Sega is Being 'Very Cautious' About AI Use in Game Development - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 2 days ago / 1,314 Views
Sega senior executive officer and deputy chief business officer Tsuyoshi Saito in an interview with Nikkei says the company is being "very cautious" when it comes to the use of AI in video game development.
He did admit Sega is using AI is other areas such as with publishing and corporate departments in order to improve efficiency.
"We are using AI to improve efficiency in areas such as publishing and corporate departments, as well as for generating business ideas," he said (via VideoGamesChronicle). "However, we are being very cautious about its use in the game development process, and we are not entrusting the creative aspects of games to AI."
Sega has established a "Generative AI Committee" to establish guidelines around its use, develop tools, and conduct compliance checks for Steam listings.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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better cautious than careless
Very unlikely any of the publishers will outright reject it, what with that poor financial situation in gaming that has lead to countless layoffs in recent years, all of them are looking for ways to reduce their bottom line. AI has many uses in gaming that are attractive to them beyond generative AI, speeding coding, searching games for bugs overnight when the QA team is asleep and compiling a list of bugs found that need fixing ready for the QA team to send to the other departments in the morning, searching open source texture databases and such and recommending textures from that database to developers for individual art assets in a scene, etc.
Not using generative AI to actually make art assets and such is probably the most we can hope for on the majority of these publishers.
Oh, I know well and good it's unlikely. Actually, I would even push it further and say impossible. Because that's the way the world has always worked for big business. No morals, no ethics, only the the dollar sign, that reverent, holy, beautiful dollar sign. All hail profits, forever and ever amen.
The only hope for any new games to be all-human-made is with tiny indie devs, and even that is going to be rare.
If you're line in the sand is AI, it's pretty much retro-only from this point on.
i dont believe you
You know what would be better, Sega? NOT USING AI IN GAME DEVELOPMENT AT ALL.
you know thats not going to happen
That's wise, although probably moreso because of the potential backlash than quality concerns. Obviously there's quality concerns as well, but I bet game development is one of those areas where AI could actually bring notable efficiency improvements.
If by efficiency you mean even more lay offs, then yes.
Not necessarily but possibly. I work in software development (so not game development, but there's obviously some things we have in common), and we legit use AI to get more done rather than fire people. But yes, I definitely think layoffs due to AI are also a real thing. Considering perpetually increasing game development costs, I think using AI to keep costs (more) in check by avoiding hiring more people is also a thing that's happening either already or in the future (for better or worse).
We wouldn't have such massive cost increases if it weren't for billionaires and the tax breaks they're getting.
The rich have nothing to do with increasing game development costs. Costs are increasing because games are increasingly complex and detailed. Some of the price pressure is coming from the expectation that profits should increase, i.e. kind of what you said about billionaires (although I reckon there's very few, if any, gaming billionaires - instead, they're probably mostly millionaires of varying wealth).
