Video game company Electronic Arts, which was sold this month for $55 billion, said it is investing heavily in generative AI.
Many video game players in areas like Seattle are concerned that this trend could put their favorite game developers out of work.
The $55 billion sale of Electronic Arts isn't over yet, but it's already sending shockwaves through Seattle's video game industry. Not only because so many people in Seattle were working on EA games, but also because the company is betting its future on generative AI.
Generative AI has caused a cultural conflict so profound that it has sliced the video game industry in half like a battle ax through a rotting zombie.
Meanwhile, major game studios and technology companies are pursuing artificial intelligence to increase efficiency and create more complex games without significantly increasing costs.
On the other are video game programmers, artists, and other professionals who have been hit by multi-year layoffs. Some people blame generative AI.
Listen to the audio version of this story on KUOW's Booming podcast below.
“Everyone's talking about it,” Sky Zhou, developer of the cozy game “Snacko,” said this fall at PAX West, a video game conference in Seattle. “There's so much controversy, so much drama, like we're going to boycott this game or something because it uses AI or something.”
Classic AI vs. Generative AI
AI has been a part of video games for a long time.
Traditional AI uses logic and rules to make complex decisions, so even in the 1980s it was possible to play chess with a computer or engage in sword fights with in-game enemies that reacted to your movements.
Essentially, traditional AI navigates complex decision trees, similar to reading a dictionary-sized “Choose Your Own Adventure” book.
But generative AI, a type of technology made famous by companies like OpenAI, generates entirely new content based on samples built by other companies, often without paying the programmers or artists whose work is used to train the AI.
If this were a “choose your own adventure” book, then it would be one where new paths are added depending on the reader's every decision. The size of a book is theoretically infinite.
The AI divide
Seattle has the second-highest number of video game jobs of any U.S. city. It is called the Hollywood of video games because it is home to a large number of game studios, including Nintendo, Bungie, Wizards of the Coast, Riot, Unity, Valve, etc., centered around major companies like Microsoft (Xbox).
There are dozens of other video game studios and publishers (67 at one count), new game companies being spun off all the time, and countless companies specializing in everything from voice acting to keeping player communities happy and engaged.
Within this ecosystem, and within the larger node of gaming companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, large companies like EA and Microsoft are effectively tripping over themselves to push generative AI tools aimed at lower-cost, faster game production.
“Build me a four-story apartment building in Paris,” EA's president of entertainment and technology told AI agents at the 2024 Investor Day. Almost instantly, a new building appears in your field of vision, ready to be introduced into the game. “Zooming out even further, this technology could extend to neighborhoods, cities, and ultimately a world where gaming environments exist instantaneously.”
“This remarkable technology is more than just a buzzword to us; it's at the very heart of our business,” said EA CEO Andrew Wilson.
Many game developers and fans are concerned that generative AI could put video game jobs across the country at risk. The most vulnerable are the voice actors and artists who give each game its unique feel. Programmers aren't safe either.
Within the gaming community, many players increasingly associate AI with poor quality, as well as disliked features such as microtransactions (where games ask you to pay for upgrades even though they're free to play).
That's why they've singled out game studios that replace artists with AI-generated art, like the zombie Santa Claus and familiar AI tell in Microsoft's Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. “Did you notice anything when you looked at this image?” asked YouTuber BlameTruth. “Six fingers!”
The outrage has grown so much that Bellevue company Valve is now requiring games that use generative AI to disclose information when listing games on its Steam platform, the main online marketplace for PC games. For Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Steam's disclosure states, “Our team uses generative AI tools to assist in the development of some game assets.”
Negative backlash against generative AI is common, but not universal. For example, EA's “College Football 25,” which used the technology to model the faces and bodies of 150 sports stadiums and 11,000 players, has received far more criticism for its microtransactions than for its use of AI.
Some argue that the obsession with discovering AI is going too far. Nevertheless, the social media firestorm has shaped how many players feel about generative AI.
draw a line
Hunter Bond, director of horror game studio Dread XP, has included a ban on generative AI in his company's contracts. He said he would rather quit the industry and become a chili pepper farmer in New Mexico than allow his company's developers to use AI art. Reason: He believes AI will create boring games that fail to connect with fans.
