There have been many “bad moves” going on in the gaming industry that seem to keep mounting to the point where gamers wonder if some of the “big wigs” at the top even care about those who actually make the games and those who are playing them. Case in point, Electronic Arts has long been a company that has “prided itself” on doing whatever the heck it wants and not caring about the collateral damage that it causes in the process. Just look at some of the sports games it’s made for proof of that. But now, the company’s CEO has stated something big about AI.
If you don’t know, the “AI debate” is one of the bigger issues in the gaming space right now. Specifically, “Generative AI” is something that many developers and publishers are considering using because they can just “train AI to do a certain task,” and then they’ll crank out things like art, animations, or even stories. For many, this is a red flag because it’ll cost the game industry even MORE jobs than it already has. Furthermore, as proven by many who have tested this kind of AI, the art, animations, and stories come off as “soulless” instead of being truly infused with creativity.
Did that stop Electronic Arts from saying they want to use it in the near future? Not at all:
Indeed, the CEO feels that over half the game development processes will be “positively impacted.” But is that the truth? It depends on how you want to look at it, and how you prefer to have your games made.
If we’re talking strictly on the “numbers level,” then yes, the time it would take for the Generative AI to create certain assets and crank out certain texts and details for the game would be much faster than if a person or group of people did it.
The catch has to do with quality. If you take a look at Twitter and other social media platforms, you’ll notice that people have posted “AI-generated videos and images” on their timelines, and it looks anything but realistic and quality. So now imagine that across an entirely AAA video game and think about whether you want to play it.
This is why so many are frustrated with EA as a whole. They are obsessed with “building online communities” and fueling the live-service market rather than making quality titles and meaningfully building up its teams, and this is another example of that.
