Hi, I'm Tommy Thompson and this is AI and Games: a YouTube series about how AI works in video games,
and the research that uses games to change the state of the art in AI technology. I've
made a lot of videos at this point, around 100 of them in fact since I launched this
channel back in 2014. And I figured it was time I reached out to you.
So let's not bury the lede, AI and Games is going to be experiencing some changes this year. This
will include some changes to the videos I make, how I make them, and how they're presented.
Hey everyone, I'm Tommy, and this is my face. I wanted to make this video to discuss the changes
ahead, why I'm making them, and if you're on board with it all how you can help support it
and continue to build the community we've fostered in and around this whole great YouTube experiment.
Almost 9 years ago I had a dumb idea to make YouTube videos to support my students: I was
a university lecturer in the UK teaching game development, a job I took on a few years after
graduating my PhD in artificial intelligence for games. It was a marriage of two of my passions.
Though despite my not really knowing what the heck I was doing, it slowly gained a following
after a couple of years, notably thanks to a certain video on the AI of Alien: Isolation.
The channel has experienced a slow but steady growth over that time,
breaking 100K subscribers back in early 2020, being recognised in the gaming press,
and over time getting access to stories from developers themselves as they began to trust
and respect the work that I do. Knowing that it's done not just with a great attention
to detail and accuracy, but for a lot of love of what my fellow developers create.
But it's a YouTube channel that's never been financially sustainable,
and to this day still fails to do so despite the wonderful support provided by the community. That
meant it has always been a background consideration to my career in academia,
one which I have been suffering a professional crisis with as far back
as 2017. And so for the past two years I've been working evenings and weekends
to put together something quite exciting, as the impact this YouTube channel has had
on my life continues to change. And three months ago, I put it all into effect...
In September of 2022 I quit my job at King's College London and walked away from my academic
career of 10 years. Thanks largely to the fact that since before the pandemic, I started
doing an increasing amount of work in the games industry. This includes consulting with companies
big and small on all things AI for games, be it research, design or development. AI and Games,
the company, is now in its third year and I've worked with over a dozen companies since then.
It is a business that is sustained not by the performance of new YouTube videos, but instead
the existence of the YouTube channel. Many of my clients I have worked for in recent years,
reach out because they watched the YouTube series. This alleviates the financial burden of my YouTube
output, because now the most important thing is that every video maintains my standards of
quality I have established, given my goal is for each video to support the developer community,
but also provide some fun and educational content for those of you who simply enjoy playing games.
This means that my livelihood is now tied to this channel, but in a different way. I'm actively
working with games companies right now, and am always on the lookout for new work. This is how
I survive and provide for my family. And hey, if you work at a studio and are keen to have a chat,
check out the business enquiries info in the video description.
This means that the YouTube channel now get's a new lease of life, it's success helps buy my time
out of contracting for studios. To give me time every month to focus on producing content for you,
and to hire in more people to help improve the overall production and function of the channel to
service the community. To kick off this new era in style, I decided I wanted to do new things,
but also do some of the older things a little bit better. So what does that even mean?
First things first, AI and Games is not going anywhere. The things
you like about this channel are staying as they are. But,
it's all getting a bit of a facelift. Our three core video types will stay as they are:
- AI and Games is what you know and love, and it stays as it is. Research and applications
of AI in games, with episode 70 rolling out this month, as a deep dive into the
evolution of the AI systems of The Last of Us Part Two. But I have a little backlog
of big episodes I wanted to cover but I need the time to do them right, and I think it's
time to get those out of storage. Some big high profile topics are finally happening in 2023.
- Design Dive continues as a video essay series on AI and game design,
with the Revisiting Evil series returning for part 4 as we discuss the first person horror
era of Capcom's beloved franchise. Plus my series on Soulsborne games will continue later this year.
- AI 101 continues to be the backbone of the channel, providing explanations and
overviews of key AI technologies for those keen to learn a little more. With our next episode on
how machine learning is transforming the industry in ways we previously couldn't have anticipated.
But also, we've got not one, but two new series coming to the channel:
- One piece of feedback from the community, was that you enjoy episodes on all things generative
design, but procedural content generation videos often get lost in the sea of AI and Games. So
it's my pleasure to introduce Artifacts: the brand new series exclusively about procedural
content generation. The first episode is a sit down and interview with Joris Dormans,
the creative director and programmer of Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy,
and how this roguelike procedurally generates entire 3d worlds, plus characters,
histories and storylines. This is in fact a sequel to episode 57 of AI and Games in
which I explored the original game, and I look forward to sharing it with you.
