New Microsoft gaming chief has “no tolerance for bad AI”

But Asha Sharma faces scrutiny for lack of gaming experience.

See full article...

 

[Abulia]

Irrespective of their gaming resume, Gamertag age, or other seemingly random metric, the new head of Xbox seems stunningly unqualified to lead a multi-billion dollar division based on their their prior work history.

But maybe that's the point and they want new blood? I dunno. Good luck turning it around.

 

[bignick243]

Those statements don't read like a clear line against the use of AI tools to me. In fact, they seem deliberately crafted to leave lots of doors at least partially open.

Sounds like mealy mouth corporate speak to me.

 

[Hmnhntr]

Dear lord, what's wrong with her teeth?

Is it not possible to read an article about a woman and not comment on her appearance?

 

[picklefactory]

How will she understand the culture of gaming having never been a part of it? Market research and focus groups?

Extremely funny comment. "What are you gonna do, ask people? Use statistics???"

Yes! Obviously!

 

[graylshaped]

I get what you mean, and you're not wrong. But please don't take away one of the few advantages a slow old guy like me has. I need those guards to be dumber than rocks.

I'm with you, brother. Currently inching my way through a ghost no-kill run on Dishonored 2.

And people thought I was kidding when I said my backlog had a waiting list to join it.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

How will she understand the culture of gaming having never been a part of it? Market research and focus groups? It's not like it's a niche hobby these days either.

Yes, that's exactly how. I'd prefer to have someone with a genuine love of the product and/or service in there, but those things you mentioned exist for a reason. They work. One can get "statistics blinded" of course, thinking that the numbers are the thing the numbers represent and miss the bigger picture, but that doesn't make statistics useless... and focus groups are a critical tool in finding out what customers actually want.

 

[Readercathead]

Her picture looks AI generated.

And she talks like a chatbot too. All corporate-speak and generalities. Regurgitate the talking points, say whatever they think will pump the stock, turn around and lay even more people off.

 

[TekaroBB]

exactly, actors don't play games or read books when work on films. Fallout, mine-craft, last of us, game of thrones. they all never heard of it or barely know anything about those and yet nobody yells burn the witches. As long as she does the job and improve business, nobody care if she played Deep Rock Galactic

Actors are just performing the story on the script. But I'd hope the writer and director of a movie is at least passingly familiar with the work they are adapting?

 

[DrewW]

Did anyone ask Ben Heck if he wanted the job? He can put an Xbox anywhere

 

[enilc]

She can't make it worse. It would be nice to see some actual competition in the console market for a change. I wish her luck and hope for her success.

 

[SirBedwyr]

So, they hired a complete talking head for that job?

How very Microsoft of them.

The next console is going to be the "XBOX Series 720 Two X Premium"; you just know it. Their blessed little B2B brains can't help it.


View: https://youtu.be/EUXnJraKM3k?si=OqW0l9KFNOJy-qcF

 

[paulfdietz]

How will she understand the culture of gaming having never been a part of it? Market research and focus groups? It's not like it's a niche hobby these days either.

The "culture of gaming" has some real whoppers though, like believing that the best players should be the preferred customers.

 

[charliebird]

I’m not defending Microsoft’s choice for the new head of Xbox. Her resume definitely doesn't line up with what you’d think of as an ideal candidate. But to be fair, Phil Spencer had the perfect gaming resume and seems like a decent guy, but Xbox has still completely withered under his leadership.

I'm sure there is a lot of stuff going on in the background that isn't fully under his control, but you generally have to give responsibility to the head of the division. I'm just mostly annoyed that Microsoft keeps buying all these developers and seemingly making things worse. It’s not just Xbox that's suffered but the industry as a whole. They aren’t the only ones doing it but they are probably the biggest.

 

[ChefJeff789]

As someone with fond memories of the 360 era, and Xbox Live Arcade in particular, it has really been something to watch MS not just kill Xbox, but repeatedly maim it until it has become contorted into something less than parody.

 

[paulfdietz]

By reading the room and listening to customers.

And by looking at actual objective marketing data, not self-amplified forum screaming.

 

[graylshaped]

Actors are just performing the story on the script. But I'd hope the writer and director of a movie is at least passingly familiar with the work they are adapting?

