Artificial intelligence has been used in video games nearly as long as there's been video games, but there's a clear difference between NPC AI (and the like) and Generative AI. The past year or os has seen things like ChatGPT blow up and become more readily accessible to the public, even if the art associated with it feels off or strange. If nothing else, there's something a little funny about some AI generated images, and LAIzy Picture Phone seeks to turn that "funny" into fun.
Created by Canvas Ink. Games, a studio from South Brazil, LAIzy Picture Phone is an online multiplayer party game that combines classic party games with the abilities of Generative AI. Namely, players write prompts to generate AI images and then, fitting the pure chaos of party games, figure out what the prompt was based on the image. Sometimes it's close...sometimes it's not. The Best War Games recently spoke with Canvas Ink. Games founder Eduardo Saffer Medvedovski at Gamescom LATAM to learn how they use this Generative AI to enable the human element of party games.
LAIzy Picture Phone Encourages Quirky AI
Players can be as simple or as complicated as their imagination allows them to be. In LAIzy Picture Phone, each player writes a prompt of three or more words for the AI to then create an image based on that. Multiple photos will populate and allow the player to choose what they think is the best image to show. This image will be shown to the other participants and challenge them to guess the phrase based on the AI-generated images. This keeps going until players are ready to end, like the best party games. Whether the prompt is something like "a cat flying an airplane" or "a dog shark shooting missiles," Medvedovski told The Best War Games it's a good time to be creative, but also laugh at some prompts might be a "fail."
We saw an opportunity to get a laugh out of it because the human connection, in terms of communication, is always noisy in party games. Even if we ask someone to draw something in a party game, we have this noise, and it's all part of the fun and the mechanics itself. It's not really about the individual drawing; it's about how we try to make ourselves understandable and how AI fails at it.
Another way that Canvas Ink. Games uses AI for laughs is through its avatars, which are all robot/AI versions of human painters and the like. The avatars and voices are all robotic "because people were already making fun of these AI-like robots. That's why we decided to make avatars that are robot versions of some famous paintings and painters."
Canvas Ink Prioritizes Access for All
Along with the indie Brazilian studio's goal of quick fun with others, they also target the mobile market for easy marketability, which essentially translates to providing easy access for all. This applies to the ease of playing LAIzy Picture Phone but also the studio's other projects like Music Rush. Music Rush is also a web game, but instead of being an AI-based party game, players indulge in a free one-tap musical and rhythmic runner with unlockable characters, who are based on actual iconic musical artists. All of Canvas. Ink Games' titles are available to play at the tap of a button.
We are mostly now focusing on some web games that you just click and play like we do. We want to do apps and port them to every platform eventually, but for now, if you want to play a match, you just scan a QR code and you are in the room. Another game that we are doing is Music Rush, a classic music game where you can play samba music or another type of music. Easy marketability is just focusing on ways people can easily relate to and play the game.
In a world of pricey hardware, paid DLCs, and complicated gameplay systems, it may be refreshing for some to see a game with a simple concept and no paywall like LAIzy Picture Phone. Even for those skeptical about Generative AI, LAIzy Picture Phone seems like a great way to get a laugh or two out of it as well.
LAIzy Picture Phone is currently in open beta.