Frustration thrives as the promise of AI-empowered games gives way to redundancies, diminished job satisfaction and player boycotts.
Solo Australian developer Joe Gibbs is excited about how artificial intelligence (AI) will transform his game. Partnering with an AI company, Gibbs intends to implement a dynamic branching story system into his real-time strategy game, Fall of an Empire.
“Maybe a character has a trait that makes them uninterested in hunting—and when that same character ends up in a hunting accident, it breaks immersion,” he says.
“So the idea is to dynamically update those storylines, fill in the gaps, and make the whole thing feel more cohesive.”
Gibbs’s game is aiming to launch next year. But had it launched today, it could see a mixed response through nothing more than including this new tech in his title.
Certain support services within the gaming community could decline to help him, reviewers may refuse to play the game, platforms that host the game will insist that it’s labelled as content that contains AI material, and, crucially, players may outright boycott it.
It’s a fluid issue, and matters may be different next year. It came to a head earlier this year when the maker of The Alters, 11 Bit Studios, was caught out by players for using AI assets in their game without disclosing it to players, triggering outrage. As Gibbs points out, many of the world’s most popular games clearly flag their use of AI tools, including PUBG, Lost Ark and Call of Duty.
But regardless, within AI’s short lifespan, it’s left a polarising scar on the global gaming industry.
“Some people are very wary or reluctant to use it. And there are certainly corners of the community that are outright opposed — you know, “death to AI,” that kind of sentiment,” says Chad Habel, videogames industry veteran and developer at Bad Plan Studios.
“But I think the most common view I’ve heard — both within our studio and with others — is: “We’ll use it if we have to, when it’s useful.” Habel also added that his studio’s latest game, twin-stick shooter End of Ember, won’t contain any AI-generated assets.
For an industry that’s often been on the bleeding edge of technology adoption, why has this tool garnered so much hate in such a short time?
Fear, loathing and lobotomisation
For games developers, AI adoption has become yet another factor eroding job viability. Some within the industry feel that by using AI, they are training their replacement. That’s been the case at mobile game maker King, where 200 staff were made redundant, with reports that the AI models they were encouraged to use have supplanted them.
King are the makers of popular mobile game, Candy Crush. Source: King
For those that remain, AI use may also inadvertently detract from job satisfaction. One developer at a major Australian games company, speaking to Infinite Lives on the condition of anonymity, said they feel “lobotomised” and creatively drained from using AI in their work.
“It’s as if the tool causes all users to trend towards mediocrity, in both product and emotional experience, and it is incredibly difficult to get it to do anything novel — an understandable limitation given the underlying math of the tech,” they said.
“The most common use case I’m seeing is that people who were already sort of bad at making games are now sort of bad at making games quite a lot faster; processes are yet to shift to where it’s being well integrated into pipelines.”
Players, too, have noticed a drop in the quality of some game-related collateral as the industry grapples with how best to use the tool.
“I’m in a number of communities and forums, and I’ve noticed whenever someone shares a trailer or screenshots that look AI-generated, the backlash is instant. People call it “AI slop.” There’s a pretty nasty reaction,” Habel says.
“So if players identify something as lazy, or if it negatively affects the experience, there will be backlash.” Habel adds that some studios have taken a strong anti-AI stance to garner community support for their game.
An early screenshot of End of Ember, by Bad Plan Studios, who are not intending to use AI in its assets. Source: Steam.
Amy Potter-Jarman, former Twitch APAC Marketing Director and founder of the Frosty Games Fest, has also noticed a shift in player sentiment towards AI.
“I think, generally, players want to support the ethical development of video games – we also see this in anti-crunch policy support, for example – and understand that generative AI is riddled with ethical concerns and ultimately bad news for creative industries,” Potter-Jarman says.
“I personally won’t work on any games using generative AI, and we had all games featured in Frosty sign a disclosure that their games were generative AI free. I believe the majority of the other indie Summer Game Fest showcases have the same policy.” She adds that some professional game reviewers in her networks have taken a similar stance.
Notably, despite debate within the industry, its peak body, the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA), supports the sector’s “responsible and ethical deployment of AI, especially through robust copyright and IP protection laws.”
Productivity gains, polarisation pain
Yet, across the board, Australian game developers told Infinite Lives that they have noticed productivity gains from using AI-powered tools. If not directly via creation of game assets, then through streamlining the organisational work that goes on around the game’s creation. That productivity boost was most pronounced with solo developer Gibbs.
“If I want to add a new panel or a new feature, I can get a prototype out in a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks,” he says.
“The side effect of that is it creates a sort of generic aesthetic. Lowest-common-denominator stuff… You should still come up with the core ideas yourself, and only let the AI handle the parts you want help with—not the whole idea.”
From Gibbs’s perspective, the broader debate on AI use in games is gradually subsiding. Habel agrees.
“Friends of mine who were previously outspoken critics of AI now post memes using it — maybe they didn’t notice, maybe they stopped caring,” Habel says.
“So in the short term, yeah, AI use might hurt [game] sales. But in 10 years? Probably not.”
Gibbs agrees, likening the AI adoption furore to the debate initially triggered by the introduction of computer-generated imagery (CGI) into film or how the introduction of digital art initially upset those in the art world.
For now, the issue continues to divide the gaming industry and players, exacerbated with each major redundancy round linked to its adoption. The promise of AI creating new gaming experiences, as Gibbs intends with Fall of an Empire, or empowering smaller teams to create more involved games, has been countered with fear, frustration and, most of all, polarisation.
As Habel puts it: “The inability to talk across perspectives might be the biggest issue of all.”
What’s your stance on AI use in games? And has it changed over time or galvanised? Keep the discussion going and let me know in the comments.
Harrison Polites writes the Infinite Lives newsletter. Follow him here.
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