Can We Create Deeper, More Immersive Video Games?
A Year of Discoveries at Atomic Dirt
A year ago, we started Atomic Dirt with the intention of using technology to make gameplay deeper and more lifelike. As a gamer I was fatigued by the trend toward bigger-not-better game worlds. My favorite franchises kept pouring out beautiful content but with nearly identical mechanics and the same gameplay loops I first fell in love with…back in college. Meanwhile, revolutionary technologies like AI and augmented reality with the capability to truly change how we play games are only glancingly explored.
I devoted my marketing career to convincing clients to adopt new technologies that reach and engage new audiences. Some were major successes (convincing Nabisco to put Oreo on this thing called “Facebook”) but many ran into client roadblocks. It’s difficult to prioritize innovation when you’re an employee who’s just trying to get through the day (“I can’t look that far ahead. Too many fires to put out.”) or there’s not clear path to success (“I don’t know if Esports goes into our sports sponsorship team or our CTO!”)
Now I’m my own client and I need to convince my own company to adopt new technologies. That’s the journey we’ve been on for the past year at Atomic Dirt. We have a year’s worth of hands-on learnings working with LLMs, game engines and tapping the brains of tremendous development partners from the coast of California to Lviv, Ukraine. Going forward on this blog, I’ll share what we’ve learned. And maybe I’ll learn how to use Linkedin properly in doing so. Two birds.
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”
-Ezio, Assassin’s Creed
Assassin’s Creed might be my favorite video game franchise. From the moment I jumped into my first hay bale outside Jerusalem, I've had a serious soft spot for Ubisoft’s approach to the open world. It would be fair to say I founded Atomic Dirt while playing the latest entry in the series; Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. Roaming through Asgard, I realized something: this may be the prettiest and largest Assassin's Creed I've ever played... but I'm bored. Why is this happening to me in my beloved series? Does this mean I’m a templar!? I realized it’s nothing more than gameplay fatigue: the same basic gameplay loops x 20 years takes its toll. Many modern games, often with budgets upwards of half a billion dollars, aren’t lacking in resources, but they seem stuck on the concept of getting bigger instead of coming up with something more innovative. What if there was a game that was truly open? Would people want to play a game where you could try anything?
A world where very little is actually permitted.
Long story short – many games focus so intently on sleek graphics and volume of content that they fail to innovate in ways that make their worlds more immersive. What if we could create games as dynamic and surprising as real-life? Enter Atomic Dirt.
Tomorrow: We’ll dig into a game from 1986 inspired our journey and how LLMs might get involved.