Tommy Thompson

@tommy

That Scottish AI and games guy... __ Founder of @aiandgames.com Game AI Programmer & Consultant Public speaker, educator, nuisance BAFTA Connect He-Him, PhD Weekly Newsletter: aiandgames.com YouTube: youtube.com/@aiandgames

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Tommy Thompson@tommy· 12d

Nothing more amusing (for everyone else) than listening to a Scotsman yell at a computer.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Jul 1

Don't you love how Sony have just fucked their audience so badly this generation? The only reason they get away with it is because Xbox have been so bad that they simply do not present any meaningful competition.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Jun 27

Plus a fun teaser: when I was out doing consultancy work with Riot Games in May I got to record two episodes in their content creation studio which was great fun.

Sitting with Wes Kerr in Riots content studio

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Jun 26

"'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Industry Whose Behaviour Ensures This Regularly Happens" Brought to you courtesy of @videogameschronicle.com

Headline about Sony and Bungie shafting their devs

Headline about Tim Sweeney being a right wank

Microsoft conveniently ignoring that their AI hype is the reason that an Xbox bought in 2025 has retained more value than their stock price.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Jun 18

Big congrats to @georgeosborn.bsky.social on launching Power Play: a deep dive into the exploitation of video games for political gain. It was a huge effort in getting this book out the door and I'm very proud of him for smashing it out. Go check it out at: www.hachette.co.uk/titles/georg...

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Jun 6

Given I know someone will ask, 3291 games released (or releasing) in 2026 have AI disclosures against the 10401 games already out this year. So that's 32% of all games this year with a Gen AI flag. 2024 was 22%. My guess is Steam AI disclosures will increase at least 50% YoY to over 6000.

Steam Game Releases by Year
2024: 185828
2025: 21439
2026: 10401

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Jun 6

Holy McFuckSticks I am prepping a new presentation for Monday and the Steam AI disclosures for 2026 since March have increased from 1423 to 3291: another 131% increase. But again, the review counts are telling. 65% of these games have fewer than 10 reviews. A slop trough that nobody's buying.

Steam AI Content Disclosed Game Releases by Review Count
2024: 2186
2025: 4703
2026: 3291

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Jun 5

CEO lists use cases that show nobody thought this through. You're on the phone waiting to speak to your health insurance provider and the AI is asking what you know about 17th century poets. I don't fucking know AI Karen. I'm in the hospital needing an operation. I have bigger problems right now!

'Imagine like giant animatronic robot say. perhaps, Optimus Prime?] walking around in a theme park and entertaining guests as theyre waiting in line. Suddenly, your one hour wait ir line becomes a really fun and delightful and engaging experience, she says. "Imagine youre waiting on hold for a customer service agent playing a voice game of Trivial Pursuit. Suddenly you wouldn't mind vour 10 minute wait. You might actually be like, 'wait, I haven't finished. At its most basic, there storytelling experiences with infinite branches. where. because these experiences are new and additive, they're dynamic, thev 're personalized. You can take a story in any direction.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· May 29

So if you wondered why I stopped doing livestreams on Thursdays, it's cause I was running online training sessions with the good folks at Riot! Just wrapped a crazy couple of days on site in LA running a workshop. Great fun and hopefully we can do it all over again. But for now, flight, sleep!

Tommy Thompson@tommy· May 10

Being chipping away at Dark Souls 3 since the end of January. Have a lot of thoughts about it as both a follow up to the original and Bloodborne. No doubt I'll make a video about it. But every now and then they drop an area like Lothric Castle with the Dragonslayer Armour boss, and it just clicks.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· May 5

Caught a preview screening of The Sheep Detectives at the weekend. It's a good laugh but... The premise that Hugh Jackman is murdered doesn't hold up when you see he's still Wolverine levels of jacked under that coat.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Apr 27

I love comments like these: 1) Expecting something simple means you don't understand the problem. 2) Game dev is hard. 3) They're not curing cancer because, I dunno, it's not their skillset? Just because my coffee is a bit pretentious doesn't mean the barista should go and become a physicist.

YouTube comment on my video on pathfinding in Alien Rogue Incursion by user soulshinobi:

"Way more complicated than expected, why aren't these people just curing cancer instead."

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Apr 23

Makes flippant remark. Double checks YouTube analytics. Yup, here we go again!

Currently top 3 most watched videos last 48 hours on the AI and Games YouTube channel are all Alien Isolation related.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Apr 22

Some absolutely banging indie games in recent weeks. Still haven't had a chance to crack open Pragmata. Maybe I'll stream it at the weekend. While Vampire Crawlers will get all the exposure for sure, Replaced and Aether & Iron are great. Plus I'm still chipping away at Killing Stone and Raccoin.

