Warhorse co-founder believes 'AI is not a get out of jail free card' and that execs have a 'simplified mental model' of what it means for games

Few things are constant in life, but the reminder that AI is wriggling its way into just about every facet of life is unfortunately pervasive. Take games for example, it's wormed its way into voice acting, voice acting, and more voice acting. But aside from giving players a plethora of dull and generic quips it's also been cited as one of the reasons behind the seemingly neverending string of layoffs in the industry.

The thought process is 'why pay humans to do work when you can pay robots to do it, just kind of worse.' This is where Warhorse's co-founder, Martin Klima, thinks videogame execs are getting it wrong, because "AI is not a get out of jail free card."

While Klima does believe that AI may become unavoidable if cost-saving stays as important as it already is, he points out that "it doesn't work how people imagine in a very simplified mental model".

The idea that you can lay off half your staff and replace them with AI is a "fundamentally flawed idea, because it doesn't work like that". Klima believes that instead of replacing half of a team of devs, player demand for bigger and bigger games will invariably drive studios to keep their human dev teams the same size, but augmented by AI. This would, he says, allow them to make even bigger games than they could beforehand. The game that offers players more "is going to be better".

"It can mean [the game] has more branching classes," Klima adds. "It can mean it has more missions to play, whatever—people will still want to have this bigger game." While AI may not reduce the cost of the game, it will allow us to create bigger games for the same cost".

Some studios have been using machine learning to cut out busy work that only bogs its developers down for a while now, like Warcraft. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick also commented on the tech, saying that, while AI isn't in the business of making hits because "clones don't sell", it can still be helpful to devs. Unfortunately, it looks like not everyone's got the memo just yet.

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