Nier Director Yoko Taro Says "AI Will Make All Game Creators Unemployed"

Enigmatic game developer Yoko Taro has weighed in on the question of AI in game development, saying that AI is set to make human game devs obsolete within 50 years. He predicted that AI would be used to create narratives that are specially crafted towards each player individually.

Yoko Taro, best known for his work on the Nier series, spoke on AI as part of a Famitsu roundtable for upcoming game The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy alongside Jiro Ishii and two of The Hundred Line's developers.

The developers all agreed that AI will quickly become mainstream in game development, and discussed where that would leave the industry. "I think that AI will make all game creators unemployed. In 50 years, game creators may be treated like bards," Yoko Taro said, predicting a time where human-made game development will be seen as an obsolete craft.

When asked if AI had the potential to create the kind of fantastical stories that human developers make, the panel generally agreed that it would be able to reach that point. "I think that in the near future, we will move from an era where we have to imitate the style of our favorite creators to an era where we can have our favorite scenarios generated," Yoko added. "AI will determine the preferences of users and skillfully generate route branchings that they would want to read, and the recommendation capabilities will continue to improve."

Hundred Line director Kazutaka Kodaka added that this kind of AI-driven design would take away the ability for players to share the same experience of a game, making them less likely to become a worldwide hit.

As AI becomes increasingly common in both the creative and technical side of game development, game-industry figures and bosses have weighed in on the technology. Many game-industry executives have spoken positively about AI, many of them from the same companies that have laid off staff in the last few years. Kingdom Come 2 director Daniel Vavra said he hopes AI could help him and his staff make games faster, while Larian Studios' Swen Vincke has embraced AI to automate tedious tasks no one wants to do.

Using AI to replace creative work such as art and voice acting remains very controversial. The SAG-AFTRA voice-actors strike is currently in its ninth month with no end in sight--with AI protections one of the big issues on the table.