Microsoft has filed a gaming patent for "crafting and altering game narratives" using generative AI

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A new patent filed by Microsoft purports to demonstrate how game designers and players alike can alter a narrative experience using generative AI.

Microsoft AI generative patent for gaming
(Image credit: Microsoft)

A new patent filed by Microsoft may give some insight into game development ideas the company is exploring.

Microsoft filed a patent in 2024 that's now available publicly, exploring ways that generative artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in game design, allowing the designers and the players alike to both customize the experience through prompts. The patent provides a "high-level summary" of ways that games can be iterated on, such as quickly generating objects relevant to the narrative based on the provided prompts.

Another example shows how the system could be implemented into a pre-existing sandbox game like Minecraft. From here, players could provide prompts asking for new gameplay rules, systems, non-player characters (NPCs) or narrative content to be crafted on the fly.

Now, it's extremely important to emphasize that this is just a patent, and corporations are constantly filing patents on tech and software innovations that might never end up actually being used. Remember Sony's amusing diagram of someone excitedly yelling "McDonald's?" Still, it's a snapshot into paths the company is looking into right now.

Microsoft is heavily invested in the future of AI, with the company funding OpenAI to the tune of billions of dollars. In 2024, Xbox head of gaming AI Haiyan Zhang opined that AI will augment game developers, but that the technology isn't a replacement for actual humans working on a project.

A lot to prove

Electronic Arts user-generated box game demo

Publisher Electronic Arts showed off a concept for game worlds that respond to player prompts in the form of a world of cardboard. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

AI is an extraordinarily broad and hot topic, and for good reason, with discussions abounding surrounding the nature of ethical usage, what systems are being trained on, and much more. While generative AI has more specifically remained at the periphery of implementation in games, major companies are looking into it.

For its 2024 Investor Day, publisher Electronic Arts gave a brief gameplay demonstration, showing off how players could create a unique gameplay experience that they wanted based on providing different prompts and generating a world of cardboard.

Brian Fargo, CEO of Microsoft-owned development studio inXile Entertainment (the team behind the upcoming time-bending role-playing game Clockwork Revolution) noted in 2023 that he's interested in some aspects of how AI can aid game development, but that he's "not convinced" AI has any place in crafting game narratives or NPCs.

Personally, I remain thoroughly skeptical of any work around AI-generated narrative content, especially if it could come as a threat to people's jobs. "AI" as a broad concept might have a place in the world in removing drudgery and making people more efficient, but at the end of the day, I want more writers and designers in the world.

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Samuel Tolbert
Samuel Tolbert
Freelance Writer

Samuel Tolbert is a freelance writer covering gaming news, previews, reviews, interviews and different aspects of the gaming industry, specifically focusing on Xbox and PC gaming on Windows Central. You can find him on Twitter @SamuelTolbert.

1 Comment Comment from the forums
  • fjtorres5591
    This and other similar patents not yet noticed are inevitable.

    For defensive reasons at a minimum but also because generative software is already being used on game development. And this djinn is not going to be bottled. And it is being used because it is *needed*

    As the oft-ignored truism says: "AI is not going to take your job, but a human using AI will."

    Software that amplifies the productivity of a single developer to do the work of several humans *will* be used. If nothing else because game development costs are spiralling out of control at the same time sales of those expensive games are becoming more and more volatile. Games that succeed, rake it in big time, while the others thud badly. No middle ground. It's not necessarily that the less successful games are terrible or even bad at all, it's just that with 9-figure budgets even falling "short of expectations" can be deadly to a studio, its staff, and even the publisher. Because just like Hollywood movies, games are fully funded over years before release, and the market can and often does change in the interim. Midjudge the market's mood and loose the audience. And the investment.

    Anything that can reduce the cost of development and/or allow the flexibility to adjust the game as close as possible to the release date (read the patent's prose carefully) or even during gameplay, will be welcome as a tool to minimize risk.

    Consider just how much grief UBISOFT would've been spared if AC SHADOWS had a character creator instead of two hard wired defaults. (MASS EFFECT got it right.) Or, similarly if VEILGUARD actually responded to user choices and preferences instead of presenting "choices" that had no impact on the narrative. Again, Bioware *used* to do it right in both MASS EFFECT and DRAGON AGE. The game narrative responded --within limits--to player choices and preferences.

    Of course, developing decision trees that extensive takes time, money, and *foresight* to consider a broad range of gamer preferences and the state of the market years and years in advance. The alternative is ending up with a $200M game that struggles to break even instead of doubling or tripling the investment. A failing that few publishers can survive.

    So, like it or not, Generative Tools will be used.

    Because studios that don't will be literally betting the farm on five or ten year old choices. And end up with a CONCORD instead of a RIVALS.
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