By D. Maan, Jadetimes News
Industry Veteran Expresses Concern Over AI Driven Changes in Gaming
A veteran video game artist with nearly 15 years of experience describes the gaming industry as being on "shaky" ground. The pandemic induced surge in players and profits led to rapid investments, expansions, and acquisitions that now seem short sighted. Despite ongoing profitability, thousands of workers have been laid off, and successful studios have closed over the past two years, with fears of more closures to come. "Everyone knows someone who's been laid off. There's lots of worry about the future," says Jess. While some leaders tout generative AI, such as ChatGPT, as a potential savior citing benefits like development time savings, enhanced creativity, and personalized user experiences rising budgets and audience expectations make these promises seem like a perfect but uncertain solution.
Concerns Over AI's Impact on Creativity and Jobs in the Gaming Industry
Jess, a member of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain's game workers branch and its AI working group, asserts that the most enthusiastic supporters of AI's creative potential are not the creatives themselves. Amid widespread layoffs, there is growing suspicion among workers that executives view AI as a cost cutting measure, given that labor is their largest expense. Jess knows individuals who have lost work due to AI and has heard of similar cases affecting jobs in concept art and other entry level roles. Although AI tool developers claim their products are not intended to replace humans, and consensus suggests the technology is not yet capable of doing so, Jess is more concerned about job transformations. She fears that instead of generating their own material, artists might find themselves merely supplementing AI efforts, rather than the reverse.
AI Image Generators and the Impact on Creative Roles in Gaming
Publicly available AI image generators can produce impressive results from simple text prompts, but they often struggle with details like rendering hands and chairs accurately. "The stuff that AI generates, you become the person whose job is fixing it," says Jess. "It's not why I got into making games." Despite gaming being a multibillion dollar industry, it is also an artistic medium that integrates the talents of artists, musicians, writers, programmers, and actors, among others. A common concern is that AI may end up minimizing the contributions of these creatives rather than enhancing them.
Concerns Over AI and Cloning in the Gaming Industry
Chris Knowles, a former senior engine developer at Jagex, renowned for its Runescape title, shares Jess's concerns about AI in gaming. "If you're going to have to hire actual human artists to fix the output, why not harness their creativity and make something new that connects with players?" says Chris, who now runs UK indie studio Sidequest Ninja. He notes that smaller developers generally show little enthusiasm for generative AI, primarily due to worries about cloned games. Online game stores, where indie developers make most of their sales, are filled with imitations of original titles, especially in the mobile gaming sector. While AI cannot yet replicate an entire game, copying assets such as artwork is easily done. "Anything that makes the clone studios' business model even cheaper and quicker makes the difficult task of running a financially sustainable indie studio even harder," Chris explains. He also highlights the significant electricity consumption required to run generative AI systems as a major concern.
Copyright Concerns and the Ethical Use of AI in Gaming
Copyright concerns surrounding generative AI, currently the focus of several ongoing legal cases, are a significant barrier to its wider adoption in the gaming industry. These tools are trained on vast amounts of text and images scraped from the internet, which many artists, including Jess, believe constitutes "mass copyright infringement." In response, some studios are developing systems trained on internal data, while third parties are offering ethical tools that claim to use authorized sources. Despite these efforts, there remains a fear that AI will be used to mass produce assets such as artwork and 3D models, increasing the pressure on workers to produce more output. "The more content you can make, the more money you can make," says Jess.
Mixed Reactions to AI in the Gaming Industry
While some in the industry remain wary of AI, others are more optimistic. Borislav Slavov, a Bafta Games Award winning composer for Baldur's Gate 3, expressed excitement about AI's potential impact on music. Speaking at the recent Games Music Festival in London, Slavov highlighted how AI could help composers explore new musical directions more quickly and push them out of their comfort zones. He believes this would allow composers to focus more on creating deeply emotional and powerful themes. However, Slavov acknowledged that AI cannot "replace the human soul and spirit." Conversely, Jess, despite her serious reservations about using AI to "automate creativity," is open to utilizing it for repetitive administrative tasks common in most projects.
The Need to Reassure Gamers and Regulators
The AI industry is working to reassure governments and regulators about its future use, as evidenced by a recent law passed by the EU. However, it also needs to win over gamers. Online shooter The Finals faced backlash over its use of synthesized voice lines, and Square Enix was criticized for using generated art in its multiplayer game Foamstars. Jess believes the increasing discussion about AI has made gamers appreciate the human touch in games, valuing experiences crafted by other humans. "I'm still putting something of myself into it, and I think there's a growing recognition of that," she says. Indie developer Chris adds, "If you train a generative model on nothing but cave paintings, all it'll ever give you will be cave paintings. It takes humans to get from there to the Sistine Chapel."
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