Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Utilizes AlienGPT So That Players Can Generate Their Own Civilizations, Quests, and More

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Image: Stardock Entertainment

Stardock has just released the latest edition of its award-winning strategy game series and has included a new feature to assist players in creating their own civilizations. Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova is now available for early access and includes a new feature called AlienGPT that is based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The developer has added the tool in the newest game as a means for players to generate their own content instead of having to buy DLC content. Players need only to provide the GPT a description of their civilization and press a button. The AI will generate aliens, and quests, and even communicate with the player in their chosen language.

About AlienGPT (via Stardock Entertainment)

“GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer” and since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT the world of generative AI has really taken off. For the past several months, we have been working to build GPT technology into our Tachyon engine, Stardock’s cloud-based metagaming technology that has previously been seen in Ashes of the Singularity, Offworld Trading Company and Star Control: Origins. Thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT API and Tachyon, we are proud to demonstrate what this technology can do for games.

AI-GENERATED CIVILIZATIONS

In the past, Stardock would release new civilizations for $4.99 for 5 as a DLC. Creating a new civilization was a lot of work. Lots of writing and lots of new art and game balance. With Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, it’s just a matter of entering a description of your civilization and pressing a button.”

Players will be able to customize the civilizations created by the AI and even play against them. Other civilizations will interact accordingly and players can also share their creations with others online. Stardock has said that its large art library, which spans 30 years, is being used to train AI image generators. It has also clarified that even though this AI solution is being used to generate new content it does not mean that the developer is backing away from needing humans to create more content as well as provide QA for its own internally generated content.

From Stardock Entertainment:

THE HUMAN FUTURE

Ironically, this work has resulted in us putting out the call for even more artists, writers and editors. While on the surface, this may seem counterintuitive, let me walk you through how this works out.

Before: You hire artists, writers and editors and produce N assets per month which is insufficient to be commercially viable. I.e. the consumer market just won’t pay enough to justify focusing them on these tasks.

Now: You hire artists, writers and editors and product 100N assets per month. Now it’s enough to justify the work. The stuff the AI generates is really good and getting better all the time, only a human being knows our game well enough to know whether the output fits in with what we’re trying to do.

So the short answer is, we expect to hire more artists and writers and editors in the future.”

Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova is in early access and is available on Steam or the Epic Games Store for $39.99.

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Peter Brosdahl
As a child of the 70’s I was part of the many who became enthralled by the video arcade invasion of the 1980’s. Saving money from various odd jobs I purchased my first computer from a friend of my dad, a used Atari 400, around 1982. Eventually it would end up being a lifelong passion of upgrading and modifying equipment that, of course, led into a career in IT support.

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