Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann believes that generative AI can help make better ideas for games. In a recent interview, he said that AI could help get rid of the “less boring” parts of game development. This would allow developers to focus more on being creative.
Hartmann thinks that AI could help developers work together better and make games faster. “We as an industry definitely have to innovate on many levels to develop faster and also be willing to take more risks,” he said. However, not everyone in the gaming industry agrees with Hartmann.
A survey showed that 30 percent of developers think AI can lower costs and make things more efficient. But 8 percent think it will make costs go up, and 20 percent think it won’t have a big impact. Also, 35 percent are worried that AI could lead to games that aren’t as good.
Despite the different opinions, Hartmann believes that human creativity is still very important. “There’s always something special. Humans will always be one step ahead,” he said.
“I don’t think genAI will be able to translate those unique things into fresh ideas. If you find it designing games, the game’s going to be all the same.”
As game actors strike for better protections against AI, Hartmann has faced criticism for his comments. In an interview, he suggested that AI could help make game development go faster.
Ai enhancing game development creativity
“Hopefully AI will help us to streamline processes so hand-done work will go fast. Ideally, we can get it down to three years so we can iterate more,” he said.
When asked about the SAG-AFTRA strike, Hartmann said, “I got to be careful what I say because we are a big company and have to deal with all those organizations.” But he still thinks AI can offer new ideas for gameplay without replacing human workers. “For games, we don’t really have acting… The majority of the team sits in programming and that’s not going to go away because that’s all about innovation,” he stated.
However, many AAA games have a lot of acting in them. Games like “The Last of Us” and “Baldur’s Gate 3” use performance capture to make characters move and feel emotions in a realistic way. Hartmann also thinks AI can help with localization, which means translating games into different languages.
“Right now, we’re localizing our game into a certain set of languages. With AI, it’s not just about making it cheaper, but about translating our games into more languages, which is great for gamers,” he explained. Even with all the excitement about AI, Hartmann knows that machines can’t fully capture human creativity.
“Humans will always be one step ahead. The machine might get very close, but I don’t think it will be able to translate those unique things into fresh ideas,” he said. The debate about AI’s role in game development is still going on.
It shows how hard it is to balance new technology with the value of human creativity that can’t be replaced.
