Series AI has unveiled its Rho Engine, an AI-driven tool that automates many of the processes of game development.San Francisco-based Series AI launched the Rho Engine as an AI tool that can improve every part of game development, said Pany Haritatos, CEO of Series AI, in an interview with GamesBeat.
The Rho Engine stands as the industry’s first AI-native, multi-modal full-stack game development platform, poised to revolutionize the way games are created, powered by generative AI, Haritatos said.
“At Series AI, we’re redefining the game development process with the introduction of the Rho Engine,” said Haritatos. “Our platform empowers developers to bring their ideas to life faster and more efficiently than ever before. The Rho Engine is not just a tool; it’s a creative suite equipped with state-of-the-art AI generators and copilots, designed to streamline every aspect of game creation.”
With a rapid surge in momentum, Series AI is spearheading the development of multiple games simultaneously, showcasing the company’s dedication to innovation and excellence. The unveiling of the Rho Engine at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024 promises to demonstrate the platform’s prowess and potential to transform the gaming landscape.
“We have a small ambition to basically disrupt the entire games industry. And we’re doing that by building a first-of-its-kind, end-to-end multimodal game generation engine using generative AI,” Haritatos said. “We really empower every part of the game creation process.”
Also Read: How AI and other tech are accelerating game development
By multimodal, he means that every asset that you might need in the game can be created with a generator that the company has created.
“We can generate textures, backgrounds, meshes, sound effects, scripting, character, designs, story narrative, whatever it is,” he said. “We’ve essentially done the R&D work to put together a technology capability that unlocks that. Every aspect of the game is plugged into a generator.”
While it may be possible for AI tools to enable one developer to do the work of ten, and for new indie game developers to benefit from this tool, Haritatos is first focused on providing tools for expert game developers who already has a track record.
The Rho Engine
He said the Rho Engine represents a paradigm shift in game content development, enabling small development teams to generate all essential systems required for building immersive virtual worlds. From audio and scripting to environments and game mechanics, the Rho Engine delivers unmatched versatility without compromising on quality.
The Rho Engine is a proprietary technology that the company is building internally to enable the creation of the best AI games, Haritatos said.
“We have designed it for creators, with humans in the loop. This is about giving a suite of tools and capabilities to expert game designers to enable them to bring their vision to life in a way that wouldn’t have been possible even a year ago,” Haritatos said. “Our North Star is how do we get to a place where we can increase 1,000 times the productivity of every person using our tools.”
That means he wants a team of two or three people to be able to build a game that is 1,000 times bigger than the game they would have been able to do two or three years ago.
“We do that by extracting all the high friction, expensive, slow processes of a traditional game studio and finding ways to get AI to power those capabilities. So whether that is generating art assets or creating an outline over like a 300,000-word story, and then turning that into these playthroughs. We’ve figured out how to get AI to power the entire system. So we built something like 20 custom generators for every type of asset that you might need as a game creator. And then we built this entire suite of tools on top of that, enabling this very high-order creative process where you’re not getting bogged down by worrying about shaders, or C+ code, or what the bits and bytes are.”
Instead, he said, developers will be discussing characters and scenes and story beats and how these things weave together. And then the AI builds the content for you, he said. The tech is platform agnostic.
Big supporters
Series AI’s vision and innovation have attracted the attention of industry heavyweights, securing support from prominent backers such as A16z, Bitkraft, and F4 Fund. The company’s expansion has been further bolstered by strategic executive hires, including Drew Boortz, former growth equity investor and Nexon VP, as well as Michael Cinquemani, former chief content officer for Fusebox Games, and Fernando Guardiola, former Scopely art director.
As Series AI showcases the capabilities of the Rho Engine at GDC 2024, the company is inviting potential partners and collaborators to explore the platform’s potential and engage in discussions for future collaborations. Interested parties can schedule meetings with the Series AI team by contacting gdc@series.ai.
For more information about Series AI and the Rho Engine, visit series.ai and follow the company on LinkedIn for the latest updates.
Origins
Haritatos formerly worked at Kongregate and Snap. He formed the company a year ago and raised $8 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and others.
Haritatos said the team was heavily inspired by Pixar, which built the world’s best 3D rendering technology, and then used that to create 10 No. 1 movies in a row. Series AI wants to use its tech powered by AI to build a game creation engine. The idea goes back about six years, but the company got started a year ago.
