BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
He's probably right but I'm surprised he said it.
Sakurai: modern game development is too time consuming and unsustainable. AI is the solution.
- Thread starter BennyBlanco
- Start date
He's probably right but I'm surprised he said it.
Little Mac
Member
Instead of spending a handful of years pushing the latest version of unreal engine 5, why don't devs go back to PS4 level of graphics but run them at rock solid 60-120fps? Also, as
rofif
stated, shorter games. Not every game needs to be an 80+ hour grind that most players lose interest in halfway through.
rofif
stated, shorter games. Not every game needs to be an 80+ hour grind that most players lose interest in halfway through.
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Angry_Megalodon
Member
Fuck off. Stop making slop or hire better people.
Nydius
Gold Member
Technological progress comes for us all. The people angry at this reality or who think they can fight it are tilting at windmills, just like the horse buggy manufacturers against the automobile, the home oil industry against electricity, or the paper pushers against the computer.
RodriGames40
Member
Why is a Nintendo auteur saying this when none of their games so far seem to exhibit a higher investment? Is he talking of the stuff upcoming in 2026 or what?
Angry_Megalodon
Member
Wrong analogy, since the whole premise to justify the use of AI is FALSE. There is NO NEED for it. There's nothing to gain for consumers, only for shareholders and greedy suits. Why you would rather play soulless slop made by a dumb machine is beyond me.
bender
What time is it?
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
He doesn't work for Nintendo and is a gamer himself
The Cockatrice
I'm retarded?
Why did it become time-consuming when engines have evolved considerably to develop games easily like UE5(even tho it's not a great performative engine)? Corporations used to make a big game every 2 year or so and those game were harder to make because artists had to fake realistic lighting and whatnot. Now with raytracing it's much easier. Sounds like bs.
RodriGames40
Member
I mean, the biggest budget projects he has worked on are Nintendo games. I take it this might be a generalized statement.
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March Climber
Gold Member
What you're implying: All AI leads to slop.
What Sakurai is implying: Good devs will use certain AI tools to enhance development speeds for specific mundane tasks that shouldn't require hundreds of hours of manpower.
What is generally true: Bad devs will try and use whatever easy tools they can, including AI, as a catch-all way of development, leading to something derivative, uninspired, or boring.
There will always be people who use tools correctly and people who asset flip. This won't change with the inclusion of AI. Thus AI wouldn't be the thing to blame here, it would be human greed.
ReyBrujo
Member
AI can be a huge time saver if you know how to harness it, especially with programming. However the problem is usually not the coding but the planning and management.
Bojji
Member
15-20h game with unique content is perfect.
What we have is: 10h of unique content repeated and stretched to 60+h.
I don't think he is - not in the sense he thinks he is anyway.
'Increased efficiencies' in game dev have consistently all been funneled directly back into production values, for well over 20 years now. AAA in particular doesn't improve efficiency for cost reasons, but simply to double and triple down on production values even more.
And even with all that - the costs keep escalating anyway.
For AI to make a dent - we need to be looking at two orders of magnitude (100x) efficiency improvement, and even that might get eaten up in a couple of years. Now - sure, if we can eliminate human in the loop entirely - that number doesn't sound so far fetched - but a world where games are 99.9999% AI slop isn't necessarily one I want to play games in.
The only real way out of this equation is if AI does in fact, transcend the current limitations of training and becomes self-improving and drive its own creativity. But I think at that point - we'll have bigger problems/questions to deal with than entertainment.
Angry_Megalodon
Member
The moment you open that door, there's no turning back. Greedy suits will ask for more, more and more. In the end it will be just monkeys and baristas (like Phil Spencer himself said) punching in prompts. We already have that in Hollywood. And in literature. I dont want it in videogames. I'm not paying anything for a product not made by human creativity. What's even the point.
Just tell Ubisoft, EA, MS and everyone else that they must use AI "ethically". Not happening.
Bernardougf
Member
How about less bloatness and more efficiency ?
Connificent
Al Pachinko, Konami President
Kirby's AI Ride
ByWatterson
Member
Which I have been saying forever.
SHAKEZ
Member
Stop trying to exhaust the hardware limits on graphics, start using it smartly to power more interesting mechanics and faster development of assets.
Open world games still have shit optimization problems because devs just want to push graphics instead of interactivity and gameplay.
Open world games still have shit optimization problems because devs just want to push graphics instead of interactivity and gameplay.
TerribleAtThisGame
Member
I'll join the chorus here because I have the same opinion. I'm so burnt on quantity-over-quality one-and-done "experiences". Blockbuster gaming, these hulking fucking epics of busy work and cinematics and...just content for quantity's sake. There's something slimy and ultra corporate about it and the mere concept of it pisses me off at this point.
Not pretending to know what the "modern gamer" wants but I vastly prefer a short(er) game that makes me crave another playthrough on a harder difficulty to master mechanics and encounters. Open world games are especially uninteresting to me as they essentially all blow their load in the first couple hours. Here are the building blocks, there will be random roaming groups of enemies with no tricks or traps or encounter design and...do that A LOT.