List of recently played games on Steam:
Vampire Crawlers
Replaced
Aether & Iron
Balatro
The Killing Stone
Dead by Daylight
Raccoin
STALKER: Enhanced Edition
Resident Evil: Requiem

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Apr 6

Like what the fuck is this shit!?!? Everybody knows this pub is never this busy. Except maybe when the hordes of the damned come to visit???

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Apr 6

One of the local old man pubs is running an advert in the town magazine for it's annual beer festival and they've used generative AI to make it look like it's this bustling centre of brewing culture. This nightmare fuel is sending me. I just love it.

A nightmare image of fake ai generated people in front of an old man's boozer

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 26

Plus next week I'll be releasing part one of this series as a video on the YouTube channel as well. In case you'd rather just watch/listen to me dole this out than sit and read another 10,000 word essay.

Thumbnail for next week's video: 'Game AI's Existential Crisis (Part 1)'

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 25

If you're wondering about the slop problem on Steam this year... oh boy. When I prepped a talk for @gamerepublic.bsky.social's event on Jan 28th, the number of 2026 games with AI disclosures was 268. Checking today (March 25th) for a talk next week, it's at 1423. A 430% increase in 2 months.

Games each year with AI disclosures:
2024: 2156
2025: 4319
2026 ongoing: 1423

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 22

Ah I see Crimson Desert is the latest to run the 'gen AI art was temporary and we forgot about it' excuse. If you actually forgot about it, then you lack appropriate studio policies for using genAI tooling. But then they conveniently only added the AI disclosure to Steam earlier today.

We would like to address questions regarding the use of AI in Crimson Desert.

During development, some 2D visual props were created as part of early-stage iteration using experimental AI generative tools. These assets helped us rapidly explore tone and atmosphere in the earlier phases of production. However, our intention has always been for any such assets to be replaced, following final work and review by our art and development teams, with work that aligned with our quality standards and creative direction.

Following reports from our community, we have identified that some of these assets were unintentionally included in the final release. This is not in line with our internal standards, and we take full responsibility for it.

We also acknowledge that we should have clearly disclosed our use of AI. While these tools were primarily used during early production, with the expectation that these assets would be replaced prior to release, we recognize that this does not excuse the lack of transparency.

We sincerely apologize for these oversights.

We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of all in-game assets and are taking steps to replace any affected content. Updated assets will be rolled out in upcoming patches. In parallel, we are reviewing and strengthening our internal processes to ensure greater transparency and consistency in how we communicate with players moving forward.

Generative AI technology is used in a supplementary capacity during the creation of some 2D prop assets.
Any such assets are replaced through our production pipeline by our art and development teams, ensuring they meet our quality standards and creative direction.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 21

⛔ Getting annoyed posting about DLSS5 again. ✅ Spending my morning coffee writing about Resident Evil 4 for the history chapter of my Game AI course.

Screenshot of RE4 with caption: "Resident Evil 4 pivoted the series survival horror tropes into a more terror-laden and action focussed experience that was a critical and commercial hit."

10.6.2 Responding to Player Performance
Capcom’s beloved Resident Evil franchise was transformed in 2005 courtesy of the fourth main entry in the series coming to the Nintendo GameCube. The series had become renowned for its deliberate and often obtuse orientation and design. Characters moved in an almost tank-like fashion, and players had to consider the character’s orientation relative to fixed camera points. This drove much of the...

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 18

DLSS 5 reveal going on well, then.

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Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 16

Integrating the NVIDIA face renderer into DLSS was always going to be dicey - and I'm surprised they tried tbh. It fails at the first hurdle: the upscaled re-faced Grace Ashcroft should at least look like the high-res version of her, be it in-game or in marketing. These are two different people.

AI upscaled Grace with Nvidia's neural face rendering, showing a different face structure, eyes and mouth.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 14

Plus I've had confirmation that later this year we're going to see maybe two, possibly three AAA games announced that use generative AI in a far more substantial way. (I don't know anything about the games or studios, I just know who the AI suppliers are) The next wave is coming. As I predicted.

#4 The First AI-Native Title from a AAA Studio/Publisher Will Be Announced*

As mentioned we’ve seen a slew of AAA titles that have used generative AI to some degree - largely with disdain and outright revulsion from the gaming masses - but there is very little that is what hype-merchants refer to as ‘AI-Native’: meaning that the gameplay experience requires generative AI technology to work.

