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A former Blizzard and Riot Games lead developer says there may come a time when AI can competently displace human game developers, but that day is not today.
Over on Twitter, Greg Street, who was lead systems designer on World of Warcraft from 2008 to 2013, and then filled various lead roles at Riot Games including executive producer on the League of Legends MMO until 2023, touched on the harrowing topic of AI and its capabilities in the game dev space.
"AI may one day accelerate game development. But it's not happening today," said Street. "All of these layoffs are just to cut opex and make the stock prices go up. It will lead to empty portfolios for the next few years."
Street was seemingly responding to this week's mass layoffs at Amazon, the gutting of Amazon Games, and the ending of new development on the studio's fantasy MMO, New World. In a follow-up tweet, he commented, "I'm sorry for my friends at Amazon who were trying to keep the MMO dream alive."
Further reflecting on the seemingly unending downsizing in the games industry, Street said: "I mean layoffs happen for lots of reasons. But if a company is claiming they don't need workers because AI is going to make their games or movies or books today, that's a little premature. (It's better at music.)"
It definitely feels like generative AI hasn't reached a point where it can make mechanically and narratively compelling games, although I take great issue with the suggestion that AI music is anything other than auditory torture. Still, in response to a commenter, Street predicted AI will soon "be able to do terrain or say a billion weapon variants," but argued "it's a long way from being able to tell cohesive stories (but that doesn't mean decades either)."
