r/technology • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 13h ago
Artificial Intelligence Konami president Hayakawa believes AI “won’t bring a significant change” to the game market. “Humans” and “creators” are crucial for developing innovative games
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/konami-president-hayakawa-believes-ai-wont-bring-a-significant-change-to-the-game-market-humans-and-creators-are-crucial-for-developing/98
u/Icy-Concentrate2076 13h ago
Most AI generated games are shit. Not in features or how pretty they are or how well coded they are, but in the game itself. "Find needle in haystack" or "Find buggy line of code among 1000 post it notes". Most people (me included) aren't creative enough to make a captivating game. Even if you could spawn it into existence.
3
u/CapitalRegular4157 13h ago edited 13h ago
True. AI is good at putting 2 and 2 together. It is not good at, itself, being creative. It knows how to get from point A to point B but it will never "know" what fun is or what "feels" good to play... At least this current LLM technology won't.... Eventually we'll figure out how to simulate brain chemistry if the terminators don't kill us all first.... But then we'll have to fight the replicants and reploids, so we probably won't be able to play any games.
20
u/Friendly_Engineer_ 13h ago
AI is by definition derivative and not art. Art comes from human imagination
11
u/thisnamemattersalot 12h ago edited 12h ago
The overwhelming majority of human art is derivative too. How often do you genuinely view a piece of art in any medium and think "wow this has never been done before"?
-1
u/lurklurklurkPOST 9h ago
Every time I shuffle a deck of cards or watch a sunset on a beach, it is utterly unique.
3
u/thisnamemattersalot 8h ago
If that's your bar for uniqueness, then AI can absolutely do unique.
2
u/lurklurklurkPOST 8h ago
Thats not my bar, but it is important to maintain a realistic baseline and not give in to hyperbole
2
u/-LaughingMan-0D 13h ago
It regresses to the mean by the very nature of how it works. That's why what it makes often feels generic and cliche. Not a problem if yoj want functional code, but with art you want creative chaos and taste.
2
0
u/Kristophigus 7h ago
And that's totally fine. It's a tool. Be mad about what the process does to the environment, but people being upset about a tool is getting old.
2
u/shiftywalruseyes 13h ago
That really is the crux of it I think, anyone can make a fully functional game in an afternoon now, but very few people can develop something that is actually fun to play. I think it'll open up lots of opportunities to indie devs that have that creativity and allow them to create more ambitious projects they couldn't have before, but I'm also concerned that those games will be buried under the sheer volume of slop that is going to saturate the market.
3
u/SilentDanni 13h ago
I mean, AI cannot replace taste. I've seen however at least one very engaging game made with AI. I'm sure some creative folks will be able to create some cool stuff with it.
-3
u/rushmc1 11h ago
AI will certainly be able to model "taste" going forward.
3
u/SilentDanni 10h ago
I strongly disagree. I don't think you can emulate an artistic vision of an individual. I don't think there'll be a future where a LLM can produce a movie in the way Robert Machoian does, or illustrate like Moebius, or conceptualize like Jodorowsky. It may produce similar results after some guidance, but it cannot just emulate a spark of brilliance, or the minds and ideas that are truly novel without guidance.
Mind you, I'm saying without guidance. If you have an individual expressing how they'd like a painting, a tv show, a game to an LLM and then the LLM produces the desired outcome then the LLM was only a conduit for the creativity.
I think we're still very far from emulating "humanity" if you will. It could change some day but I think that's still a few decades away at least. Feel free to dm me if that changes!
1
u/scopa0304 9h ago
For decades the game industry has been plagued by “idea guys” who were certain their “game idea” was going to be the next big thing. At least with AI those people can get their ideas out of their system and see for themselves that it wasn’t really a good idea after all.
19
u/clue124 13h ago
Thats pretty easy to say for a multimillion, well established corporation. For those in indie or smaller studios, this over saturation of slop is an absolute nightmare.