Only to the extent they want to be "faithful" to it. Do they understand how to tell the version of that story they are trying to tell is maybe more to the point.

 

[pixelatedindex]

I don’t really understand the whole toxicity of gaming part. I watch a couple of trailers, buy the game (usually single player campaigns), play it and move on to the next. Sometimes my friends get together and we talk about game design / level design. Sometimes I play online at Arc Raiders, Deadlock, and games like Deep Rock Galactic. The most toxicity I’ve seen is during Xbox 360 / PS3 days. But maybe I’m just lucky but we kick out toxic people from the lobby, or if it’s in something like Call of Duty we shoot them lol.

The cesspool of toxicity seems to be coming from being “too online”. And I see that across all social media - there’s a fine line of engagement vs satisfaction. Being too engaged is a problem, and being not engaged at all might mean you miss out on a bit of the community, if that’s important to you.

Good for this exec I guess - generally they have a ton of upside and almost no downside. Lowly peons are fired at the blink of an eye but the board takes forever to fire an exec. I don’t really wish any of them well.

 

[sciccoso]

Dear lord, what's wrong with her teeth?

Spoiler: that's how actual people outside your bedroom look like

 

[TekaroBB]

And by looking at actual objective marketing data, not self-amplified forum screaming.

"Objective marketing data" is frequently bullshit though. This is how you get trend chasing failures like dozens of "last year's best seller" killers every fiscal. It's not really enough to say "our numbers show that a man with a gun on the box sells better and a woman", there's a lot more going on. Yet from listening to interviews with devs there are a ton of really bad execs out there saying shit like "we told you the marketing data, if you didn't move COD numbers clearly you did something wrong."

 

[paulfdietz]

"Objective marketing data" is frequently bullshit though. This is how you get trend chasing failures like dozens of "last year's best seller" killers every fiscal. It's not really enough to say "our numbers show that a man with a gun on the box sells better and a woman", there's a lot more going on. Yet from listening to interviews with devs there are a ton of really bad execs out there saying shit like "we told you the marketing data, if you didn't move COD numbers clearly you did something wrong."

It can be bullshit, but ignoring it can be much worse. That's how you pursue your own biases and prejudices even when the market is screaming for you to do something else. The data act as ground truth that prevents individuals or teams from spinning wildly out of control.

 

[TekaroBB]

Only to the extent they want to be "faithful" to it. Do they understand how to tell the version of that story they are trying to tell is maybe more to the point.

True enough. In any case, it's kinda a bad metaphor either way. If we are asking if a CEO should know about the product they are managing, to reuse the movies theme it's less "Does this CEO know about the original work being adapted?" and more "Does the studio exec watch movies?"

 

[TekaroBB]

It can be bullshit, but ignoring it can be much worse. That's how you pursue your own biases and prejudices even when the market is screaming for you to do something else. The data act as ground truth that prevents individuals or teams from spinning wildly out of control.

That's why ideally the person running things behind the scenes should be a business person who also has familiarity with the product they are managing. Ideally someone who knows how to run a business but is also aware of what is happening in the industry beyond the raw numbers.

I can't be the only person who knows the pain of working under a manager who doesn't understand my job, versus one who does.

 

[jatb]

The general concept of "AI" in the context of video games has absolutely nothing to do with LLMs, though.

But I guess part of her job is going to be about convincing people otherwise.

She probably had the chatbot spit out some stuff about AI in gaming and saw it probably meant something different but wanted to be vague in case.

 

[StuBeck]

Is it necessary to have experience in gaming for what is essentially a managerial position?

Not especially, although a second article about this likely wasn't very necessary either. They said this when they were appointed.

 

[WhyNotZoidberg]

Those statements don't read like a clear line against the use of AI tools to me. In fact, they seem deliberately crafted to leave lots of doors at least partially open.

It's pretty clear to me that they're going to use AI and use it a lot.

...Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”

I read this as "AI is the most innovative technology available to us so we're going to build games using it".

Additionally, I don't believe that the former head of AI Slop is now anti-slop. Oh well, Xbox had a good run. My Game Pass runs out in April and I'm not going to renew. $20 was a good value for me, $30 isn't so much.

 

[A_Very_Tired_Geek]

Jeez, would you people STOP conflating the general term AI/Artificial Intelligence with LLM tool use.

