Does one need to use AI for a video game?
With many people using the controversial technology and others denouncing it or coming under fire for using it, generative AI remains a very heated topic in the current age. In positive news, if you want to hear someone’s take on AI, Pocketpair’s John Buckley has said what we all think about AI but have been too tired to fight our relatives on, as they buy Italian AI slop cards for their children. There’s only so much Bombardino Crocodilo one can handle.
Palworld has been ruffling Nintendo’s feathers for quite a while now for simply asking the question of what would happen if Pokémon had guns. Given its developers’ history, it only makes sense that pushing buttons is something the studio does, and we should be thankful for creators openly questioning the push for generative AI in the industry instead of going down without a fight.
Palworld Rises Against LLMs
As reported by Games Radar, Buckley said that “even I, who is in the industry, I just felt like a natural, ugh, why? The rest of your game looks fine. Did you need to? I think that’s going to be the attitude for quite a while. I think people will look at it and say, did you need to do that? Couldn’t you just do it yourself?” The Palworld head of publisher brings up a fair point, since very often studios have enough money to pay for artists who will do it a lot better and deliver, provide jobs, and keep the creativity flowing, while generated art is just reheated nachos with nothing newly created.
We should be thankful for creators openly questioning the push for generative AI in the industry instead of going down without a fight.
“We have a lot of artists in-house,” he said. “They like doing stuff themselves. There’s no reason to get rid of them for the sake of an AI doing it. Just seems pointless.” Buckley continues with the point that layoffs for an AI instrument aren’t worth it and make no sense. If one enjoys creating, they wouldn’t be cutting corners.
“It feels very intrusive. It feels like everyone who is super gung-ho about it isn’t from the industry. They’re, dare I say, outsiders looking to get rich quick.” And of course, in this economy, everyone needs to get side gigs or think of how to survive, but usually it’s the bigger players with fat wallets that benefit from these risqué moves to cut down manpower in the name of self-importance. The idea that a person is not worth keeping is already something we should be putting humanity in a time-out for, let alone for replacing it with a yes-man algorithm.
At the end of the day, it’s never the workers who get to speak up on things, but the higher-ups, which is no surprise, and everyone who disagrees just wishes they had the strings to pull. Nothing new was really said by Buckley, but we were all thinking it; it’s just that we aren’t close to the top to be heard on our opinions of AI.
