How AI Tools Can Help With Creating a Game

Artificial intelligence is making its way into our daily lives. At Seppo we also explore the opportunities that using AI tools offer and want to share our findings. So, if you are looking for inspiration for your leaning game, this article is definitely for you!
game design

How AI Tools Can Help With Creating a Game

Who doesn’t know the feeling – you want to create a funny and engaging learning game. You know it would be great to have a funny, exciting, or mysterious story for it. You want your gameboard to be mind-blowing and tasks to be challenging, yet fun and motivating. But somehow you’re stuck or you don’t know where to start. 

So what does AI have to do with this, you ask? Well, let’s explore how AI tools might just be able to help you with your “white paper fear” and help create this superb learning game you’re aiming at.

Definition of AI – and the different forms of AI

AI is short for “Artificial Intelligence”. It’s a branch of computer science that develops intelligent machines, simulating human-like behaviours and cognitive processes. AI has developed very quickly in the past few years and is already able to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. We can divide the existing types of AI relevant for creating a game into two categories:

  1. Text-based AI
  2. Image-based AI

In the following let’s take a closer look at both of them separately. 

Text-based AI

Text-based AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence that uses natural language processing to understand and generate human-like text, enabling applications like chatbots and language translation. There are several tools out there that can be described as text-based AI. The biggest and most known tool at the moment is ChatGPT from OpenAI. The tool describes itself as follows: 

“ChatGPT is an advanced AI language model that can understand and generate human-like text. It can engage in conversations, provide information, answer questions, and assist with a wide range of tasks across various domains.”

Interesting ChatGPT features:

  • Free of charge
  • Easy sign in: You can use an existing Google account to sign in/ don’t have to make a separate account
  • Multiple language options: ChatGPT can understand and produce answers in any language that you can write in. For example, it works pretty well in Finnish. The tool might be rather weak in some languages though and works best in English.

However, one downside to ChatGPT’s popularity is that it might occur that you temporarily can’t sign in, due to an overload of users already signed in.

How to use text-based AI for game creation – benefits and limitations

Text-based AI can help you in many ways with your game creation. For example it can help you with the so-called “white paper fear”, a feeling of uncertainty or hesitation, when faced with a new project or task – not knowing where or how to begin. This is especially often the case when it comes to storytelling.

Writing a good story can be challenging and time-consuming. It also requires a certain amount of creativity. This is where AI can help. Assuming you already know the topic and the target group/ future players of your game, you can ask your AI tool to give you tips and ideas. 

AI can help you with the story ideation process in many ways:

  • Design a story arc, with a beginning, middle, and end
  • Develop characters or plot points
  • Help you get ideas, what type of story would fit the topic/ target group of your game
  • Create realistic dialogue to bring characters to life (helping learners to connect to the game on an emotional level)
  • Help integrate gamified elements, such as points, badges & leaderboards into the narrative
  • And much more…

You can always specify your questions further to modify the answers you get from e.g. ChatGPT. For example “Shorten this story to 100 words” or “Rewrite this story, so it fits for HR-managers”.

Further, text-based AI can help you with ideas for tasks. Let’s assume for example you are doing a game about ESG issues, related to the “environmental” aspect. You want to create a task about packaging material and their waste. You could ask your AI tool:

  •  …to come up with a number of different tasks or activities related to the topic. A possible answer for our example could be “Choosing packaging materials”. Remember that you can always specify your question after the given answer, e.g. “Provide me with additional tasks” (Be aware: the tool might suggest tasks that do not fit Seppo.)
  • …to give you a specific task. In our example, it could be “Give me a multiple choice task related to leftovers” – and you might get “Which recyclable material is often recyclable?” as a suggestion
  • Note: Check your facts elsewhere! You cannot trust that the answers provided by the AI tool are facts. If you are an expert in the field, it is easier to analyse if the provided answer is true or not. Otherwise, use other reliable sources about your topic.

There are many more things text-based AI tools can help you with. A few more things that might be useful for creating your next game:

  • Synonyms (to give you ideas for game names OR to help you avoid using the same word over and over)
  • To translate sayings/ proverbs into other languages
  • Initial Game creation/ ideation: dividing up the topic/ identifying themes related to the topic. E.g. “What issues are part of ESG” 
  • Help with Agenda, lesson plans or structure of a training, e.g. what kind of activities could be included, and how/ where does your game best fit into the schedule

Be aware though, that text-based AI tools are best for getting ideas, not a ready text to copy and paste into your game. You never know what the AI produced text is based on – from what authors, websites, etc. So there might be some issues with copyrights.

Image-based AI – benefits and limitations

Image-based AI tools, as the name suggests, use artificial intelligence to analyse visual content like images and videos. Those tools provide help with tasks such as object detection, image classification, and image generation. Tools to create audio and video material are developing quickly, but are currently still limited. Popular image-based AI tools are for example DALL-E from OpenAI and Midjourney. OpenAI describes DALL-E as “an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.” Midjourney defines itself as “an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.” 

For game creation, image-based AI tools can be for example used to:

  • Create graphics (without the ability to draw), e.g. for a game board
  • Make visual elements, to add into your Seppo game to bring it alive.

Similar to text-based AI tools, there are some downsides to image-based AI tools, especially when it comes to legal issues, such as copyrights. Image-based AI tools are often combining the work of several artists to create something new. However, it’s mostly not possible to check what works the AI produced image is based on. Therefore, when wanting to be on the safe side, similar to text-based AI, it’s better to use it for ideation – for example get ideas how a game board for your game could look like. Then, you could use other tools, such as e.g. Canva or Illustrator, to then actually create the game board yourself.

Last, but not least, remember not to feed any sensible data into the AI tool, such as people’s names, passwords, company internal secret information or similar. Even though the AI tool might not use the entered data actively, the data is often stored somewhere and might be used to develop the tool further.

Get ready to press “Start” on this AI-powered adventure, when creating your next learning game with Seppo. Game on!

Would you like to give gamification a try and see what it can offer your organisation?

Click to contact us for more information here! Contacting us is not binding.

Or contact Katerina Eskelinen, Sales Manager, for more information. You can reach her via email: katerina.eskelinen@seppo.io or phone: +358 40 528 4828.

Resources: