07 January 2024 , 10:00
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As more and more publishers announce investments into AI technology, 2023’s GOTY winner is living proof of the importance of video games made by humans.
Being a fan of video games these days means having to put up with a lot of rubbish, let’s be honest. When paid-for games like EA FC 24 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora aren’t constantly forcing microtransactions down our throats, publishers like Ubisoft announce they’re getting into NFTs. Remember those? Thankfully, for the most part, the latter seems to have died a death – but it still made for a lot of pointless conversations we knew wouldn’t end up going anywhere. Throughout the past year, it’s become clear that video games now have a new enemy: artificial intelligence.
Of course, this issue isn’t wholly exclusive to video games. In pretty much every type of artistic endeavour, the rise of AI-driven tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney in recent years has continued to threaten the work of all creative individuals. We’re told it’s to make our jobs easier, but the ways it’s been implemented so far all point towards being an excuse to cut corners in the development process. A way to save costs, nothing more.
Admittedly, as a journalist whose job involves getting articles to rank as high as possible in search engines, it doesn’t particularly rub me the right way that Google can just scrape my work and spit it out at the top of its search result page. Even worse, a website made less than a year ago can pick my words apart, rewrite it slightly, and then pass my work off as if it’s some bots, or even potentially someone else’s. Yes, I have a reason to have a bleak outlook on the way AI is handled, but then so does everyone else who has made content creation their career.
Usually, whenever the likes of Blockchain, NFTs, the Metaverse, and other types of nonsense try to bleed their way into video games, enough players kick up a fuss that developers and publishers drop it after taking notice. The market reacts, those at the top watch how the market reacts, and then (for fear of ruining their public image) abandon whatever is the hot, useless fad in that moment. Whenever questionable technologies like these come around we should always ask the question: will it make video games better? And if not, anyone sane would not bother dabbling at all.
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The problem with AI, however, is that it’s been a lot easier for broader audiences to engage in the ‘fun’ that can be had with its uses. ‘Oh look, it’s a perfect recreation of the Mona Lisa eating a hot dog’. ‘I’ve always wondered what it would look like to have Bart Simpson sing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody – and here it is’. I’m not discounting the fact that AI can have its uses, but extreme hypothetical instances like these highlight how it can be abused.
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The latest example of AI’s worrying use in video games came earlier this week, when Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu spoke in his new year letter to staff about how the Japanese publisher would be “aggressive in applying AI” going forward. To hear this from a company responsible for some of gaming’s biggest franchises, such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts can only be described as disheartening. Sure, while the hope is “to enhance development productivity” while making games, the reliance on AI to go about doing this doesn’t fill me with confidence.
Sadly, Square Enix isn’t alone in its use of AI. The official ID@Xbox Twitter account’s use of an AI-generated image for its Christmas message, as glimpsed by @WarwickOnX after it was taken down, sparked its fair share of outrage. People were quick to notice that the artwork featured lines and blurred facial expressions that didn’t make any sense. From a platform that should be a bedrock of supporting creative game developers, each of whom works tirelessly to make games for its console, Xbox should know better. Losing the goodwill of both your audience and partners probably isn’t worth skimping out on a few quid to pay for artwork drawn by a human.
Whatever you think of AI’s apparent impact in the video game space, one thing is clear; it’s not going away anytime soon. Currently, it feels like publishers and platforms are experimenting with what it can be used for, making ‘mistakes’ along the way to see what players will tolerate. It’s in these instances that I think about games like the much-celebrated Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios’ wildly ambitious fantasy RPG that has human fingerprints all over it. From the way character interactions are specifically animated to what’s being said, to the voice actors speaking it, to the writers that put the words in their mouths in the first place.
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t the only modern AAA game entirely made by humans, of course, but it just so happens to be the perfect lightning rod to discuss how valuable the efforts of creative people can be deployed to inspire the imagination of its audience. My only hope is that Square Enix, Xbox, and everyone else that’s even ever so slightly toying with the so-called benefits AI can bring, consider this. As for me? I want to continue enjoying games made by people, because art is the expression of the self, not of software.