David Gaider, the former lead writer of the early Dragon Age games, has delivered an uncompromising verdict on generative AI in video game development. He believes the technology is not only unready for broad use, but is often creating the opposite outcome from what studio executives promise.

Many people working in the video game industry have expressed strong opposition to the use of generative AI in development, and David Gaider is firmly among them. The former lead writer of Dragon Age, who now works at Summerfall Studios, was asked by GamesRadar+ how he views the growing use of Artificial Intelligence in game production. His answer left no doubt that he considers the technology deeply harmful in its current form.

Gaider’s objections go far beyond the fact that generative models may have been trained on artists’ work without their consent. He believes AI does not meaningfully streamline development in many studios, but instead introduces new sources of error. One example is the use of placeholders, temporary assets that developers intend to remove later but forget about, leaving them in the final release. Problems of this kind have appeared even in high-profile games such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

“All you need is a lazy developer or a forgotten temporary asset, or one that was placed there by someone who’s no longer on the team, and you’ve got a problem on your hands. Honestly, how does it help? Does it make work more efficient? Does it improve work? It wouldn’t be so bad if generative AI were seen more as an assistant that takes care of the tedious tasks and leaves the more important tasks to the workers, but it seems we’re seeing the opposite: AI is deployed to do the important work, and the worker is around to ‘clean up’.”

“In all my time as a narrative designer, I’ve never encountered a situation where editing a flawed product took less time, or yielded a better than mediocre result, than simply scrapping it and redoing it from scratch. And while there’s potential for AI to handle the most tedious tasks, I also believe we must be very careful not to eliminate all the work that’s useful for training junior developers. How are we going to train the next generation of developers if we eliminate all entry-level tasks?”

AI Use and the Risk of Developers No Longer Understanding Their Own Games

Gaider does acknowledge that Artificial Intelligence may have a place in digital production environments. Speaking to GamesRadar+, he said he sees “some potential” in the technology as “a useful development tool,” but he does not believe today’s AI systems are capable of delivering on that potential. “It’s not ready for the general public. There are simply many executives who really want it to be.”

The former BioWare writer believes generative AI is particularly poor at iterating on designs, details and game elements. In his view, developers cannot simply ask it to adjust small parts of an existing result and expect a consistent outcome, which already makes it unreliable at that level. He considers its possible use in programming even more troubling. “How do you debug ‘vibe coding’? What’s the point of creating prototypes with AI when the result is that no one on the team has learned anything about how to make the final product? Why use AI to create concepts that will inevitably be soulless and contain errors, and that will be things your own artists can’t replicate? Why have systems that no one on your team really knows how to use? And I could go on.”

When asked how he would like to see Artificial Intelligence used in game development, Gaider gave his harshest answer yet. “Until there is some regulation? Until we can be sure that it is only trained with legally obtained data? Until the people who make the decisions about its use finally realise that it is not the source of cheap labour they pretend it is, and stop seriously harming their teams by forcing it on them while expecting unrealistic results? It should be treated like the virulent plague that it is.”

The video game industry is nevertheless moving quickly to make room for AI. Krafton wants to establish itself as an “AI First” company, Square Enix intends to use the technology in 70% of its quality assurance and debugging processes, and PlayStation has openly stated that it has a substantial plan to introduce AI across multiple studios. Some independent developers continue to avoid generative tools altogether, but a significant part of the industry has already decided that AI will shape its future.

Source: 3DJuegos