And its not like konami wont use it in their pipeline either, so its not out of the question to expect mega corporations to start rapidly pumping out games en masse as well. We are only in the first month since opus 5.5 and reddit seems even more divided compared to when AI videos and images saturated the space.
I dont want to be pessimistic but my optimism for more organic releases is dwindling rapidly
6
6
6
u/danielrobertcampbell 10h ago
And this is from KONAMI?!
2
u/eddmario 9h ago
I know, right?
What's next, EA being Anti-AI as well?1
u/RemarkableWish2508 8h ago
Are they "Anti-AI" though, or just saying that a tool can't replace a tool operator?
6
u/Fairwhetherfriend 10h ago
AI is very good at reproducing and remixing existing ideas, but creating new and novel things is entirely outside of its designed function.
The best it can do is combine two existing things in a novel way, but it typically won't have any reference for what would make a combination interesting unless someone has already tried it, so you'll get a lot of like... peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich sorts of ideas if you tried. Sure, it's new and novel, but it's not good, lol.
That's why a lot of developers use AI as part of their work, but it wouldn't work well as a whole replacement. A lot of the grunt work of software development is just rehashing existing stuff which is why so much of it was already made modular and reusable even before AI was a thing. But new ideas on how to use those functions are not really a thing AI can do effectively. That's still a very human skill.
6
6
10
u/CartographerFit3410 12h ago edited 12h ago
I don't know if I'm missing something but it doesn't make sense to me for game companies to support AI. If it comes to a point where anyone can vibe code their own game to do exactly what they want and fit their very specific preferences, what's the point of spending $70+ on a game that you may or may not like from a major company? Wish more of these massive gaming companies would fight against this trash
6
u/Shapes_in_Clouds 10h ago
If it comes to a point where anyone can vibe code their own game to do exactly what they want and fit their very specific preferences, what's the point of spending $70+ on a game that you may or may not like from a major company?
I mean most people don't really know exactly what they want. Half the fun of playing a game is being surprised and learning/understanding the game on a deeper level. I don't think most people are interested in vibe coding their own game even if it were incredibly simple and easy. People will still want to experience something new and engage with the creative visions of other people.
-1
u/DangerToDangers 10h ago
As someone who works in games and uses AI, I half agree and half disagree with his statement. The thing that AI is allowing me to do is automate a lot of the monkey work and create tools to make my life easier without having to rely on programmers. A lot of game making can be boring repetitive tasks, and a lot of game making often follows rules and algorithms. Letting AI do that frees me to do more creative work. It increases my output significantly, which is where the west struggles to compete with China for example because they can afford bigger teams and their work culture is hardcore.
So for tools and steamnlining content creation I'm in favor. For graphical assets and vide coding features I'm not so much in favor. Vibe coding tools is great because it doesn't matter much if they break since the end user is not the player.
5
u/DunkeyColdMedina 13h ago
I believe the change will be significant, but it won't be a net positive.
2
u/Tedy_Duchamp 13h ago
People aren’t gonna play AI slop games.
9
u/manachar 12h ago
Gonna pile on and say they absolutely will.
Maybe primarily on mobile, but free-to-play games are already pretty close to slop and AI will lower developmental costs.
People seem quite willing to spend money and time on slop.
Slop, here defined as low-quality high quantity shovelware.
The industry pumps loads of it out, see what does well. Anything that does well, even if coded by human (Balatro, BallxPit, etc) then it will be analyzed and copied.
Heck, how many people would love to have a clone of Stardew Valley with mermaids! Oh, lots, and Coral Island exists (not AI slop, just unoriginal copying of another gameplay mechanics).
Some of the copying and interaction is natural.
Every big video game hit would "inspire" other studios to do their own take on it. Sometimes the copies were better than the original!
AI is the next iteration of cheap human developers in other countries.
I wish it wasn't effective, but loads of money to be made by making iterations on successful formats.
This won't fully kill high quality human-made games. But it will probably kill the "just okay" games that cost loads of money to make. Many studios fall in that category.
Expensive human made slop is less profitable than cheap AI slop with a few humans at the helm.
