(Ed. full transparency, the image pictured above is AI-generated, as are most placeholder top images here at PGM, the rest of this article and all PGM articles by Todd Russell are 100% written by a human being, zero AI-generation in the text is ever used unless it’s clearly denoted and/or used as an example of why A.I can’t do everything human writers can do)
You’ve seen the headlines, seen the articles, maybe not so much here, but any search on “AI” will invariably end with the villain in the room being: A.I. Here’s only a few filtered, but you can filter plenty more yourself:
- AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry | WIRED
- Activision Blizzard is reportedly already making games with AI, and quietly sold an AI-generated microtransaction in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 | GamesRadar+
- This Is What Could Happen if AI Content Is Allowed to Take Over the Internet (singularityhub.com) (Ed. this one deals with training AI with too much AI producing gibberish, so the reverse argument is true: using more AI for AI generation actually has a negative impact on the output. Perhaps even with AI, also, too much is, well, too much)
- Videogame voice actors are officially on strike over AI: ‘We refuse this paradigm’ | PC Gamer
Before this sounds like I’m sticking up for A.I, because I’m currently involved and creatively active in that scene, I want to look at another problem in game development I’ve seen over the years. It’s something that until only recently when studios started the layoffs that has changed (see: To date, 16,000+ Game Job Layoffs from 2023-2024 and Counting …)
Too many people are working on a single game.
Read that sentence above. I’m not saying too many games are being created by too many people, although some will argue (even myself at times) this is true, too, but there are too many cooks in the games kitchen.
Generally — and this doesn’t mean I’m stuck in the 80s and 90s — I like the older days of game development, you know, the arcade days where one person primarily programmed games. I’m not against small teams, a few people, artists, sound people, maybe even a few programmers on a team working together. We enjoyed the speed of development once upon a time. We marveled at it.
Now, it seems to take too long to get games in front of people. No, this isn’t every developer, every publisher, because there are still indies out there going lean and mean, and my hats off to them.
Some of these AAA games are just stupidly expensive and stupidly overstaffed. I’m talking not dozens, but hundreds of people working on a single game. That just puts wayyyyy too much pressure on the end result being a huge financial success.
And when/if it isn’t? Then come the labor cuts. The blades come out for the team. What if smaller, more nimble dev teams were used? Create more smaller, creative and, cough, risky games? When you get a winner there, you can finance larger projects. But don’t bet the farm on a single game.
This is what seems to be happening: these medium and larger studios are risking too many $$$ on single games.
This doesn’t mean there can’t be some AAA games built with larger teams, just like there can and will be larger tentpole movies. You know, those like James Cameron is doing that require ridiculous hundreds of millions of dollars to make a single movie. These big games and movies should very much be an extremely rare circumstance.
Maybe going forward this will be more likely.
I mean, we’ve got GTA 6 coming someday in the future and it’s taken years and years and years to create (A GnR Next Album Like Wait Continues – Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer Leaked Early, Then Officially Released, No PC Version?). 2014 that work started. 2014! Before it’s released it will be more than 10 years.
10 years to make any game is prohibitively long. The problem with more time, comes more gamer expectation and there is a point where too much time becomes too high expectation. Guns N Roses faced this with their album Chinese Democracy. It’s a good album, but it doesn’t have Slash playing guitar on it. One guy. One band member can make a difference. It doesn’t have Izzy playing rhythm on it either. It’s got Axl Rose’s genius, but he’s missing the rest of his important team and he took too darn long to get it out to people. Fans move interest to others. Fans want to see something new from you. Taylor Swift knows this and it’s just one part of her marketing genius.
So, even if GTA 6 delivers and gamers are happy with the end result, it’s set a terrible precedent for what makes for a successful business model in game development.
I offer the solution to jump in the Delorean and go back in time. Go back to smaller teams, smaller projects, more creative, faster and, yes, less expensive output. Less priced games. Instead of raising game prices even higher … the move to $69.99 from $59.99? Dumb. Go lower, $29.99 and lower. Heck, get down to $14.99 or $9.99 like Lethal Company (see: Lethal Company horror game launched October 2023 has 71,000+ Overwhelmingly Positive Steam Reviews). Would devs rather sell 100,000+ games at $10 vs. 10,000 at $29.99? Or 1,000 at $49.99? Do the math.
Now, what about A.I? The Darth Vader of 2024. The technology that is under fire for taking work for human beings. Stealing the creativity from us?
Are they?
Are AI-generated content going to supplement people making larger games? Cutting down staff size? Is this a terrible thing for the game business if it does? I don’t want to see anybody lose their job, but this has happened throughout history with something coming along that saves time.
Human beings, we need more time, not less. I think if some A.I can be used to reduce human time spent on churning essentially the same code a human being would write or providing smaller or more insignificant backgrounds that artists don’t need to hand draw or create.
No, I don’t want to see all human-created art gone from the world, replaced by A.I. I think behind any good A.I there are human beings in the mix. The human filtering is important. The human tweaking. The humans involved or leading the creativity.
As someone currently experimenting with A.I in a number of creative areas (games, music, art), I see a path where humans can work with A.I to churn out creative works that could take us different directions faster than before. Huge emphasis on the word “could.” A.I could also litter the digital streets with a ton of garbage. That is one of the fears, that sites like PGM, articles you’re reading like this one, written entirely by a human being — me, in this case — will be replaced or buried by mostly AI-generated articles.
Opinion articles like this one cannot be written by A.I because A.I has no opinion. It has no independent thought, views, likes, dislikes, biases (ok, it can simulate bias) or interests. It can’t do what’s being done here. As long as that’s the case, as long as A.I can’t do this kind of content, these 100% human written articles will go on. And on. And on. Just like that Titanic theme song by Celine Dion with your heart.
A.I has no heart either. Cue the tin man.
When A.I gains sentience, and heart, perhaps then it will be time to raise fear as a concern for not just creative but all mankind. Or maybe it will be a Star Trek future where money isn’t important any more (money, IMO, is a much greater evil in the world right now than A.I).
In the meantime, my opinion, game development in 2024 could use less human beings involved. Don’t go crazy in the comments mincing my words, I’m not saying no human beings whatsoever, because there is an important creative difference in quality when human beings are involved.
This might be a radical viewpoint for some, especially those directly impacted, but these displaced workers could go out and create their own game studios. They could go and create their own games and, maybe, even use some (or a lot of) A.I to help out.
Aye, the rub.
Bob
Definitely need fewer cooks in the kitchen. I would take less in terms of visuals for an additional final fantasy game more often. The new hd-2d style is an interesting tradeoff.