It’s about incredibly talented people not doing incredibly boring stuff” – Blizzard devs say it’s possible to use AI tools while still feeling “handcrafted

There seems to be no escaping AI these days. Along with the numerous posts on social media which at times have left me questioning what is real, it has also become a common feature across various platforms and devices. Even the transcription tool my friends and I use in our D&D game often delivers a summary of the session back to us, all unprompted.

Then in games, we’ve already had the likes of AI NPCs, AI scriptwriting and AI voice acting, to name just a few. AI really is everywhere. As our Alex spotted at Gamescom last month, a lot of smaller indie developers are using the technology to generate content, with AI artwork becoming a recurring theme. But, what about the bigger studios like Blizzard?

I recently sat down with developers behind two of the company’s biggest franchises – World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 – and the subject turned to AI. While Blizzard uses the technology for the more “menial” areas of development, both teams agree that when it comes to things such as characters and stories, you just can’t beat a human touch.

“I think one of the things for World of Warcraft that makes it feel very unique, at least on the art side of things, is the handcrafted feel to it,” Gabriel Gonzalez, World of Warcraft’s lead visual development artist, tells me. “That is, and always will be, a big part of it.”

“I think for us, and the way we can think about AI and the tools and how we might or might not integrate them goes back to ‘how do we find ways to do away with the more menial parts of the work,’ and free up more time for people to be creative,” the developer continues. “One of the examples we have been focusing on recently is helm fitting, so for the character workflow, currently, it’s like the way that different helmets fit on a character needs to be changed for each of the races, right?”

This is due to World of Warcraft’s characters having horns or more unusual ear shapes. “Things like AI help a lot with that,” Gonzalez explains. “I would say the philosophy is always how we free up more time for our team to be creative, and take away the menial.”

World of Warcraft’s associate design director Maria Hamilton adds when it comes to creating a narrative that is actually going to connect with the community, AI will never be able to fill that role. “I don’t think stories resonate as well with people unless they are written by people,” Hamilton says. “I feel like the stories that really stood out in the last two expansions were the ones that struck at the heart of human experiences, and they were often things that people had experienced themselves.”

Hamilton adds she hasn’t “seen a need to do anything other than our handcrafted storytelling” for World of Warcraft. “It’s about people feeling it, and I just don’t think the technologies are suitable for that,” she says. “We do use machine learning, as Gabe said, for the really serious drudgery of things… but after the ‘things’ run through it, somebody still has to approve them. Someone still has to look at them and go ‘yep, nope, nope, yep, not that one’.

“It’s more about making incredibly talented people not have to do incredibly boring stuff.”

Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller echoes what his fellow Blizzard developers say. “Right now, we don’t use AI to create characters or gameplay. I think Blizzard as a whole is known for handcrafted games and handcrafted worlds. So, we try to pour all of our creative energy and all of our passion into doing that,” Keller tells me.

“For us, it is more important to get the details right, and to make sure that the gameplay is as impeccable as it can be and withholds the Blizzard standard, rather than trying to make something as quick as we possibly can.”

In terms of AI use in the industry more generally, Keller says it’s currently “a little hard to say” where the technology is going. “It is obviously starting to take its foothold across a lot of different industries globally, so I think that we are going to be seeing more and more of it, whether it’s just in tools that people use.”

No matter what, though, Keller notes that AI technically is advancing. “So, we are going to see more of it,” the Overwatch 2 game director reiterates.

Over the years, many within the industry have spoken about the use of AI in games, and actors such as Jennifer Hale, David Hayter and Ashly Burch have all shared their thoughts on the technology.

For more on the wider topic, be sure to check out our Ed’s feature: How AI is changing video game development forever.