- But also, I wanted to look deeper into how games have been an ongoing
aspect of AI research since the very beginning. And so to explore those topics,
we kick off the new series 'The History of AI and Games', with our very first episode
looking at the story of the supposed chess automaton, The Mechanical Turk.
All of these episodes are in development and will be out in the coming months.
But that's not all. I wanted to have a bit more of a fun outlet to explore the topics
and ideas I explore on AI and Games while retaining the 'edutainment' if you will of
the main channel. So with that, it's my pleasure to announce AI and Games Plus,
a new second channel that allows for new and wonderful offshoots
that keep the core themes of what my work is about, but in a new format.
- In keeping with the conventions of the main channel, the second channel has a flagship program
called, wait for it, AI and Games Plus. It's where I get to have a bit more fun exploring the
same topics as the main channel but without the focus of it being a piece of educational content.
This means we'll be exploring stuff we've never seen before on AI and Games, but also revisiting
older topics, or simply doing tie-ins to what's happening on the main channel. The first episode
of AI and Games Plus will be later this month, and compliments the upcoming Last of Us Part Two
episode, by instead analysing the AI of The Last of Us Part One, the remake of the original game,
and how the AI has changed on account of the remake using the the AI tools of the sequel.
- Next up we have something completely different, but also strikingly familiar:
a podcast! Branching Factor is a brand new podcast in which I sit down with my delightful crew of
cohosts, all of whom work either in the games industry or in games research as we discuss big
issues and areas of our interest with one another. Tune in for the opening episodes where I sit
down with each of my wonderful co-hosts, Dr Anne Sullivan, George Osborn, Dr Mike Cook and Quang in
the coming weeks. The podcast will be available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more later this month,
but AI and Games Plus is the home of the video version of exciting new venture.
- Plus, no pun intended, I wanted to create a show where you have a bigger say in what makes the AI
great in a given game. To that end, get ready for Player Choice: a new series in which you,
the audience, get to decide on the best games in a given category, and we'll see whether your
thoughts match up with mine. Main episodes are released on YouTube but the actual elimination
rounds will take place live on Twitch, so be sure to tune in and make your voice heard!
Both Branching Factor and Player Choice will in fact sponsored by the good folks over at
modl.ai - an AI gaming startup that I actually work for. They're supporting
me in putting out this new content. If you're wondering who on earth modl.ai is,
and why I'm willing to work with them, keep an eye out for a video later in the year on
the main channel in which I go behind-the-scenes on the work they're doing and how they're part
of the new wave of AI tools that are actually improving game development.
- Lastly in amongst all of this, my review series Smoke & Mirrors,
will have episodes out monthly as I discuss new games I'm playing and my musings about them.
--
So there we have it, that's all the new stuff coming. It's a bit of a change,
but it allows me to focus on the things I want to do the most, and heaven forbid I
might even have some fun along the way. And for me one reason for some of these changes,
is to get content out to you, but in a more sustainable way. Many of my episodes have
been made late at night or over weekends given my other work responsibilities. And
frankly that's not sustainable, especially when you consider this YouTube channel isn't
*that* big in the grand scheme of things - and again not financially profitable.
The plan has always been to carve out a space that allows me to make more content,
get support for that process, and allow me to pay my bills, provide for my family and just,
survive without having to crunch every episode. I'm not doing that anymore. And
that might sound contradictory given there's now more content coming to you than before,
but the framework within which I can make my content has changed, and that enables for me
to do more in a sustainable way. And the more you the audience support it, then the more I can do.
In the long term, I have a lot more that I want to make. But the YouTube side of what
I do needs to be more sustainable and better managed if I'm going to do it.
I get requests a lot for tutorials and lecture style material, and that's something I'm keen
to do. I would love to produce entire courses of material on how to build your own AI for games,
and take the stuff that I discuss in the main channel and show you how to do it yourself.
Leaning on the ten years of experience I have as a university lecturer and more recently as
an actual game developer. In fact, I've already done the research and put a rough plan together
to produce over 100 hours of videos that covers everything from basic steering behaviours all the
way to training machine learning for procedural content generation. It's something I'm keen to
make a reality. But you can't make that kind of content one video at a time,
it has to be dropped in bulk: hours of content at once, and that requires the YouTube side of what
I'm doing to be more successful, and more manageable. But the plan is to get there,
and speaking of all that jazz, how can you help all of this grow and mature and develop?
Tell you what, let's talk about how you can support AI and Games
in the simplest and easiest of ways, within spending a penny.