13
u/iwannabetheguytoo 13h ago
I used to think that, then I remembered Candy Crush and other mobile crapware games are both decades-old and consistent top-grossers. If tens of millions of people (still) play (and pay) for games like that, then it’s a guarantee that AI slop-games can be contrived into existence and profitability.
2
2
u/jellyhessman 10h ago
LOL
Candy Crush is one of the most highly psychologically engineered games in existence.
Literally everything in that game is designed by gambling experts to make it as addicting as possible.
2
u/OldJellyBones 7h ago
The Chinese and Indians will, they already consume fully ai slop movies and tv series at a voracious rate
5
u/mlp851 11h ago edited 11h ago
If a lazy dev uses AI to make a game. Yes it’s going to be utter slop.
If a good dev uses AI to make the prototyping and coding go faster, while maintaining total creative and artistic control, then no-one will be able to tell the difference.
For better or worse these tools are here to stay, vast amounts of software companies are using them already and it’s absolutely inevitable that gaming studios will follow suit.
I think some people think using AI means you just tell it to make a game and off it goes. No quality games studio is going to do that, they will be using it as a tool to make development faster.
I know I’ll get downvoted because you can’t even say anything vaguely neutral about AI on here. But this is the reality, it’s happening, and if used properly it’s just another tool. It’s not going to turn every game into slop.
1
u/FoodMadeFromRobots 13h ago
No just like they didn’t play human slop games.
7
u/Smiling_Jack_ 12h ago
lmao. The massive, most profitable mobile gaming market says otherwise.
1
u/FoodMadeFromRobots 10h ago
My point was there’s good human made games and bad/slop human made games. It’s no different than AI assisted games, there will be bad ones and there will be ones made by competent studios that are good.
And to your point if people play shitty mobile games by humans they’ll also play shitty mobile games made by AI.
5
u/TFenrir 13h ago
How do you even define slop? Is it a reflection of the quality, or an inalienable attribute you attach to anything made with AI?
I don't think people are preparing themselves for a world where AI will be able to create experiences more compelling than human made ones.
I don't even say this as a positive or a negative! I think people need to really at least entertain this idea, rather than cling onto a truism associated with the human soul or whatever, imbuing products with intrinsic merit.
It's easy to imagine the positive cases of AI that makes even more compelling things, but maybe this will be compelling to the cynics and pessimists - can anyone think of any downside that we probably want to take very seriously?
3
u/Only-Cranberry-4502 12h ago
I think it’s going to change and with how the atmosphere, really slowly and people are going start accepting it over time without actually realizing it
4
u/TFenrir 12h ago
I don't think it will happen that slowly. All it takes is for the overton window to keep shifting in this direction where it becomes... Exhausting and 'expensive' to avoid AI at all costs. Many people just say that they do while they secretly 'indulge' (I had one conversation with someone who felt a lot of shame about this, it was actually really interesting).
But at the rate of progress, we will have games of incredible quality and scale by next year - but beyond that, they will be living games that are constantly being updated by swarms of AI. Free expansions, forks, mods, whatever. The ambition will be beyond capabilities even by the end of next year, but at that point the ambition will be aiming further than human capabilities.
At that point, people will find whatever justifications they need to play with the dopamine machines.
2
u/Only-Cranberry-4502 12h ago
I agree too I guess by slowly I’m not really what I meant or even had a measure
It’s hard not to use something that completely changes the speed with how you do things even if it’s at a starting point. For example, in programming, coding is getting less because ai can do a lot that doesn’t require you to type it all out so it definitely accelerates speed which gives you time to think more big picture and is actually really useful for time management. If you know what you’re doing, ai is definitely helpful and I think public opinion is going to not never truly accept, just more over time forget why they didn’t like it
2
u/Shapes_in_Clouds 10h ago
Even aside from the theoretical ability of an AI being able to create a good, full game all on its own from a simple prompt - people are crazy if they think it won't be used extensively in game development for asset creation, systems development, and post processing tech like DLSS 5. Humans will still be the driving creative force, but there will be a lot of AI utilisation and editing in the process.
