Tencent, Microsoft, Amazon pitch AI tools for video game developers at ChinaJoy expo

Big Tech companies, from Tencent Holdings to Microsoft and Amazon.com, have rushed to pitch their artificial intelligence (AI) tools to Chinese video gaming firms at ChinaJoy, the country's biggest annual digital entertainment expo in Shanghai.

Shenzhen-based Tencent, which runs the world's biggest video gaming business by revenue, is offering a range of AI services to cover the "full life cycle" of game development, Tencent Cloud Internet Industry general manager Chen Liang told the South China Morning Post on Friday at ChinaJoy, which concludes on Sunday.

"AI has been used in video games as early as the 1990s," Chen said. "But the current generative AI (GenAI) boom has raised people's expectations of the entire market."

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Citing an example, Chen said large language models - the technology underpinning GenAI services like ChatGPT - have helped shorten the time for content generation in video games. "There are many things we want to do in the future, including using AI in character production, scene production and making bots," he said.

Video gamers try out new products at the opening of the three-day ChinaJoy digital entertainment expo in Shanghai on Friday. Photo: Weibo alt=Video gamers try out new products at the opening of the three-day ChinaJoy digital entertainment expo in Shanghai on Friday. Photo: Weibo>

Tencent Cloud, which is responsible for the internet giant's AI operations, has been working on Wuthering Waves - a hit action role-playing mobile game developed by Guangzhou-based Kuro Games - since the project was started several years ago, according to Chen.

The Tencent unit accounts for 42.9 per cent of cloud services adoption in the domestic gaming sector during the second half of 2023, the company cited an IDC report as saying. The report also said more than 90 per cent of China's top gaming companies, including Perfect World and 37Games, use Tencent Cloud's solutions.

Cloud computing technology enables companies to distribute, manage or process over the internet a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service, just like electricity from a power grid. These resources are stored inside data centres, where AI systems training is typically done.

The positive response to GenAI advances at ChinaJoy reflects the continued optimism for further developing and expanding adoption of the technology in the world's second-largest economy.

Gaming enthusiasts flock to the exhibition space of Blizzard Entertainment, a unit of Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard, and Chinese partner NetEase at the opening of the annual ChinaJoy digital entertainment expo in Shanghai on Friday. Photo: AFP alt=Gaming enthusiasts flock to the exhibition space of Blizzard Entertainment, a unit of Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard, and Chinese partner NetEase at the opening of the annual ChinaJoy digital entertainment expo in Shanghai on Friday. Photo: AFP>

Microsoft, which just went through a global outage of cloud computing services last week, said the company's AI platform is providing support for a number of local video-gaming firms. Through Microsoft's Azure OpenAI, Beijing-based Perfect World is able to create non-player characters and digital humans, according to the company.

Johnny Tian, a vice-president at Microsoft Greater China Region, said at ChinaJoy that the US tech company's "huge AI system" will continue to support the overseas expansion plans of Chinese game developers.

Amazon Web Services, meanwhile, has been supporting various Chinese video gaming studios to improve their workflow efficiency through its Amazon Bedrock service, according to Zhang Xiaofeng, gaming principal architect at the Seattle-based firm. These include analysing user comments for ByteDance-owned Moonton Technology, and operations and maintenance management at Shanghai-based Lilith Games.

"The [emergence of] generative AI is similar to the invention of the steam engine," Zhang said. "It can bring about an industrial revolution in the video game industry."

A cosplayer poses for photos at the booth of Huawei Technologies' HarmonyOS platform on Friday at the opening of the annual ChinaJoy digital entertainment expo in Shanghai. Photo: AFP alt=A cosplayer poses for photos at the booth of Huawei Technologies' HarmonyOS platform on Friday at the opening of the annual ChinaJoy digital entertainment expo in Shanghai. Photo: AFP>

Still, China's video gaming market has seen growth slow in the first half, when total sales rose 2.1 per cent year on year to 147.3 billion yuan (US$20.3 million), according to a report released on Thursday by the semi-official trade body Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.

While the industry saw a 2.4 per cent revenue drop in the first half of 2023, full-year growth was at 14 per cent, according to the association's earlier reports.

"I personally think the gaming industry is still in the early stage of the so-called explosion in AI applications," Tencent Cloud's Chen said. He pointed out that developers are trying to strike a balance between achieving quality with AI applications, while managing the cost of computing power consumption.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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