The goal of artificial intelligence (AI) startup Jabali is to develop a game engine that will enable anyone to build games without knowing any coding.

Vatsal Bhardwaj, the founder and CEO of Jabali, who oversaw product development at Microsoft and Meta before founding the company, stated in an interview with PYMNTS, “Our mission is to democratize the creation of games.” The startup has received finance of $5 million.

“We see the opportunity right now to create this ChatGPT movement for video games, which will enable talented creatives, talented game developers, game designers, and really passionate gamers to make video games end to end.”

The gaming industry is growing rapidly, with projected revenue of $184 billion by 2023. Even though hundreds of games are published each year, development expenses are substantial. After averaging $50 million to $150 million in the previous generation and $60 million in 2014, blockbuster game budgets are predicted to surpass $200 million in the upcoming years. Jabali wants to use AI to lower the price and complexity of game production.

AI to Cut Expenses

To make content production in video games easier, Jabali combines cutting-edge generative AI technologies—such as popular and open-source models—with its own proprietary technology. To support the functioning of its AI-based game engine, the company also uses well-established cloud computing and gaming technologies, combining modern tech trends with video game development.

According to Bhardwaj, a time will come when individuals or small teams can use AI-powered technologies to build complex video games, significantly decreasing the need for huge production teams. Jabali hopes to improve the efficiency and accessibility of the game development process by streamlining the workflow and combining the necessary tools, eventually emerging as a major participant in the game creation ecosystem.

Jabali is presently in the development stage and intends to extend an invitation to a limited number of users to begin utilising its product in the latter part of 2023. As it starts to put its technology in the hands of players, the business is especially interested in collaborating with smaller teams and forward-thinking game designers that want to innovate and create games created with AI from the bottom up.

Although there are many products that make game development easier in certain areas, like story creation with ChatGPT or image creation with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, Jabali’s CEO feels that not many businesses have developed their AI efforts to make game development as a whole more mature.

AI Encouraging Originality

According to the CEO of Jabali, artificial intelligence will have a far greater influence on the gaming business than smartphones had on mobile gaming. According to Bhardwaj, artificial intelligence (AI) will enable game designers to produce incredibly lifelike gaming environments with interactable characters and dynamic plots that change based on player choices.

He believes that this technology will profoundly change the genres and styles of games that are currently available, implying that classic formats like battle royales and role-playing games—like Fortnite—will develop into completely new kinds of gaming experiences.

Furthermore, AI has an impact outside of the games itself. According to Bhardwaj, AI will completely transform game creation and the player experience. More agency and control over the gaming experience will be given to the players.

Notably, a considerable drop in development costs is anticipated for high-caliber game production. The era of half-billion-dollar expenditures for games, like Red Dead Redemption 2, might soon come to an end as AI technologies make game creation more productive and affordable.

“In the very short term, I believe we’ll see people using AI to iteratively improve the kinds of games being made today — same genres, same styles, just created cheaper and faster,” Bhardwaj said.

“But as we start to understand the creative potential of generative AI, we’ll witness a reimagining of existing genres and the emergence of entirely new ones that we haven’t seen before. Most importantly, AI will grow the pie for creators and give players a lot more choice and interesting games compared to what we have today.”