Yoko Taro, the game director for beloved action games like Nier Automata, has expressed his fears around increased AI use in video game development, stating his fear that in 50 years “game creators will be treated like bards”.
In a discussion with Kotaro Uchikoshi (known for the Zero Escape series), Jiro Ishii (428: Shibuya Scramble) and Kazutaka Kodaka (Dangenrompa) in a Famitsu interview, the group was asked about the future of adventure games. This led to a discussion surrounding AI’s prevelance and its potential impact on the genre.
Kotaro Uchikoshi said: “There’s a lot of new games I want to create, but with AI technology evolving at such a high speed, I fear that there is a possibility that AI-generated adventure games will become mainstream.” Following this, Yoko Taro echoed these fears: “I, too, believe that game creators may lose their jobs because of AI. There’s a chance that in 50 years, game creators will be treated like bards.”
Yoko Taro would later state: “I think that in the future, we will move from an era where we have to imitate the style of our favorite creators to an era where we can have our favorite scenarios generated. AI will determine the preferences of users and skillfully generate route branchings that they would want to read, and the recommendation capabilities will continue to improve.”
All of these creatives are known for narrative-rich games, and as such it’s clear why they in particular would worry about the increased use of AI. Thankfully, the future they pondered about is still far out. AI’s use in video game development has remained scarce in AAA development, especially in the realms of writing the story. So at least, for now, adventure games like the ones these developers have created should remain unthreatened from these technological advancements.
Do you share these concerns? Let us know below, as well as how long it’ll take before we see AI’s widespread use.
