Pathea Games believes that we should not overuse artificial intelligence.

The God Slayer is Pathea Games’s next big project. The Chinese developer is known for My Time at Portia, My Time at Sandrock, and the upcoming third installment in the franchise, My Time at Evershine. With The God Slayer, the studio is challenging itself by creating a more mature, open-world steampunk action-RPG and switching from Unity to Unreal Engine 5. WCCFTech recently interviewed Pathea Games founder and creative director Wu Zifei to learn more about the game. During the interview, the publication also asked the studio about its stance on using generative AI tools in game development.

“The only AI we use is for iteration. For example, we’ll say, ‘Okay, we want this character to be a female salesperson,’ and then we’ll use AI to search online for different models. After that, we do it ourselves. Overall, I think our developers don’t want to use AI too much. First, there aren’t many examples of Asian steampunk, so the examples AI provides are strange. So, we actually have to think about a lot of things ourselves and start from scratch. That’s helped us keep the world and characters of The God Slayer grounded. I think we’re not using too much AI, at least for us. For now, at least, it’s the correct way to go,” said Wu.

The use of generative AI tools is one of the most controversial topics in the gaming industry. Recently, we heard that Sakurai Masahiro, the creator of Super Smash Bros., believes that generative AI can make large-scale development more manageable. Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear and Death Stranding franchises, plans to use the technology to automate basic tasks so he can focus more time on the creative aspects of game development.

Previously, Richard Pillosu, the co-founder of Spanish indie developer Epictellers Entertainment, expressed a similar, albeit more explicit, opinion, stating that there is no point in using AI for creative activities. Dean Hall, creator of DayZ and Icarus, says the real issue with AI is how we manage its impact. Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, said that game characters could look more realistic if AI were trained using human-written scripts. Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, argued that everyone will end up using AI, so there is no point in Steam labeling it on game pages.

The God Slayer may be released later for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, and next-gen platforms, if they are released by then.

Source: WCCFTech