By Todd Russell
There’s an 800 pound gorilla in the room, and it’s not Stern Pinball newest game: King Kong: Myth of Terror Island, it’s that two letter four letter word: AI. We cover AI here at PGM, both as a necessary evil and as a creative curiosity. We have no false illusions how it can and will change game development. We have explored Are Creative People Ripped off more by Human Beings than AI? What we’ve rarely pondered is the deeper question: should AI become the future of game development?
My Score Chasing Recap Show co-host and fellow PGM member Bradygoat shared the following article from GamesRadar+ in the Discord.
“EA laid off developers across its many studios last week, and while the company did not specify the exact number of people affected, reports suggest “between 300 and 400″ jobs were cut. Now, EA CEO Andrew Wilson says he’s optimistic about the future in part because of how heavily the company has invested in AI.” – After reportedly laying off more than 300 people, EA CEO says “AI is powering our future” and is already being used “in design, animation, and storytelling” | GamesRadar+
Thanks for sharing. There will be more and more companies using AI to generate code, music, art/graphics and text. It will start smaller, perhaps with stuff like crowd and background generated stuff and it will turn into full blown AAA games that are more than 50% AI generated. I have almost zero doubt this will be the future of gaming, not saying I agree with it, or even want this future, but humans are greedy in nature, they will do whatever they can to make more $$$. Another PGM article about a dumb use of AI, hope you all read it: AI Voice Scanning to Auto Ban Human Gamers is another dumb use of AI
I do not have any faith in corporate business choosing humanity over machines if the end result is $$$ profit $$$. Sorry for the cynicsm, but reality is reality. We’re headed toward gaming that is using this new “AI” that is miles from truly intelligent AI … whether or not we like it, the next 3-5 years almost everybody will be using some form of this obscenely power hungry tech in their development. Those that do it the “old-fashioned” way — meaning, no AI whatsoever or perhaps a very tiny % — will become the exception vs. the norm.
Here’s the thing, if these generated AI games are fun, I will play them. I don’t care if faces in the crowd of a virtual football stadium are drawn by AI gen vs. human beings — so long as it doesn’t look terrible (aye, that’s the rub) … those gamers that say they do are lying. How many even pay that close attention to faces in a stadium in the crowd? That has almost nothing to do with playing a College football game.
We all don’t want to see people lose jobs, but we also don’t want to see $100 games when they should be $10-25. What none of us want to see is less human labor, more AI generation, less true ownership (renting games!) and rising game prices. The problem is we all know the latter is exactly what’s going to happen. Cost savings for publishers will not be passed along — in most cases — to us in game prices.
It’s not necessary for human beings to copy and paste and change things that are largely the same if a machine could do it for them faster. Speedier development means games launched for us sooner. That’s a benefit in the dev cycle and the days of games like GTA 6 taking longer than an infant becoming an adult will be no more.
Another question we must ponder first: is AI even ready to replace human workers? In most cases, in 2025, yes, the time we’re reading and hearing all this doom and gloom, the answer is a big, bold NO.
“Anyone firing employees because they thought that AI would do their jobs in 2025 should be fired. It really doesn’t take much research to see AI isn’t at the place where it’s replacing people – yet. And business managers – particularly in small and mid-sized companies – who think it is better think again.” – https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/11/artificial-intelligence-small-business
Machines should (someday, eventually, when the tech can do it correctly) replace humans in some tasks, but very simple, and very repetitive tasks, even some very dangerous tasks too … machines are a perfect fit so that humans can explore more creative, complex and/or fulfilling jobs in the world and use more of their lives, which are finite, to do things in this world that matter to other humans and ourselves.
I don’t believe there is much value in some work being done by humans and would like to think others would agree. I don’t want to see people lose meaningful jobs, but some jobs for humans aren’t meaningful to them, they are freed up to go find a meaningful job that gives them greater purpose in life. I celebrate that scenario.
The biggest problem with 2025 AI are bugs. These AI programs have all kinds of problems. Generated pics have flaws, particularly with text and proper generation of hands (correct number of digits!). Generated music the voices lack realistic passion and often have a robotic filters to them and cloned voices are often kind of off compared to human voices. These and more are the telltale signs of AI gen content. That’s why some humans despise the fingerprint of AI content and seek to condemn anybody using it.
There is an even more significant issue with turning things over to AI completely that is a good place to finish this discussion.
If people don’t write the code and/or at least review the code leading to machines writing all the code and fixing the code there will come a point where we no longer understand the code. It can and possibly will become a lost art through time.
And that’s when AI truly becomes scary.