Prepare for AI to “totally destroy everything”

Artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on the gaming industry and its billions of players, according to Min-Liang Tan, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of gaming company Razer.

Tan said the technology’s impact on the entire field, from how games are developed to hacking to complete levels, cannot be overstated.

“For us at Razer, we think AI is going to completely disrupt or change everything in gaming,” Tan said on CNBC’s “Beyond the Valley” podcast.

Games play a vital role in the creative field, with 3.6 billion players worldwide and nearly $189 billion in annual revenue, according to research firm Newzoo, which tracks data across mobile, console, and PC gaming.

“Game developers will be able to use AI tools, and game publishers will also be able to use AI tools to distribute and sell new games…For gamers, AI tools can change things in terms of how they play,” Tan told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at Singapore’s SWITCH conference.

Razer, known for gaming gear such as mice, headsets, and keyboards, has developed Game Co-AI, a tool that uses computer vision to “watch” a gamer’s play and provide hints for solving quests and defeating enemies. According to Razer’s website, the tool will also use data such as public APIs, and a beta version of Game Co-AI will be available in “late 2025.”

However, the potential use of AI in esports (i.e. competitive gaming) has sparked debate.

“I don’t think we’ll run the AI ​​during matches, but what about during training?” Tan said. Tan said there is a desire among some esports players to use AI to help coach future stars. “I’m very excited about this. The opportunities are endless.”

Tan said that in addition to assisting players, AI can also detect and fix bugs during game development.

Traditionally, testing games has involved “a bunch of people sitting in a room” playing the game and identifying bugs one by one in a process known as quality assurance or QA, Tan said. Razer is developing an AI QA Companion that can find and log bugs. He added that users will soon be able to suggest bug fixes as well.

“(QA) is about 20-30% of the (development) cost and about 30% of the time,” Tan said, adding that new tools will automate the QA process and improve the efficiency and productivity of human testers.

The impact of AI is being felt in every industry, but there is still disagreement over how far AI can go in gaming.

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive, the video game publisher that developed Grand Theft Auto, said on Tuesday that AI cannot match human game developers.

However, when asked to predict the game a year from now, Tan said: “I think we’ll be talking about some of the new and exciting games being built using AI and how we see the future from there. Maybe we’ll see one or two blockbuster games.”

Developing games typically requires large teams and large investments, but with AI, Tan says, it can be done with a small group of people. He added that AI is not a threat to jobs and can eliminate “boring” tasks. “Human creativity is still needed.”

Tan said how the gaming industry leverages AI could have far-reaching impacts beyond the industry, suggesting it could “create multiple other new industries.”

“A lot of what’s happening in the tech industry comes from games, and I believe a lot of what’s happening in AI will come from AI games,” he said.

Razer was founded in 2005 by Tan Krakoff and Robert Krakoff and became known for its Boomslang mouse (named after a deadly snake) designed specifically for gaming. “For gamers, the mouse is everything. It’s an extension of your arm,” says Tan. “The more accurate your mouse is, the more likely you are to get a piece of debris,” he said, referring to “kills” made in first-person shooters.

Tan said the company, which is headquartered in Singapore and Irvine, California, expanded globally “very quickly” after its founding. Razer went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2017 and went private again in 2022.