Half-Life 2 writer: Valve devs quietly testing generative AI for game writing

Erik Wolpaw is known for writing some of the best lines in gaming, whether it’s the modestly funny humor of Portal or the voice lines in Left 4 Dead 2. He also contributed to the narrative direction and voice lines in Valve’s juggernaut Half-Life 2. So it’s hard not to listen to a Half-Life 2 writer when he discusses game writing and artificial intelligence in the same breath.

In a recent episode of the MinnMax podcast, the longtime writer and Half-Life 2 contributor revealed that a small team of developers at Valve is quietly experimenting with generative AI tools to help with video game writing.

Erik Wolpaw: AI is"pretty bad" at creative writing

In the podcast, he said, “A small group of people at Valve has been looking at some AI stuff, and it’s taught me a bunch of stuff.” From the tone of the conversation, he didn’t seem too worried about AI taking over his job. In his own words, “I’m currently not worried about AI taking over creative writing because it is pretty bad at it.”

Wolpaw continued, “And I’m not just saying that defensively. We’ve really been messing around with it. And like art, there are a lot of questions about that, but I don't think it’s going to—any time soon—be writing novels that are better than those written by humans.”

He compared generative AI to chess bots, which the “best players in the world” can still beat. While Wolpaw doesn’t see AI as having the potential to take over the video game writing space, he does see some potential for it in other aspects of game development. Unlike movies or novels, games need NPCs or characters who react in real time to whatever a player does. While this is already widely implemented in many games, it could be further improved with AI.

Wolpaw further stated, “If you throw enough artists at a game, enough humans can create the art for a game or almost any discipline. The thing with game writing, specifically, is that we have always had to simulate characters in the game reacting to whatever you do in real time.” He gave the example of Left 4 Dead, where a specific effect would trigger a character to utter a voice line. He says, “The only place where I feel like AI is worth investigating is game writing.”

Wolpaw clarified that the work at Valve is pretty experimental and informal. He said, “Let it be known far and wide that this is not a concerted Valve thing. It’s just about finding the best practices for the technology we currently have access to. This is just some people sitting around saying, ‘This is a crazy technology. It would be kind of silly for us not to look at it at least.’”

Buy the Steam Deck OLED on Amazon here