"We're not in the business of speculation, or generating NFTs, or trading, or pay-to-play, or any of that stuff," said Midwood, "but we don't really discriminate, so if you want to make that kind of stuff with you can."Īside from supporting other developers as middleware, Anything World wants to use its software for its own consumer products, including a Twitch extension. And when it comes to controversies around "the metaverse," Midwood says the company "sees potential for web3 in gaming" but doesn't have plans to start minting NFTs itself. "Īnother reason Midwood thinks Anything World will be well-received as game development middleware is that rigging models is not the average 3D animator's favorite part of the job-it's the boring part. I don't think people are going to be replaced. "So that combination of AI and human power, I think, is a good one.
"Companies like Ubisoft, Activision use AI to generate some of the animation for their main characters, for their human characters, and then they finesse that by hand," said Midwood. In a 2017 GDC talk (opens in new tab), for example, indie developer David Rosen talked about how he used algorithmic animation in Overgrowth. It's already normal for game animation to be created with code, blending poses together algorithmically and using physics to create behaviors. Regarding its use of machine learning, Midwood doesn't expect Anything World to be grouped in with image generators, mainly for the reason that animation automation in games isn't nearly as novel as AI illustration. So that combination of AI and human power, I think, is a good one. AI voice acting is another fraught field of machine learning research going on right now. The tool is also being developed at the same time as AI image generation tools like Dall-E, which have been called unethical by some critics (see Kotaku back in August, for example).
Some of the company's recent investment money has come from blockchain and "metaverse" interests: companies which think this kind of easy-to-use 3D world creation tool is going to be big for the virtual worlds of the future. Making awkward donkeys poof into existence feels very benign (I'm reminded a little of that old Nintendo DS game, Scribblenauts (opens in new tab)), and that cuteness perhaps belies Anything World's place among some of the most controversial trends in games and tech right now.
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