Yes, the commercialization of LLMs is a real problem, but it's a recent one. AI in gaming has been a central pillar since the early days! You literally cannot have an adversarial game without some form of AI powered opponent. Also, asset creation via automated (and yes, AI modeled) means has been used since the 1990s. What did you think procedural generation is? I can tell you it's definitely not random, and it learns from its mistakes in recent incarnations.

It's also not necessarily the case that all language model use is unethical. SLMs and other locally run and trained tools exist and are sometimes quite adept at specific tasks.

I'm just as skeptical about Sharma's assurances about unethically generated LLM content in future games and other content given Microsoft's media blitz about "AI everything!!" ... which it certainly isn't. It's specificly generative language models everything so they can say they're part of the cool kids crowd. You know, typical Microsoft whenever they get caught with their pants down. Not a moderate bone in their corporate body.

But, of all people, this forum should be able to distinguish media bullshit in claiming "AI" for itself. That's not true, unhelpful, and plain wrong.

My point is, all this rabid hate about "anything AI is bad" is just plain zealotry and completely ignores what AI actually is as a category of computer science and the history of software and hardware.

 

[Unsure platypus]

I am scared about where this will go.
Non gamer- Red Flag
AI Champion- Yellow Flag(Maybe this will make for better single player games?)
Loss of other senor execs- Yellow Flag
Increase of subscription costs- Red Flag
No shared vision- Red Flag

As an Xbox gamer since launch, I hope for the best. I really don't want to move to Playstation, but will if forced to. She really didn't lay out a vision outside of the generic no AI slop. She really could have focused on having a great gaming experience, on hardware and cloud. Talked about the great IP/Talent across the gaming studios. Like said anything to make the change a positive moment for the brand.

I think it is really the lack of vision that scares me. I hope she is able to run the business successfully, and let those with the gaming Bonafide's make great games.

 

[Pat_Murph]

She was head of core AI and she's intolerant of bad AI ?

All that's been put out so far is bad AI. They are lot called Microslop for nothing.

Rip Xbox

 

[WeirdExponent]

..so NOT going to use Co-Pilot.. got it.

 

[Qyygle]

I guess when you said any game related subreddit you specifically meant fighting game threads whining about main, then sure, yeah, I guess. Most competitive circles I've run in call this small-beaning and usually gets laughed out of the room. Like if you are playing a top tier and still whining most people are gonna call you a scrub and move on. I guess it works in Street Fighter and Tekken? I'd hope most devs aren't this dumb, but sure.

Yeah, I agree with the overall cringe that's associated with most 'gamer culture' these days, but I'd also have to disagree on balance decisions regarding top players.
Outside of the fighting game genre, I don't think it's normal to 'main' a character in that way.
My most played game at this point is probably World of Warships, and the standard there to be considered a top tier player, is you're good in every class and vessel. If you only play carrier or battleship, you'd be less skilled than someone who managed the same stats but played everything... If you're not listening to the top playerbase when balancing, you're ignoring really critical data there... And it's really showed with player count and overpowered ship creep over time.

 

[mpfaff]

Dear lord, what's wrong with her teeth?

CEO teeth

When people make fun of and shit on Gamers, this is what they're making fun of and shitting on.

There are plenty of people who object to her resume, maybe having someone who was plugged into AI isn't great for gaming. But it gets tainted and bogged down by this weird shit.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Just to point out the obvious here before we stray too far down this path, she's not a game developer. The studios under her are the ones hopefully making the more direct decisions about gameplay.

But I do agree with your premise in general.

I have a friend who worked on the Xbox Killer Instinct. He wrote a long post once about how players are terrible at balancing games. It didn't stop people from harassing him in weird and personal ways (even offline) about the game's balance.

I think my perspective as a creative is people often don't know what they want. If you ask them you will mostly get "more of what we already have". Because that's how people tend to think. Which is fine, it's not a criticism, it's just human nature.

If you want to do something new you just have to do it. You can't ask people how they want it, they won't know until you show them.