“My entire career has been focused on the disruption of the games industry using technology,” he said.
He said his first company focused on combining the internet and games. The second combined mobile and games and augmented reality.
He said the company is collaborating with a major strategic partner in the games and media industry, but he cannot yet disclose the partner. The goal is to innovate through technology, storytelling and creativity. The company will likely raise more money later this year, as it has hit its R&D milestones and growth trajectories, he said.
The partner has its own intellectual property, and Series AI is helping bring those IPs to life.
“We unlocked a number of exciting new factors and we are now building our 3D game generation capability. We believe we’ll be generating 3D games by the end of the year,” he said.
The Rho Engine can work with tools like Unity and Unreal. It is a kind of meta engine, with agents that can convert its content. These content generators are engine agnostic.
Building games
The company will embrace the Pixar model where the company will launch original games created by its own team. But they also have a partnership in place, similar to the Pixar-Disney partnership, where they will work very closely with this major partner.
“They have a need for a lot of games for their services. And so we’re working with them to produce a slate of original games, with the first one coming out in Q4,” he said.
A few more will come out in the six months after that, he said. The first few games will be mobile titles, but the company will likely move on to PC and console games too.
The team
The company has senior game makers who are tired of the old way of making games with more than 100 people and years of development making a game they hope players will like. Such teams have to raise a lot of money from investors.
“We really don’t think that is a sustainable model for the right amount of innovation and creative process in the industry,” he said.
The company has less than 20 people now, with three games in production. The internal team consists of people who have worked at multiple companies. It uses co-development contractors outside the company.
Will game devs believe it?
I asked how Series AI will overcome typical game developer skepticism about magical tools. Haritatos said that the partnership will be one proof point, once the company discloses its partner, which can help validate Series AI’s claims. Series AI is also hiring people that are known in the industry.
“We’ll be sharing more about the content and how it looks over the next few months,” he said. “And then I think the world can see what’s possible with this technology. It is mind blowing. I have to say that I’m still shocked that it is as good as it is. It is very much indistinguishable from traditional game development methods.”
Will this AI eliminate jobs?
Haritatos said he believes AI is going to create more jobs and it’s going to take away some during a period of change.
He said it is a time of technology disruption, like when the game industry shifted from 2D imagery to 3D, and there was a lot of anxiety about the changes and what they would mean for games. Some people will be impacted, he said, but those who are thinking about serving consumers and creating the best product experiences and use the tools most effectively will succeed.
“This technology is really just an enabler that allows people to bring visions to life. So I believe that it’s not going to take away jobs. I think it will actually create jobs. I think that even within our studio and our journey, we’re able to employ more people because it now becomes possible to make many more types of games that were not feasible before,” he said. “It was impossible to rationalize the economics before because the cost was so high. This ultimately becomes more about enabling more types of entertainment to serve more audiences. That is going to grow the industry over time.”
Asked about the current layoffs hitting the industry, he said it isn’t because of AI.
“That’s because of several years of bad decision making that is working its way through our industry and is especially affected by macroeconomic factors. AI actually is the way that we get back to growth as an industry and continue to thrive,” Haritatos said.
He said the company is taking a responsible approach to generating AI models where it needs to do so, respecting and preserving and paying for the IP of others.
“We tackle this problem by showing the industry it is possible to be innovative and build amazing technology while preserving people’s ownership of their intellectual property by paying people for their work,” he said.
To avoid copyright infringement on art, the company built its own custom AI language models with training data that it paid people to create.
“We are not a ‘push button, get a game’ technology,” he said. “We are about enabling a design vision. We start with a designer coming up with the ideas of the world environment, characters, and whatever it is that they’re interested in creating today. So they have established the high-order design. And then AI is collaborating with them to bring their vision to life. We are designer led.”
Human game designers start out with the inspiration of creating a specific game they want to make, and that part is done in a traditional way, with a team working through the idea. The tools help flesh out the idea and bring it to life.
While there is plenty of competition out there, Haritatos believes his company is the only end-to-end multimodal game creation company.
“The competition out there is the incumbent game developers are the ones who are building on a traditional game development stack where they’ve got years of investment in a powerful game engine or whatever the case may be,” he said.
The company wants to enable the tools to embrace user-generated content in the future, but it’s not part of the plan today.
Author: Dean Takahashi
Source: Venturebeat
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