1
u/Myusername1- 5h ago
Ai is definitely going to be used in game development going forward. Whether it’s organizing time/procedures , to helping out/organizing storylines. To coming up with an infinite amount of daily quests that keep people in the game longer.
Theres no way AI doesn’t have an influence in game development anymore.1
u/DrowningKrown 8h ago
On mobile, they absolutely do. The sheer amount of AI ads I see for games on IOS and then I go check their store page out of curiosity: millions of downloads, thousands of reviews
1
1
u/Expensive_Put_3338 12h ago
They do, ask NTE player or other gacha games. Currently, many of them are build with AI blatantly.
0
u/Heydickhead 13h ago
AI slop is shit, true. But I think incorporating AI into npc's so you could literally talk to them on the mic as you play would be awesome.
Imagine playing GTA 7 and you can just have literal conversations with them. Shit would be both epic and hilarious
-1
u/hammackj 12h ago
Spoiler every game on the market from AAA uses AI in some form same with most indies the ones who say they don’t are lying.
-1
1
u/WalletFullOfSausage 13h ago
Just not people like Kojima, who made Konami untold fortunes by literally inventing the stealth game genre.
1
u/Shiningc00 12h ago
Eh, I think this is pretty much a pragmatic take. AI, or LLMs by definition don't create anything new. At best, it can help development by working through drudgery. But AI can't somehow come up with new gameplay or art style or story or even a new game engine or something.
1
u/heroism777 12h ago
That’s the most sane take Konami has done in the past decade. This might be the turn around point for Konami.
1
u/Hobotronacus 12h ago
I don't think it will bring significant change, because he's right human talent is absolutely necessary to produce something good. I do think AI will be used no matter what. I also think AI will reduce the number of jobs available in the industry, but not by as many as the c-suite are hoping for.
1
1
u/MissLeaP 10h ago
It already did, though. We can't trust half of the newly developed games and hardware prices have risen to such a ridiculous degree that nobody can afford PCs or consoles necessary to play the next generation of videogames.
1
u/Positive_Conflict_26 10h ago
Unless these "humans" and "creators" are self funded his point is moot.
Money suits don't care about "innovative", they care about the bottom line, and if firing all the pesky workers who need breaks, health benefits, and vacation time, will make that bottom line look better, they will do it.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/mEan_Refrigerat9r 6h ago
Unless those creators were creating for Kojima productions. Then they weren’t nearly as crucial.
1
u/pockypimp 6h ago
Tell that to all the QA people who've been laid off. Two of my friends worked as QA Leads for different developer/publishers and both got laid off last year. Why pay a human to test when you can just simulate it?
1
1
u/ItsSadTimes 3h ago
It'll hurt the indie game market. With just so much more shovelware thanks to AI its going to be basically impossible to stand out as an indie dev without some marketing behind your game.
1
u/OMG_NoReally 2h ago
I am all for AI being used to accelerate and innovate dev tools. If they can make games easier to develop, allow more creative solutions, accelerate new methods of development, that's good. That's how AI should be used.
But the moment AI is used to replace the human touch in stories, artwork, gameplay mechanics, that's when everything goes to shit.
1
u/kaishinoske1 2h ago
I think what humans and A.i. are doing together to Somy can be described as significant change.
1
u/Yesyesyes1899 35m ago
I dont see value in ai generated games. as in any art created by humans, it should be done by humans.
but. I see value in ai being integrated smartly into game AI.
games like Civilization would profit from that. they have had historically bad AI behavior, that lessens the game experience.
if LLMs could be trained on those games, it would make it way more fun.
1
u/Outrageous-Machine-5 10h ago
While correct, this is kind of odd coming from the company that stunted Kojima
1
u/New-Ignorant-Money 9h ago
Says the company that fired kojima?
3
u/strife696 9h ago
They didnt fire kojima. They got into a pissing match over who had the rights to metal gear and he quit to own his IP.
