Krafton is the latest of many gaming companies to openly declare its love for artificial intelligence, announcing that it is doubling down on transforming into an "AI-first" business. This will apply not only to game development, but to all aspects of the organisation: automated workflows, AI-driven HR, management systems, in-game AI, and an entire infrastructure built around it.
Unsurprisingly, this statement has been very poorly received by fans. And there are some fiery discussions going on over at Reddit, with users pointing out how this will have a major (negative) impact on the quality of future games.
A statement from Krafton reads: (translated with Google):
"Krafton builds a virtuous ecosystem of learning, sharing, and experimentation so that members can directly experience and lead AI First culture. Support AI learning and use of work tools, focusing on in-house platforms 'AI learning hubs (Learning Hub)', and sharing practical application cases and know-how company-wide. It also operates 'AI Roundtable (Roundtable)' and 'AI Hackathon (Hackathon)' to spread a culture of mutual learning and practice-oriented use of AI across occupations and organizations."
One user on Reddit writes:
"This entire company just declared its own death with this."
Many point out that rather than going all in on AI, gaming companies should focus on a human first approach. With genuine creativity as the driving factor, something that most people argue that AI at the moment is incapable of. Also, the very fact that Krafton mentions how AI will be used for HR, has stirred up some particularly strong feelings.
"Artificial intelligence being an infrastructure for human resources sounds like the beginning of the end times."
Attempts to implement more AI is of course nothing new. And we've seen both EA and Microsoft go all in, with clear plans to take it as far as possible. But the question remains. How will this end up affecting the quality of the games? We can only wait and see.