We have been hit with demo, after demo, after demo, advocating for these ideas, but of course it’s a lot of work to get from these rather limited experiences to a full gameplay. For AAA games studios in particular, you’re typically talking a 3-7 year window for any project to go from initial concept to release. So with generative AI only really blowing up in 2023, we’re still in that phase where any AAA game built with generative AI for gameplay is still in development. I think 2026 is the year we’re going to see a AAA game get announced that is AI-native.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 14

Don't think every other live service shooter or RPG maker who has thousands of lines of dialogue aren't contemplating shipping with a system like this, which in turn drives down the rates for voice actors. I wrote about this last year: www.aiandgames.com/p/arc-raider...

Some studios will opt to only use commercial AI voice models either because they can’t afford voice actors, or simply don’t want to pay for them.

Think small indie teams, and in the latter case mobile studios.

Some studios will insist on only using real human performances as a matter of principle.

Most studios will pay for voice actors for key sequences (cutscenes) and aim to have the rest achieved via TTS with trained models on a reduced fee.

Balancing quality for key moments with cost-effective implementation elsewhere.

This is pretty much what Embark has done with Arc Raiders.

A handful of studios will opt to put more than 50% of their VO budget towards use of celebrities such as sports professionals, and actors from film and television, and have the rest of the voice work be TTS implementations by trained voice actors.

i.e. Remember when Bethesda splashed all their VO budget on Patrick Stewart for the first 5 minutes of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion? Imagine that, but a lot worse.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 12

Meanwhile as I've reported before, AI disclosures have skyrocketed in the past two years. 22% of all released games in 2025 disclosed use of generative AI. Hell, it's at 1154 for 2026 already. When I looked this up just *three weeks ago*, we were at 750. Discoverability is tanking thanks to slop

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 12

So to put that into context. 5863 games earned $100k in 2025. Meanwhile 20,008 games were released in 2025. - Compare this just to games released in 2025? 29% - Versus all games on Steam since 2020? 6.8% - Versus all games on Steam? 4.8% And we're supposed to believe that's *good?*

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 11

My full breakdown is behind the paywall (please help support our work in fighting back against this bullshit), where I look at how the Lords have advocated for IP protections, a proper licensing market, strengthening of copyright, and building sovereign AI efforts that show good practice.

Perhaps most encouraging is the House of Lords reports in their own consultations that many are in agreement that while we should seek to have transparency disclosures similar to the EU AI Act, many felt they’re don’t go far enough - a point I largely agree with. There is a need for even more granularity on how copyrighted works are adopted as part of training.

This leads to a broader discussion of the viability of it all, and also highlighting the inappropriate behaviour of big tech. While some bodies ask for a virtual line-by-line breakdown of every URL visited - which is arguably quite easy to produce - Google argued that “you are asking us to summarise the internet” - which speaks to the level of theft that has occurred in training their generative models. Meanwhile OpenAI expressed concerns over how this would expose “[AI] model developers’ trade secrets”.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 11

The House of Lords tore them a new one in this report. Highlighting that this "tacit acceptance" of IP exploitation by AI companies will do nothing to serve the UK's creative economy, and instead only harm a sector that is significantly larger than the UK's AI sector.

In summary, it’s pretty damning. The House of Lords calls out the previously advertised plans of the government as means to “drift towards tacit acceptance of large-scale, unlicensed use of creative content”. With any gains being made from this arrangement being given “to a small number of US-based firms while harms to UK creators grow.”

Yeah, they did not mince their words.

The house has made six suggestions on where the government should go next. Amongst those we find the following:

Setting out clear guidance on AI and copyright that will remove rights for companies scrape data in an opt-out model.

Set out protections both for ‘deepfakes’ and digital clones, but also necessary transparency obligations for training AI models.

Establish a market for licensing UK IP for AI companies should they wish to use it, and work to prioritise development of UK-based AI models.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 11

Let me stress 11k is A LOT for this kind of consultation. The last major generative AI consultation back in 2024 received around 250 submissions. As reported last year, this caught the government off guard, to a point that now they "have no preferred option" on what to do on AI legislation.

Since the consultation closed in February of last year, the government has been working to push forward with its initiatives, albeit with a bit of a reset given the overwhelming consensus on AI licensing, but also a change of minister in charge. Having spent just over a year in office Peter Kyle MP moved from his position as Secretary of State for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), and moved into a new role as Business Secretary. It was news I welcomed at the time, given Kyle had shown zero effort to actually engage with the creative industries, yet had numerous meetings with virtually every major player in AI. Perhaps unsurprising that his opinions seemed a little skewed towards screwing over IP holders in pursuit of sunny uplands.

Tommy Thompson@tommy· Mar 10

I love that I have achieved the status of being blocked on BlueSky both for working in AI, but also hating AI. I am hated by all sides. 😂