Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Companies around the world are still figuring out how to integrate artificial intelligence into their business models. For some industries, such as music and comics, the AI boom already poses a threat to business, thanks to copyright infringement issues. But there is one sector where the benefits from the AI boom appear straightforward: gaming. AI has played a role in the gaming industry long before the frenzy of recent years. In early 2020, Sony’s technology had already been used to create an AI agent that could beat the best drivers in the world at the PlayStation game Gran Turismo. But the AI being added today to the latest games will have a much more direct impact on the bottom lines of gaming companies, slashing the fat budgets that have historically been required for the development of every new game. Gamers want high-quality, hyper-realistic visuals and immersive gaming experiences. That requires extensive time and resources, and multimillion-dollar budgets for game developers and creators.That is, until now. Chinese gaming companies have been leading global peers in using AI tools to make game development significantly easier. Tencent, China’s largest gaming group, has been using generative AI technology, which helps game developers quickly to generate animations and create realistic three-dimensional backgrounds and scenes for games. Other decision-making AI tools are used for game-development testing, simulated gameplay, and to create game missions and scenarios. The country’s second-biggest group NetEase has also started using generative AI to refine game development across planning, design and coding functions.This means more time left for game writers to focus on the storylines of the video games, developing the game’s characters, dialogue and details of the setting and back-story of the game universe — all of which cannot yet be done at a professional level by AI. It should also enable faster and lower cost game releases. This in turn means more game releases per year, lowering the risk of losses from a single flop, as well as cutting down on the need to rely on a few ageing titles for revenue. China’s $40bn gaming sector is having a good year so far. Tencent continues to reap a windfall from its Dungeon & Fighter Mobile game which has held its position as China’s top-grossing game. Hong Kong-listed shares in Tencent are up more than a quarter this year, easily outpacing the benchmark Hang Seng index. An AI fuelled boost will be welcome news for investors and games [email protected]
