Hideo Kojima thinks video games are in the middle of a major shift: there was 2D, then 3D, and now "we have not just ChatGPT," but also extensive AI tech for devs to "take advantage of"

Hideo Kojima made a messianic decree during the Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia this week: the video game industry has undergone the third significant change in its existence, because now people can ask ChatGPT what to buy at the grocery store and stuff.

"Gaming is always about technology," Kojima wisely said through a translator during an event panel with film director (and the face of Heartman in Death Stranding) Nicolas Winding Refn, as reported by Rolling Stone. "Movies started 120 years ago, and gaming is only about 50 years old – and there [were] about three revolutions in technology."

He explained, "At first, the games were all 2D, about 16 colors, 16 bits." From there, “The biggest, first change was [that] games became 3D." This is best demonstrated through Kojima's dashing Metal Gear protagonist Solid Snake, who went from looking like something you might blow out of your nose in 1987 to an unhappy (in a cool way) polygon guy a decade later.

"The second is we [became] connected by [the] internet, and you could play [online]," Kojima continues. He often illustrates this point by posting photos of himself sitting in front of his desktop monitor contemplatively on Twitter.

But "the third," says Kojima-sensei, seemingly addressing game developers, "is the trend right now that AI is now coming into game creation, and we have not just ChatGPT, but they learn from how the players control. And I think that you'll take advantage of that."

Kojima says he personally used AI in a "machine learning rig" to download Refn and other celebrities' likenesses into Death Stranding 2, though he thinks the outcome was only "okay." Nothing beats analog, it seems.

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