First up, be sure to subscribe to both AI and Games, and AI and Games Plus,
and watch yourself some videos! Super simple. I mean you're doing it already right? The more
you watch, like, subscribe, and comment helps push recommendations and gets it out there. The
same applies to the Branching Factor podcast, be sure to share it around when it goes live,
and review or rate on whichever podcast platform you happen to listen on. Are you on social media?
Well then posting and sharing on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Discord servers can
be a huge boost to help get eyes on the content to a broader audience. On that note, you can follow
AI and Games on Twitter, Mastodon and TikTok, for updates on recent episodes and share those posts.
All of this stuff is effectively 'free', in that it takes a minute out of your day,
but it helps AI and Games get out there in the eyes of more people, and you help
make that a reality. Plus it throws a bit of monetisation my way - and in fact AI and Games
Plus needs more people to watch it before it will be monetised, so go watch the new stuff!
If you're in a position to donate to AI and Games and help it grow, then the best route
is via Patreon. My patreon community have been such a huge boon to me and my work over the
years, and without them I wouldn't still be doing this quite frankly. Not just because of their
support, but sometimes without that sponsorship, I wouldn't have had the money to keep! Right
now the funds from Patreon are being used to carve out more time for me to create content,
while also hiring in people to help elevate the quality of my work. That includes the likes of
graphical designers, artists, sound designers and more. If the Patreon can grow sufficiently,
I'd love to get in people to work on subtitles and dubs for non-English speakers,
an editor to help speed up production and even do crazy new video ideas that I without that backing,
would be suicidal for a content creator trapped in this recommendation limbo that I live in.
Today the Patreon is relaunched with a bunch of new features. While the monthly newsletter,
patron-only Discord area, early-access and name in the credits remain, there's a bunch
of new stuff to coincide with the change to the YouTube output. This includes ad-free
episodes of Branching Factor, top-tier credits and shout outs, new exclusive merchandise,
and the creation of the AI and Games Production Team: a new setup where we will have meetings on
Discord to propose and discuss video topics, submit your own ideas on what you want to see
across both channels and help steer each season of Player Choice as it happens.
If Patreon isn't your thing, you can also use the YouTube options. Becoming a YouTube Member
get some of the same perks as patrons, with names in the credits and early-access to new
videos. And it's all just a button click away. Plus you can leave tips on episodes using the
Super Thanks feature, which is kind of awesome. Not to mention you can follow,
donate and subscribe on Twitch as well, as I'll be back livestreaming on a more
regular basis this year as part of the Player Choice series and more.
Plus, this week sees the release of the new AI and Games merch store,
so if you fancy a nice t-shirt or mug emblazoned with AI and Games iconography,
head on over to AIandGames.com/store and you can see what's on offer.
So it's about time to wrap up, and I hope you're as excited about all this new stuff
as I am in putting it all together. Naturally you might have questions,
and if you do shout out in the comments and I'll be happy to respond. So when can we
start to see all this shiny new content? Well, here's what to expect this month:
- Episode 70 of AI and Games on the main channel. - Meanwhile over on AI and Games Plus,
you can expect to see: - The first episode of Branching
Factor will go live as a video version, with the audio-only versions going live on Spotify,
Apple and Google Podcasts, and many more. - The first episode of AI and Games Plus on The
Last of Us Part One will also be out in January. - And then join me in early February for the start
of the first season of Player Choice and the second episode of AI and Games
Plus which is a deep dive into a specific part of the AI in The Last of Us Part Two.
Meanwhile in the next couple of months you can expect more Design Dive, AI 101,
and the first episodes of the History of AI and Artifacts coming to the main channel.
This new direction will continue for a time, and we're going to see how well it pays off. If
it leads to more videos and bigger engagement, great, but I'm more focussed on strengthening
the community that has surrounded this channel in the past couple of years.
The past 10 years of my career have been defined by my time in academia,
as a published researcher, as a lecturer and ultimately as a
deliverer of learning. And along the way it has led to some weird and wonderful experiences,
including the creation of this weird and wonderful YouTube experiment.
My personal goal right now, is that now, going forward, AI and Games will define
the next 10 years of my career, and take me on some new and exciting journeys and
ultimately allow me to continue to do what I enjoy, which is making stuff for all you
lovely people. And to eventually move towards returning to teaching, but in my own way,
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed hearing about all the new things coming up
on AI and Games. As you can imagine there's plenty for me to be doing, and so I'll leave it
to you. All the links to the second channel, the podcast, the patreon and the new merch store are
in the description. Please check em out. Alright, you take care of yourselves, and I'll be back.