I also firmly believe most cutting edge graphics games at this point really suffer from detail clutter that kind of hinders "immersion" and adds nothing ironically. At least to me. The giant floating X prompts that look like some corporate powerpoint shit are awful but apparently needed because an ammo box must be photo realistic and therefore is tiny and indistinguishable from the 800 lbs of clutter in every room.
/rant over
Not pretending to know what the "modern gamer" wants but I vastly prefer a short(er) game that makes me crave another playthrough on a harder difficulty to master mechanics and encounters. Open world games are especially uninteresting to me as they essentially all blow their load in the first couple hours. Here are the building blocks, there will be random roaming groups of enemies with no tricks or traps or encounter design and...do that A LOT.
I also firmly believe most cutting edge graphics games at this point really suffer from detail clutter that kind of hinders "immersion" and adds nothing ironically. At least to me. The giant floating X prompts that look like some corporate powerpoint shit are awful but apparently needed because an ammo box must be photo realistic and therefore is tiny and indistinguishable from the 800 lbs of clutter in every room.
/rant over
nnytk
Member
Same here, which puts me in a tricky situation because as a graphic designer/teacher/artist myself, I despise how easily generative AI is used commercially, replacing freelance work and artistry.
But in regards to massive budget game/movie projects, I see what Sakurai is saying.
SHAKEZ
Member
He might have an ideal use for AI in development for sure, but don't kid yourself for a second here. Corporations would force the absolute worst and most derivative use of it to make things as cheap as they could.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
I'd rather have great games with low poly graphics instead of shit games with great graphics.
Using AI as a crutch or a shortcut to keep making large scale bloated games is not the answer.
Using AI as a crutch or a shortcut to keep making large scale bloated games is not the answer.
March Climber
Gold Member
For the AAA end of things, that door has already been opened. You just aren't noticing it yet because the tools are just ok, but not advanced enough yet to cut dev time even faster. Maybe it will be more obvious to the average gamer online within the next decade. We will see more games because of this, some will be obvious, some won't.
We have already reached a point to where gaming is like books, music, and to a lesser extent, movies, meaning there's too many choices (not a bad thing) and it is leading to people simply going back to word-of-mouth recommendations and browsing genres to see what might interest them.
The next thing that will need to be heavily worked on is store curation, so that people here are able to encounter less 'slop' and instead more new (or retro) experiences they might be interested in.
Liopleurodon
Member
If AI can do a better job than a regular person, than I really have nothing against its implementation.
ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
Bunch of false dichotomies and nonsense. You guys don't actually understand what's happening. We are mostly at polished over last gen quality assets. The games are not actually that long and they still take way longer to make. SM2 was about as lean as you can get, was reusing assets and design structure from 2 previous installments, and still was rushed with a ridiculous amount of cut content despite taking as long as what was effectively a new IP in the first game.
The problem isn't grafix or game length. It's organizational. Modern game dev is full too many people who are lazy on good days and don't want to crunch. Who literally take advantage of milking senior-level salaries for years on end without releasing shit. Who are more interested in wasting time procuring their activist friends as consultants. Who justify further bloating studios with bad workflows that are designed to delegate responsibilities and secure their jobs.
March Climber
Gold Member
If you want to blame it on cultural issues, okay, but I have a follow up question: Why are asian-region devs suffering from the same issues?
PlayStaytion
Member
Who said games must always be bigger? It's either Todd Howard or Take Two's biggest head, I can't think of another one.
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He's right ofcourse. Tho expedition shows you clearly don't need the silly budgets we have now; but these companies don't know how to run a tight ship.
We run a tight ship at my own business and punch way above our weight, it's an industry tho with slim margins, and even with our efficiencies we always looked at some of our competitors who would beat us out for awards and think "how the fuck are their production values so high and how can they do so much splashy spending". Turns out it was because they were playing with other people's money via USAID funded NGOs, now the plug is pulled, realising they had no idea how to do what they did sustainably many have folded. AAA feels like that, like I don't think many of these massive companies can be saved either by ai or just sensible spending, it's too ingrained in their culture. We need new businesses built lean and efficiently who can thrive.
We run a tight ship at my own business and punch way above our weight, it's an industry tho with slim margins, and even with our efficiencies we always looked at some of our competitors who would beat us out for awards and think "how the fuck are their production values so high and how can they do so much splashy spending". Turns out it was because they were playing with other people's money via USAID funded NGOs, now the plug is pulled, realising they had no idea how to do what they did sustainably many have folded. AAA feels like that, like I don't think many of these massive companies can be saved either by ai or just sensible spending, it's too ingrained in their culture. We need new businesses built lean and efficiently who can thrive.
March Climber
Gold Member
Gamers, specifically during the PS360 generation when tons of 8-12 hour shooters were being sold for 60 dollars.
Some dingus had the bright idea that game value should be equal to hours spent. 1 dollar = 1 hour. This started the bloat era.
rofif
Can’t Git Gud
everyone? Every game in every genre now seems to be way too long
lughnasadh123
Member
Funny to read this when some people were adamant that only Western devs would be doing this.
PlayStaytion
Member
Metaphor was my first turn based game and my mind got cooked in the last 10 hours of my first run, it should've been shorter for noobs.
Instant_Classic
Member
He's right