He cited the game his company is developing, The Secret of Weepstone, as an example of a game that only humans could come up with. It was inspired by the doodles D&D kids and metalheads used to draw in the margins of their high school notebooks in the 1980s and 90s.
“It's covered in pentagrams and it just has a skull and a devil with a giant sword. I love that,” Bond said. “I'd rather have someone who looks like bad ballpoint pen art all day long than some sophisticated robot interpretation of every human being.”
He said he and the game's co-creator Sean Gailey spent a lot of time working on the game's intricate linework and textures.
Asked if he could instruct a generative AI to do such graffiti, Bond said it was beyond its capabilities and posed a moral issue for him. Because AI can do that, he says, because big corporations can gobble up independent creative art, and AI can spit it back out.
“They don't care about the integrity of my work,” he said. “They just want to eat the whole world and cover it with oatmeal-flavored slop. What's the point of existing in a world where humans work overtime and robots make meaningless art?”
Indigo Doyle, developer of the upcoming game RollerGirl (unveiled at PAX West in an exhibit featuring some of the industry's rising stars), said generative AI lacks the experience of growing and dying inside a human body, an experience that informs the game and allows it to connect with players on an emotional level.
Doyle's game is based on the summer he was 16 years old. Her car broke down, so she spent the summer rollerblading around her neighborhood wearing headphones while running errands for people to make money.
“I put my childhood home there. The rollerblades are what I own and still use. The hairstyle is what I had when I was 16,” she said. “At least for now, we don't know if AI can generate that level of detail, that level of emotion and authenticity.”
Not everyone chooses a side
Many game developers said they don't use generative AI, but most went on to explain appropriate parts of their workflow, such as ideation (coming up with an initial concept) and designing in-game menus. They say the generation AI will pick up ~85% of the code and then have to do the work and clean it up.
“It's like babysitting an intern,” said developer Skye Chow.
As more and more gen AI features are incorporated into the programs that indie developers use to make games, the line drawn by Zhou and many others could change.
For example, the Unity game engine, built in Bellevue, Washington, handles things like physics and lighting for indie developers. Almost all indie developers use Unity or one of a handful of other engines.
Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg says AI has moved to the center of the company's future. A huge number of indie games are built on the Unity game engine, which is the program that handles things like physics and lighting for a game. The company is incorporating AI into more of its tools.
Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg promised, “Over time, we'll take some of the tedium and complexity out of content creation.”
chinese games
But it may not be US gamers or game developers who decide this. They are no longer the biggest market for games.
That would be China. David Brevik, a game designer turned game producer who works on games all over the world, says that the way people think about AI is very different in China and in North America/Europe.
“There is a cultural difference between the two, where they treat it as a tool and we see it as a threat,” he said. “They're embracing it more. I imagine we'll see China leading the way in that way.” China is home to Tencent, the world's most profitable game developer.
Breivik said he was on a game development team that used Gen AI, but a major company had to shut it down because the company's lawyers couldn't determine whether the practice was legal.
“There are people who stand on one side of the fence and people who stand on the other side. Especially here in the Western world, there are people who take a kind of hardline stance.” [generative AI]”And, you know, that's their opinion and it's their right to do whatever they want with the AI. But unfortunately, this is inevitable and if we don't accept this, we're going to be left behind.”
the future of creativity
The heart of the generative AI debate goes far beyond gaming. For everyone in a creative role, from artists to musicians to filmmakers, it's no longer just about efficiency. It's about meaning, connection, and the role of humans in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms.
It is unlikely that AI will completely displace handcrafted games. Let's take the movie industry as an example. Blockbuster games are like blockbuster movies. Think of a standard superhero movie based on what worked financially in previous superhero movies.
Indie games are like indie movies. You can't guarantee that you'll get box office success every weekend. But sometimes it does. And sometimes, in small towns where 16-year-old boys run errands on rollerblades, they resonate so deeply that they change the culture, or at least people's lives.
Hear this and other stories on KUOW's economics podcast, Booming.
