AI Driving Game Demo Forces Developer to Take Out Bank Loan to Keep It Running

The developer behind Teach My Little Sister How to Drive, a driving instruction sim where you instruct a generative-AI-powered, dynamic NPC, has been spending $1,000 dollars a day to keep the demo working. “Over the past month, the number of demo players has grown more than twentyfold,” the developer said, via FRVR. “This growth has also increased our operating costs considerably.”

It all seems viable and a good business model so far. According to the blog post, developer Easy Fox had to take out a bank loan to support the game, which is powered by AI models. AI models costs can soar dramatically as the number of requests users make, which consume “tokens,” increase. Teach My Little Sister constantly queries AI as players interact with the game’s NPC to progress.

The developer plans to factor this in when deciding how much to charge for the game’s full release. “For the paid release, we plan to account for expected AI usage in the game’s price,” they said. “Players will not be charged separately for their individual AI token usage after purchasing the game. This isn’t because each player is particularly expensive to support. The total cost has increased because so many people are playing, and we have taken out a bank loan to help keep the demo running.

“We want to continue operating the demo and would love for more people to enjoy it. However, we are a small team of four, and financial pressure may mean we have to close the demo earlier than expected before the full release. We have not made that decision at this time.”

The game originally launched its demo in February, but interest from streamers such as thinknoodles has given it a popularity bump. The game is also popular in Asia, where there isn’t such a stigma around generative AI, which people in the West tend to hate because it’s a theft engine that sucks up the planet’s energy like Shinra.

Teach My Little Sister How to Drive relies on Google Gemini and ChatGPT to power its dynamic NPC, which follows your instructions, reacts, and disobeys, but the developers are looking into ways of allowing local AI models to step in for players “with sufficiently capable PCs.”

Companies making use of generative AI are starting to face reality. In a recent Axios report, one mystery company spent $500 million on AI tokens in a single month after failing to put usage limits on its account. Elsewhere, OpenClaw’s creator burned through $1.3 million in OpenAI API tokens in a single month.

There have been a few high profile instances of triple-A game developers either using generative AI or being caught up in the AI debate. Recently, Capcom had to clarify comments about its proprietary RE Engine being “AI powered.”

The publisher behind Arc Raiders came out in defense of AI use in Embark’s extraction shooter, but the team has since been making progress on replacing those stilted performances with human ones. Even games industry giant Activision has come under fire for AI usage in Call of Duty and its marketing materials.