0
u/Pitiful_Option_108 11h ago
Wait Konami president said this? Aren't they like the king of slop games? Not quite AI slop but they just kept publishing Bs like Metal gear survivor and stuff.
1
1
u/not_a-mimic 10h ago
That's what I was wondering. It this the same president they've had for last 10 years?
1
0
u/Roy-Southman 8h ago
Do they even still make games? I thought all they did was pachinko machines.
-1
u/LuigiFan45 6h ago edited 6h ago
They have a several long-running arcade rhythm games that are still being developed.
The likes of DanceDanceRevolution is still alive and kicking and has been released in more places in the US at least
0
u/thisnamemattersalot 12h ago
This comment feels like burying one's head in the sand. It's like saying that game development engines wouldn't bring a change to the game market. AI is the latest big jump in force multiplication in the tech space, and will absolutely allow more to be accomplished with fewer people. The idea that entire games will be made by AI is (at least for now) absurd, but that's not what it's being used for. It's a tool, not a replacement. You still have to tell it what to do.
0
0
u/leetfire666 13h ago
Even if I agree that well created games trump AI trash, there will be significant changes. Development costs should drop as it becomes easier to make games. I’m hoping that leads to more good stories / independent game development rather than a few big titles / franchises coming out from a few big studios that can afford to fund them. I also hope it’ll reduce the need to create so much DLC, subscription models, etc to keep milking money from the same game. Wishful thinking, but we’ll see.
2
0
u/tiggoftigg 12h ago
That’s the thing. Most games out there are derivative, banal garbage. AI is great at creating that content. Also, AI is still in its toddler stage. Other than that which comes packaged in with whatever product I use (iPhone, Alexa, Google) I don’t seek to use AI. But I have no doubt that so many of these “we need humans as creators to make compelling content” sectors will be heavily disrupted by it.
0
u/Secure-Tradition793 11h ago
He has a point, however it will certainly change from a different direction. Like what the Internet did to music, AI is rapidly making DRM, exclusivity, closed-source all obsolete. So game development may be forced to change at least.
0
0
u/Intelligent-Cod378 9h ago
Unfortunately he is 100% wrong.
2
u/cejmp 7h ago
What a compelling rebuttal. I'm fascinated.
0
u/Intelligent-Cod378 5h ago
In all seriousness we just have no idea how far it can/will go, and it’s already made extreme changes to how games are made and looked at. And although I do prefer a human touch 100%, AI will likely become an entropic force in every single tech sector, especially gaming.
0
u/UnemployedOtter69 8h ago
pure marketing to mill some dollars, im sure behind the doors they are using IA in crazy ammounts, if they are smart the will setup a dedicate QA team to check that IA will not be obvious
0
u/pbagel2 6h ago
If anyone thinks virtually every single indie and AAA game developer isn't already today using AI to help them code their game, they are incredibly naive.
Fewer, but still many and growing, are also using AI to make assets, whether it's textures or models or concept art.
As much as it makes sense to be against AI for many reasons, the reality is in this specific context, AI is already ubiquitous.
You can argue how purely AI-generated games are garbage, and sure, you're not wrong. But that's a strawman that distracts from the fact that every single developer today uses AI in some way for their own game. I'm sure you can find 1 or 2 exceptions. Those exceptions are already established and don't need to code much anymore to sustain what they've already created. Should they start needing to code more again, the number of exceptions will shrink very rapidly.
-12
u/SYNTHENTICA 13h ago edited 13h ago
Delusional take from a culture that's already decades behind in software practices. The biggest problem with triple A games is sky-high costs causing risk aversion and a breakdown in creative vision from having "too many chefs in the kitchen". If AI makes everyone more efficient, then smaller teams can build the next generation of triple A games, thus solving both of these problems.
On the contrary, imagine how much more a small indie studio can accomplish with agentic coding assistants alone.
People who think like this are going to have their lunch eaten by 2030.
3
u/PurpleKami 13h ago
Calling someone delusional when they've been at the company for 30 years and probably have a better idea of what's best for them compared to you is pretty bold.
