Design or Resign: Has the Post-AI Gaming Industry Become More Accessible, Educational and Inclusive?
- SEBANTI HUI 2333168
- 10 hours ago
- 7 min read
The Internet worships cats; they dote on them, hail their pictures and cannot help but to search up cat videos on YouTube. When Game Developers come to harness this primal magnetism, what ensues is the creation of cat-cult classics like Neko Atsume and Stray. However, in mid-December of 2024, a certain indie video-game had come under fire for seemingly possessing artificially-generated visuals within it. In a matter of a few days, this discourse had spiralled out of control on various social media platforms, eventually prompting the creator of Catly, the game in question, to preemptively release their ongoing gameplay footage to subdue the accusations. However, that was merely the icing on the cake, as merely a month prior to this incident, Elon Musk had announced the incorporation of an AI game studio. It seemed as though the robots had certainly stolen Christmas for the gaming community.
From Simulation to… Creation?
It would be naive to assume that artificial intelligence holds no significance in the world of gaming. Perhaps this ignorance owes its dues to the primitive belief that all AI is generative, the woes of ChatGPT and Dall-E extending their dominion over the larger tech oeuvre. While generative AI, in the modern context, is a familiar occurrence in recent games, its predecessors were more simulative in nature.
In the earliest stages of the digital game, playing against the computer can be deduced as the earliest forms of AI application; One could battle against their system in a game of two-dimensional chess, but rarely wonder how the computer can react to their strategies and techniques. Consequently, this might correspond to the primordial likeness of the NPC or the Non-Playable Character. NPCs are purely pre-programmed and computer-controlled entities enacting upon a code of automated rules. NPCs exist to simulate an immersive environment for the living-player to interact with and progress. These models may be trained on Machine-Learning to gradually adapt to the player’s behaviour, or in the case of RPG games, enact upon Behaviour Trees (BTs) to correspond to a particular occupational class. Mantella, a mod or user-created modification for Bethesda’s prominent game, Skyrim: The Elder Scrolls V, attempts to combine these technical strategies by leveraging LLMs to impel infinite conversations between the players and the NPCs. However, Mantella’s incorporation of ChatGPT induces concerns of authenticity and fair-use of these models and the data they are trained upon, potentially prompting the concurrent issues of generative AI that seemingly lie outside the domain of gaming.
Besides NPCs, simulative gaming has gained immense prominence since the early 2000s, especially with tycoons or business simulators like Cities Skylines, Rollercoaster Tycoon and SimCity, which were often availed by students of Business Management as a part of their courses, despite the controversies surrounding its usage for educational purposes. SimCity had revolutionized the genre of simulative gaming with their later installment, The Sims franchise. NPCs had become more advanced, achieving a state of digital sentience that required a certain level of omniscient interference and intelligence from the player. Sims could mimic the quotidian actions of human beings, albeit more chaotically, and existed within their social systems that were modelled against reality. The Sims uses pathfinding as an AI strategy for the simulated entities to exhibit a sense of “free will” to travel from one action to another. inZOI by KRAFTON uses a similar system with enhanced graphics, intended for a powerful system. Simulations are likewise evident in generating infinite (theoretically) worlds as seen in Minecraft and No Man’s Sky.
The examples listed above primarily discuss AI as a part of game mechanics, intended aspects of the gameplay that do not typically destruct the gaming experience. However, this is not the issue that requires addressing. The recent thrust towards using AI to develop video-games is a glaring concern that could radically modify the industry for better or for worse.
Children and Coding:
The requirement of proper technological skills is at its apex, with corporations from every field mandating the knowledge of basic Office software. Teaching children how to use computers has been normalised since the 2000s with most schools constructing computer labs within their premises to facilitate this process. From the 2010 onwards, however, it had become imperative to teach children the basics of coding, whether it be HTML or JavaScript. Modern children are more proficient in using the latest technologies compared to most adults, and pedagogical strategies had to be modified to appease their abilities. Games being used to educate had become the rage with Minecraft: Education Edition being one of the most popular and accessible choices of software.