I've noticed that there's way too many critics online who will pop up stuff like the "hero's journey" wheel and use it to criticize a story for not adhering to it's tenets. Leaving aside how reductive it is to describe ALL stories as "hero's journey" stories, the device was only ever intended as descriptive, not PREscriptive. The great thing about art is you're allowed to color outside the box, and there are countless very well regarded stories of heroes that don't follow the "hero's journey" diagram even remotely. Plenty of those journeys don't have a reluctant hero's call to action, they literally start with someone who just WANTS to be a hero and set out to FIND the adventure instead of waiting for it to come to them.

In other words, the average noncreative thinks what they want is just... more of the story they already love. Don't get me wrong, it's good to learn from what's come before. "Learn the rules so you can break them better.", and all that, but that's not what these types complain about. Then, if they get a story that's been made exactly to their specifications, they realize they hate it, and complain about how derivative it was. Of course it was! You just spent all your time online complaining about how the brand new series of Star Trek "wasn't Trek" and then showed nothing but examples of your favorite episodes. So, of course by season 3 you're going to get a lazy rehash pulling all the old actors and even the old ship out of deep freeze and serving it up to you barely microwaved. This isn't to say that "new" is always better or "different" is always good writing, but it is saying they're coming at it from the wrong place.

 

[Jeff S]

There are a few games like this now, like Whispers from the Star, but I can promise you they are definitely janky.

It is probably one of the only good use cases for it though, the story is still written by humans the LLM is just used to give the character a bit more variety (but they will still try and force the character back to the relevant story path).

That said I've avoided these games like the plague for the simple reason that they all rely on cloud services and it's pretty much guaranteed they'll stop working in short order. Maybe when we're at the point where we can do this locally whilst still rendering the scene.

I watched a YouTube video featuring this game (and the video creator just messing with the AI), and a couple points jumped out at me:

1) The AI seems to ask a lot of personal questions, and I wonder if this 'game' is really just a front for collecting a lot of personal information - including a lot of voice data for the player - which could be used to train AI to mimic your voice. What kind of privacy policy is 'protecting' all this data - particularly for children who might be playing? I wonder if this game violates any laws regarding protection of privacy, especially wrt to minors?

2) The story premise is kind of offensive on its face ("Oh, poor me, I'm a helpless woman lost in space, even though I'm part of the crew of a scientific space expedition. Apparently I've been given ZERO training on what to do in an emergency if I find myself crash landed in a life pod on a planet. Please, please help me because I don't have two brain cells!").

3) The video featured a short plot point where the character is feeling very guilty because she blames herself for the accident that seems to have killed her crew mates, by pushing them to go too close to the star and then they got zapped by a solar storm. Then, in a later scene, she discovers data in some other pod that indicates there was a "SuperNova" so, this lets her off the hook as it wasn't her fault.

But like, if there were really a supernova how did they not all end up vaporized? Also how did the nearby planet on which she apparently crash landed not end up vaporized?

Also, was she the Captain of the ship? If not, then responsibility for them entering a high risk situation doesn't rest on her shoulders, it would be on the captain - it's not her decision where the ship goes. She can ask, but it's the captain who decides.

So, the writing seems really, really awful - although, perhaps at least on that last point, it's just to try to create conversations like what I pointed out. But, all these things seem like they should be things the character would KNOW already without the player having to tell them. And I still don't understand how the ship and crew could survive a supernova.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Dear lord, what's wrong with her teeth?

Maybe you could tell me?

 

[jonfr]

That's like all of a.i, there are no exception to that rule.

 

[khumak50]

So they put someone who is not a gamer and never has been in charge of their gaming division? Sounds like a great plan.

 

[paulfdietz]

That's like all of a.i, there are no exception to that rule.

AI is showing value in mathematics right now, when coupled with formalization to avoid AI slop.

 

[Snowball in Hell]

nowadays video games are part of the widespread culture so hiring a gaming exec now without any apparent interest does not carry the same excuse of ignorance as it did 40 years ago.

Her Xbox account was pretty clearly just set up to placate the Xbox crowd and I don't think being an "Xbox" gamer is that important overall. What should be important is being a gamer of ANY kind. If she didn't play on the Xbox, then what about Playstation or PC or Nintendo?

Don't say you think games are "art" if you have no interest in the art.

Imagine hiring a car company CEO who has never sat in a car or the CEO of a NFL team that has never watched a game? They would get dragged over the coals too, and rightly so.