attempts at standardization but also grassroots experiments using general-purpose tools like GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT to create games and develop game development literacy. The analysis investigates the framing of AI-based tools in game design as a socio-technical process, foregrounding the interplay between human and non-human agents/actants and the potential risk, which only few industry practitioners currently caution against, that AI-driven tools might make game design too {\textquoteleft}frictionless{\textquoteright} and might require more playful {\textquoteleft}tinkering{\textquoteright} with or repurposing of the rapidly evolving AI tools to see beyond their {\textquoteleft}readiness-to-hand{\textquoteright} moving forward.",
author = "Stefan Werning",
year = "2024",
month = jan,
doi = "10.1007/978-3-031-45693-0\_4",
language = "English",
isbn = "978-3-031-45692-3",
series = "Creative Working Lives",
publisher = "Palgrave Macmillan",
pages = "67–90",
editor = "Fr{\'e}d{\'e}rik Lesage and Michael Terren",
booktitle = "Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production",
address = "United Kingdom",
}