It is on these lines that Roblox had ordained their generative AI vision in 2023 to democratise game development by making LUA Script more accessible to their primary target audience of children. Roblox is a digital gaming platform, forum and community where users can play user-created games, customize their avatars and maintain a personal profile to engage with other members of the community. Daniel Sturman, the CTO of Roblox, mentioned the platform’s concern of being deprived of valuable talent as game development was not an accessible process in its current state. Besides coding, one would require proper 3D models, assets, writing, art, etc to truly construct a unique game. A person who was skilled at coding would not necessarily be proficient in making 3D models or assets. Sturman believes that generative AI could efficiently bridge this gap to democratise the process. While they did not explicitly target their audience of children through this inclusion, it was more or less implied based on the usage rates of the AI tool after its implementation. Roblox’s generative AI model is an LLM for 3D models and codes, deconstructing existing environments and scripts to generate custom ones based on the prompts that are provided. While some argue that Roblox’s AI model can be used for educational endeavours by aspiring game developers, it nonetheless ignites the same, concurrent concerns of authenticity, copyright and fair-use of data.
Inseparable, Not Insufferable:
AI and video-games are inseparable in terms of their game mechanics. However, the vision of making “Games Great Again” through gaming studios that will use generative AI in the creative process is undoubtedly an insufferable decision. The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, CTO of X and US Politician, Elon Musk is also a self-proclaimed gamer seeking to counteract the “woke” contemporaneous gaming landscapes. On the 17th of February, 2025, Musk had confirmed xAI’s role in establishing an “AI gaming studio” to “make video games great again”. This rather ambiguous statement had resulted in intense discourse on X and other relevant social media platforms regarding the legitimacy of the gaming industry amidst the global AI takeover. According to Musk, video-games being ideologically-charged through subaltern representation and the confrontations of sensitive topics was detrimental to their longevity, which would be something that AI would resolve.
Besides the blatant contradictions of how “wokeness” was “damaging art” and artificial intelligence did not, this discourse, which primarily operated from a player-perspective, seemed counterproductive to the overarching scheme of game development. The current organisation of the video game industry is capitalistic, with Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Epic, Valve, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony primarily developing Triple-A video games, however, independent or “indie” developers also constitute a significant portion of the market. The desire for an AI video game studio had likely stemmed from the dissatisfaction with DEI policies in terms of diversity-hiring engineers in gaming corporations. This was apparently, the boiling point of tolerance against big corporations and the gaming industry required a swift recession. This was no longer a matter of AI-inclusion as an intended part of the game mechanics, nor AI-inclusion to increase accessibility within a large player base as seen in the case of Roblox, but rather a complete overhaul of the industry by replacing its actors with AI.
Design or Resign?
If Roblox’s Cube AI and InZOI’s AI-generation textures and objects had left a bitter taste in the public’s mouth, then the desire for an AI game studio was simply the cherry-on-top. While Roblox and InZOI undoubtedly possess dubious utilisations of generative AI, these do not affect the game and its player base on a large scale. In fact, their models are trained on a highly limited data set prepared by the developers without branching out to acquire data from the playerbase. On the other hand, with the upsurge in layoffs in big gaming corporations from 2020 to the present, the apprehensions towards an AI studio in reality, corresponds to the apprehension of unemployment. As technology advances, several human occupations are replaced with their machine counterparts. If corporations begin to use AI in their development procedures, then several roles within the industry, such as concept-and-production, design, coding and writing would no longer require human intervention. This was precisely the reason behind Catly’s initial backlash- apprehensions. Furthermore, the market will be flooded with low-effort, copy-and-paste video games, leaving no room for originality or innovation. Unfortunately, this seems to be a concurrent reality, as seen in the case of Steam where games made using AI-generated content are listed among the ranks of games made using skilled creative labour. Indie developers tend to be affected the most by the theoretical oversaturation of the market upon losing their competitive advantage due to a lack of monetary access to AI tools.
Conclusion:
Overall, the implementation of an AI gaming studio is not only elitist, but also alienates existing workers from their labour. Despite AI being intrinsically connected to the gaming industry, either in its gameplay mechanics, or in modern accessibility features or learning tools, an industry that wholly operates on these models is not unforeseen, but would undoubtedly promote inaccessibility and alienation in the long run. As all markets, this one too operates on the basis of supply and demand, making it necessary for the customers to be more cognizant of their rights as consumers and their positions in the ownership of a game in the overarching market. Rather than promoting the oversaturation of the market, we ought to appreciate the creative efforts of human intellect of the existing developer oeuvre, indie or corporate. Perhaps it’s due time we cease playing those “Yandere AI girlfriend” games for the giggles.
Yorumlar