It didn’t take long to see the first ones rather negative reactions of some developers to recent comment by Neil Druckmann, head of Naughty Dog as well as co-author of The Last of Us, on the fact of use artificial intelligence to improve storytelling in video games.
The topic is at the center of debate in various fields and in particular in the development of video games, where AI seems to find particularly fertile ground to thrive as a support for developers, as demonstrated by the first data which speak of its use already by more than half of development studios.
To recap, Neil Druckmann reported that AI will allow Naughty Dog to “push the boundaries of storytelling in games”, in the context of Sony’s presentation of its vision for the future of entertainment, which obviously also concerns PlayStation and video games. In particular, AI could help in building deeper dialogues and with less limited interactions, as well as significantly reducing costs and development times.
In his role as head of one of PlayStation Studios’ flagship teams, Druckmann has probably worn the hats of the corporate man in this case, aligning with the company’s perspective on the “magnificent and progressive destiny” of technology applied to video game development.
The reactions of some developers
However, the issue did not fall on deaf ears: some developers immediately showed some disappointment with Druckmann’s words on the positive use of generative AI in game writing, in particular David Gaider, one of the authors of the Dragon Age series , who highlighted how the idea advocated by Druckmann on the advantages of AI is all facing the “direction”.
In essence, the AI would have the function of acting as a subordinate to the general idea of a director, who in this way would have fewer problems with having to manage a group of developers, as the individual’s idea can be developed by the ‘AI, once given guidelines to follow.
“This completely ignores the concept of collaboration“, explained Gaider, because “All those people who now work under a director”, essentially “are also storytellers, and love creating games, should not be considered an impediment to be put aside in favor of an AI that always says Yes”.
In any case, Gaider reported that the concept expressed by Druckmann has some sharable elements, because “direction obviously is important in game design”, but he also hopes that “AI is not seen as a sort of magic wand”, in this sense.
Likewise, Nessa Cannona narrative designer who is currently working on Star Trucker, reported that he would like to see Druckmann demonstrate how “putting together bits of books and stolen works” is – to summarize sarcastically – the work that AI does generative on the texts at the moment, can be “revolutionary”.
Definitely fewer words but perhaps even a greater impact comes from a post by Josh Sawyer, director of Obsidian and responsible for titles like Fallout: New Vegas and Pentiment, who responded to Druckmann’s exit with a simple image.
This is the meme photo of José Mourinho taking off his headphones looking decidedly annoyed, which has become a sort of standard response to use against statements with which one disagrees very little.
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