Casey Hudson, the director of the original Knights of the Old Republic, is working on a new game in the series called Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic—you may have heard about that already, in the form of excited gurgling noises coming from PC Gamer editor Ted Litchfield.
It’s a big deal, but in an interview with Bloomberg, Hudson said one of his goals is to avoid having his team at Arcanaut Studios grow too big. Unlike some of his contemporaries, though, Hudson does not see generative AI as the solution to making games with smaller teams..
Making videogames has become very expensive on the triple-A side of the industry. 2020’s Black Ops: Cold War cost more than $700 million to make, for instance, and the budget of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 is reportedly measured in the billions. A big chunk of that eye-watering change comes from payroll—so a small studio, obviously, means a smaller budget, which is particularly important in an era of brutal layoffs and studio closures.
“I just find AI to be creatively soulless,” Hudson said. “It’s hard to imagine where it’s actually helpful in the process. I’m just really unimpressed with it.”
As is too often the case, “AI” isn’t really defined here, but it’s fair to assume he’s referring specifically to generative AI tools used for content creation. To which I say, good, because regardless of your personal meditations on the nature of the human soul, I think we can all agree that machines imitating behaviors based on specific inputs and algorithms don’t have one—and if art is your goal (rather than just, y’know, a commodified product), that’s a problem.
Of course, others feel differently. Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Hideaki Nishino said earlier this month that AI is going to enable “gaming experiences like never before” (statements like that always remind me of Hitler’s famous quote, “Give me four years time and you will not recognize Germany”), and Lies of P studio Neowiz recently posted an ad for an “AI Creator” who will bring expertise with generative AI to the studio’s development teams and games.
Despite those countervailing opinions, I’m glad Hudson doesn’t share that enthusiasm: I’m all for technological advances that make things better, but sometimes it really does just make things worse. And Hudson, for the record, knows what he’s talking about: Before he hit the big-time with Mass Effect, he did concept and prototype art on BioWare games including MDK2, Neverwinter Nights, and Knights of the Old Republic.
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