AI makes the One Person company more possible than ever.

AI makes the One Person company more possible than ever. Not only is a work-from-anywhere, single-person company 100% doable, it’s now easier than ever to get started and grow 📈Yes, you still have to be an expert in your core niche, but genAI makes you close to an expert in every other discipline necessary to run a business. Need help with:- Marketing - Accounting- Legal- Coding- Graphic Design - Administration - Customer Support - Etc. GenAI has your back 🤖It can fill in the gaps at 1/1000th the cost of hiring an actual professional. As AI agents continue to improve, a solo company will become more and more like a 5, 10, 50+ person startup. There has never been a better time to be a solo entrepreneur.

Jon Leslie May 27

Journal

Series on why gaming layoffs have been happening

Part 5, the Finale - "But why now?"Thank you for reading this series on why gaming layoffs have been happening. You might have noticed me shouting out the local union and recruiters in past posts.This is because there's no place like home.Finland is a great home for Game Development.The culture of sharing and the work-life balance are like no other, and it's no surprise there are amazing companies here like Rovio Entertainment Corporation, Futureplay Games, Cosmic Lounge, and Supercell.Talk to cool people like Oleg Paliy and Juan Fernandez Castellano - they might know how to help you if you're curious.------So we talked about the ever-present trends that lead to layoffs...(Part 1) It's not AI causing job losses but the lack of R&D and new games.(Part 2) Game projects inevitably die out without that R&D, leading to inevitable layoffs if companies […]

Gus Viegas April 15

Journal

What value is in Gen AI nowadays?

People often ask "What value is in Generative AI nowadays?"The answer, if you want numbers, is between 43% and -26%. Key learnings from the BCG study (link in the comments):1. For the tasks AI is good at, you can expect a double digit increase in productivity.2. People are not aware yet of what a "task AI is good at" is. We need more testing and transparency.3. If the task isn't something AI is good at and you just regurgitate its answers, it actually causes more harm than good.4. AI assistance is a great leveler of skill. People who want to play catch up with senior talent benefit more from this.5. Prompt engineering or, in other words, "being better at using chatbots to engage with the LLMs" does help improve performance and avoid worst-case scenarios of using AI.6. The best uses […]

Gus Viegas March 18

Journal

Are the gaming industry layoffs related to AI? No.

Are the gaming industry layoffs related to AI? No. Part 1 - AI doesn't replace R&D, and the lack of R&D caused this.Gaming companies aren't getting huge AI gains yet.We're still in the experimental phase where most gains are obscured by the time and resources needed to test and learn new processes.Those resources? Typically a small unit is relegated to creating tools or marketing content that might help, but not fundamentally change the business.It would take a whole new business made from scratch to fully embrace the gains. *wink wink*Even when there are gains, they still need new talent & processes to operate them. *more winking and pointing to the comments*And those gains? For now, there are efficiency gains.Not creative achievements or discoveries of new business opportunities.So what's going on? What's dragging the gaming sector down right now?I believe it […]

Gus Viegas March 4

Journal

AI generated content will become very popular in Game Dev

AI generated content will become very popular in game development, considering the current AI developments! 🎯 Images here were generated by me in just minutes. Just needed proper prompts and a couple of iterations to the input! Any style and direction was achievable, with some iteration cycles. All of this can be done very FAST - which is pretty amazing! 🚀💯How can this evolve the industry? Here are some thoughts:- Outsource work for AI- Small teams can take over challenging genres with improved content output/pipeline and challenge big players- Concept art without concept artists- Character designs generated by AI- Reference art that you could use straight-forward- Assets directly ready for implementation- Board game developers, e.g., create games with just designing them and putting in AI art- Etc.Potential challenges?- Legislation?- Ownership?- What else?There are also high opportunities for other industries:- Writers […]

Antti Kananen September 14

GenAI