-7
u/SYNTHENTICA 13h ago edited 13h ago
Japan's software engineering culture is terrible, so I feel pretty comfortable calling this guy delusional actually, just as I felt comfortable telling biased redditors that AI was going to revolutionize software development back in 2024.
I mean, just look at how atrocious Japanese games are compared to western ones from a purely technical perspective. Pokemon is probably the most egregious example of this, graphics look like something straight out of 2010. It's embarrassing. Don't even get me started on how rollback netcode was the norm in western fighting games a decade before it showed up in Street Fighter. The vibecoded Tekken 6 PC slopport literally has better netcode than Tekken 8 too, which itself collapsed due to a 1 year long development backlog leaving them unable to react to community feedback.
These could all be negative case studies in a book on project management. Grim.
-4
u/Burton96HD 13h ago
I agree with you 100 percent. It's also important to note we shouldn't be basing it off AI's current abilities, although still impressive. Give it a year or two.
-4
2
u/Shiningc00 12h ago
The guy is talking about what can't be replaced by AI, like coming up with compelling gameplay or story.
You're 100% missing the point.
Also thinking that video gaming companies in Japan is decades behind is a wild take. Pretty sure these guys know more software than some random AI bro Redditor ever will.
1
u/RoadsideDavidian 13h ago
Big firms are going to be better able to take advantage of whatever benefits you believe AI gives
-1
u/SYNTHENTICA 13h ago
I think there are pros and cons. Bigger firms will have access to more tokens, but they also suffer from inertia and risk avoidance.
I can definitely see a world where the first AI assisted blockbuster game is made by a very small, passionate and group of trendsetters who primarily use cheaper models, whilst the bigger companies are burdened by an obsolete old-guard that refuses to try anything new. Only after they start to lose traction will they be forced to play catch up with their bigger wallets.
1
u/rushmc1 11h ago
You're exactly right. Ignore the troglodyte's downvotes.
1
u/SYNTHENTICA 10h ago
Whenever I make these controversial posts, it always with the hope that someone who knows more will chime in and give me a schooling. If all I get is down votes and half-assed fallacious arguments, I take that as admission that I'm right. This sub is really pathetic.
-1
u/LOST-MY_HEAD 13h ago
There will be a fine like of using ai help to build games and just making slop
-1
u/Captain_N1 11h ago
You have fallen far from your grace land Konami, in the 1980-2000s, you made great games. after that you turned into trash and cant even make your own games. You hire other studios to make them. look at that slop that is the contra remake.... it took how long to make a new castlevania. Bloodstained Ritual of the Night exists because you would not make any castlevania games.
-2
u/Limemill 13h ago
Who’s gonna ask the gamers though? If all they get is a deluge of mediocre LLM shit, that’s what they’ll have to play. And if you try to do something unique, the big players will drive you to bankruptcy before you even finish.
-2
u/Dismal_Struggle_9004 12h ago edited 12h ago
People are not going to be able to tell whether the code written was generated by AI or written manually in the short term future. Mind you almost all programmers will be using AI to help them. I cannot believe he believes this.
-2
u/Rich_Housing971 12h ago
AI is great for repetitive tasks that take time but don't involve creativity. Konami would be stupid to not use AI at all in game development. I can see AI making games code faster, closing bloated development time from 5 years down to the 2-3 years that we used to see.
-2
u/itsRobbie_ 10h ago
Riiight. Anyway, don’t mind me, just going to download a mod that adds literal Minecraft building into deadlock
-2
-3
-1
u/hellotheregeneral 4h ago
Good stance and most would agree today. That might change in 10-20 years though as AI keeps getting "smarter". It might become possible that vibe-coding starts to actually produce actually working code quite soon actually. It is imo very likely that one day in the future there might be completely AI-made games that are as good as some human-made ones today.
1
u/Whatever801 30m ago
Even if you don't think AI can replace human creativity (I think I agree), the amount of manual monkey work that goes into a game is insane. AI can definitely do that
309
u/Icy-Guarantee6994 13h ago
Rare Konami win, lmao.