Game over or next level? The generative AI debate in video game creation

Electronic Arts, the video game company that sold for $55 billion this month, has said it's investing heavily in generative AI.

Many video game players in areas like Seattle are concerned this trend could put their favorite game developers out of work.

Electronic Arts’ $55 billion sale hasn't closed yet, but it's already sending shockwaves through Seattle’s video game industry. It's not just because a lot of people in Seattle worked on EA games, but because the company is banking its future on generative AI.

Generative AI has created a cultural conflict so deep, it's sliced the video game industry in two like a battle axe through a rotten zombie.

On one side are big game studios and tech companies pursuing gen AI to increase efficiency and create more complex games without dramatically increasing costs.

On the other are video game programmers, artists and other professionals who've been pummeled by several years of layoffs. Some blame generative AI.

Hear the audio version of the story on KUOW's Booming podcast, below:

“Everyone’s talking about it,” said Sky Zhou, developer of the cozy game "Snacko," at the PAX West video game conference in Seattle this fall. “There's so much controversy, so much drama over like, oh, we're gonna boycott this game or whatever because it uses AI or something."

Old-school vs generative AI

AI has been part of video games for a long time.

Traditional AI uses logic and rules to make complex decisions, so that even in the 1980s you could play chess against a computer or sword fight against an in-game enemy that responded to your own player’s moves.

Essentially, traditional AIs navigate complex decision trees, much like reading a dictionary sized "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.

But generative AI, the kind of technology made famous by companies like OpenAI, produces brand new content based on examples built by others, often without compensating the programmers and artists whose work was used to train the AI.

If it were a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, it would be one in which new paths are added in response to every decision the reader makes. The book's size would be theoretically infinite.

The AI divide

Seattle has the second most video game jobs of any U.S. city. It’s been called the Hollywood of video games because of the large number of game studios clustered around big players like Microsoft (Xbox), like Nintendo, Bungie, Wizards of the Coast, Riot, Unity and Valve.

There are dozens more (67 by one count) video game studios and publishers, and new game companies spin off all the time, along with countless companies specializing in everything from voice acting to keeping player communities happy and engaged.

Within this ecosystem, and within the larger node of game companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, big companies like EA and Microsoft are practically tripping over themselves to promote generative AI tools aimed at faster game production for less money.

“Build me a four-story Parisian apartment building,” EA’s president of entertainment and technology told an AI agent during 2024’s Investor Day. Almost instantly, a new building popped into view, ready for deployment into a game. “Zooming out even further, the technology can extend in neighborhoods, cities, and eventually worlds that populate gaming environments instantaneously.”

“This remarkable technology is not merely a buzzword for us: It’s the very core of our business,” said EA CEO Andrew Wilson.

Many game developers and fans worry generative AI could put video game jobs around the country at risk. Most vulnerable are the voice actors and artists that give each game its unique vibe. Coders aren't safe either.

Within the gaming community, many players increasingly associate AI with poor quality, along with other hated features such as microtransactions (when games let you play free but then nag you to pay for upgrades).

So they’ve been naming and shaming game studios that replace artists with AI-generated art, like the zombie Santa Claus in Microsoft’s (Activision’s) "Call of Duty: Black Ops 6" with a familiar AI tell. “What do you notice about this image?” asked YouTuber BlameTruth. “Six fingers!”

The outrage grew so strong that Bellevue company Valve now requires games that use generative AI to disclose the information when listing their games on the company's Steam platform, a major online marketplace for PC games. For "Call of Duty: Black Ops 6," the Steam disclosure reads, "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets."

Negative blowback over generative AI is common, but not universal. For example, EA’s "College Football 25," which used the technology to model 150 sports stadiums and 11,000 player faces and bodies, receives far more criticism for microtransactions than for its use of AI.

Some have argued that the obsession over spotting AI has gone too far. Nevertheless, the social media firestorm has shaped how many players feel about generative AI.

Drawing the line

Hunter Bond, director of the horror game studio Dread XP, has a generative AI ban written into the company’s contracts. He said he’d rather quit the industry and become a chili farmer in New Mexico than allow any of his developers to use AI art. The reason: He believes AI would lead to boring games that failed to connect with fans.

He offered his company’s in-development game "The Secret of Weepstone" as an example of a game only humans could think of. It’s inspired by those doodles that D&D kids and metalheads used to draw in the margins of their high school notebooks in the 1980s and 90s.

