As games, especially large ones, become harder and significantly more expensive to develop, AI seems to be presenting a very lucrative alternative for major publishers. And as companies like Epic Games offer them more and more AI integration within engines, it’s only a matter of time before many of them jump ship and go full AI.
But according to one of CDPR’s co-chief executives, Michał Nowakowski, this doesn’t seem like “the path to follow” but is definitely an unavoidable one. Speaking during an Unreal Engine panel (via Knowledge), Nowakowski said he participated in a conversation with a person who had started an AI-based gaming studio and was told that the company could make 40 prototypes “within a week.”
“‘Two weeks from now I can have five games that I chose are going to be the best and, three weeks from now, I’m actually launching a game,’” this person apparently told the executive.
“Maybe that’s going to be successful, but I have some doubts whether this is really the path to follow,” Nowakowski added.
AI is quickly becoming a sure-fire solution to non-existent problems, at least in the eyes of major AAA publishers, who have opted for substituting creative talent and human intelligence with artificial methods that couldn’t innovate or invent something new to save their silicon.
At its core, AI, or a large language model, is an aggregator. It scans through the data you’ve fed it and averages out the result. It merely extracts from input and cannot, by design, be innovative, creative, or inventive. So all it does in the case of video games is muddy the waters.
If used for prototyping, developer ideation is drawn toward the average instead of something fresh and original. The same applies in any art-related field. The only application for AI is cutting down on rudimentary technical tasks in programming, i.e., using it to solve issues that have been solved for decades… only faster.
Creativity isn’t a problem and does not require solving. But it is that speed that counts, and little else. Just generate half of your game (or an entire game, as the person in Nowakowski’s example), slap a recognizable AAA IP logo on it, and voila, money.