“It’s just, like, covered in pentagrams and a demon with a skull and a giant sword. I love that," Bond said. "All day long, I want someone’s like terrible ballpoint art over some polished robot’s interpretation of all human existence.”

He said he and the game's co-creator Sean Gailey spent many long hours on the game's intricate line work and textures.

Asked if generative AI could be instructed to make that kind of doodles, Bond said it goes beyond capability: It’s become a moral issue for him. Because for an AI to do that, he says big companies slurp up creative art by indies so that AI can regurgitate it.

“They don’t care about the integrity of my work," he said. “They want to eat the whole world and then just cover it in oatmeal-flavored slop. What would be the point of existing in a world where humans work overtime and robots make pointless art?”

Indigo Doyle, developer of a forthcoming game "RollerGirl" (showcased at PAX West in an exhibit highlighting rising industry stars) said generative AI lacks the experience of growing up in a human body and being mortal, experiences that inform games and allow them to connect with players on an emotional level.

Doyle's game is based on the summer of her 16th year. Her car had broken down, so she spent the summer rollerblading around the neighborhood with headphones on, doing errands for people to make money.

“I put my childhood house in there. The roller blades are ones that I own and still use to this day. The hairstyle is my hairstyle when I was 16,"she said. "I’m not sure that AI, at least at this point, could generate that level of detail and that level of emotion and authenticity.”

Not everyone’s picking a side

While many game developers said they don’t use generative AI, a large subset then went on to explain parts of their workflow where it’s appropriate: ideation (coming up with initial concepts), or designing in-game menus for example. They say generative AI will get you code that’s 85% of the way there, after which you have to go in and clean it up.

“It’s kind of like babysitting an intern,” said developer Sky Zhou.

Most developers allow themselves some use of gen AI. One study by Google (released as Google was promoting its own gen AI game development tools) declared that nearly 90% of video game developers used generative AI agents (programs that can execute generative AI workflows on your behalf) in some way.

So for many, it seems it's not a question of whether to use gen AI, but where to draw the line. That line could move as the core programs that indie developers use to make their games incorporate more and more gen AI features.

For example, the Unity game engine, built in Bellevue, Washington, handles things like physics and lighting for indie developers. The vast majority of indie developers either use Unity or one of a handful of other engines. The company has been sliding gen AI into more of its tools. And Unity's CEO Matthew Bromberg says AI has moved to the center of his company’s future. “We’re gonna take away, over time, some of the drudgery and complexity of content creation,” he promised.

Chinese games

But gamers and game devs in the U.S. may not be the ones to decide this. They’re just not the biggest market for games anymore.

That would be China. And David Brevik, a game designer turned game producer, who works with games all over the world, says China and North America/Europe have very different attitudes about AI.

" There's cultural differences between the two and the way that they treat that more as a tool and we see it more as a threat,” he said. “They've embraced it much more. I would imagine that we'll see China leading the way, that way.” China is home to the most profitable game developer in the world: Tencent.

Brevik said he has been on game development teams that used gen AI, only to have the larger company shut that down, because company lawyers had not determined whether the practice is legal.

“There are people that will stand on one side of the fence versus the other. There are some people, especially in the West here, that have a kind of a hard line on [generative AI]," he said. "And, you know, that's their opinion, that's their right to do whatever they want with AI. But unfortunately, this is inevitable and if you don't embrace it, you're gonna get left behind.”

The future of creativity

At its core, the generative AI debate stretches far beyond gaming. For everyone in a creative role—from artists to musicians to filmmakers—the question is no longer just about efficiency. It’s about meaning, connection, and the role of humans in worlds increasingly shaped by algorithms.

It's unlikely AI will wipe out handmade games completely. Consider the film industry as an analogy. Big games are like blockbuster movies. Think: your standard superhero movie, based on what worked financially in previous superhero movies.

Indie games are like indie films. They may not capture the box office every weekend. But sometimes they do. And sometimes, they resonate so deeply that they change the culture, or at least the lives of people in a small town when a 16-year-old does their errands for them on rollerblades.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A representative from the game "Snacko" contacted KUOW on Monday, Oct. 13, to clarify that no AI was used in the production of that video game.

Hear this and other stories on KUOW's economy podcast, Booming.