Why Elon Musk's AI game studio can only be a bad idea

While he's posted about it on and off for a bit now, it seems Elon Musk is becoming more and more determined to create an AI gaming studio with his xAI in the hope to "make video games great again."

This move largely reads as Elon yet again stepping into unknown waters, hoping to piggyback off the success of those who actually know what they're doing. As an avid gamer himself, there's no question as to why he has taken an interest in the medium, but wading in with his own bold claims feels about as useful to the industry as throwing a bowling ball into a fish pond.

Musk's AI gaming studio being a bad idea is little to do with his politics. If anyone had the same idea and was equally inexperienced, I'd be drawing the same conclusion. It just so happens that this is a man who has the resources to be able to bring into reality what is essentially the whim of a tweet or two.

It's highly unlikely anything comes of this proposed game studio besides a modicum of hype driven by the most-loyal fans of Elon's, and the biggest haters of anything that begins with a W and rhymes with coke. The years it would take to properly develop a game that can meet the standards Elon and gamers would expect is probably more effort than Mr. Musk bargained for. Making a game is hard. We're not at the point where you can just ask ChatGPT to do it for you. It's even further behind than the so-called AI movies, which look like a tech demo made a disgusting incestuous baby with an oil painting. It's likely that this effort means that the xAI studio will remain as a concept, something that can be brought up again and again for support, but will not deliver any results.

Even if work does begin on an AI game, whatever that looks like, there is a clear lack in direction and purpose for this studio and whatever project it can churn out. When you look at posts from Elon (sprinkled all around this article), especially the video below, it seems the only wish he has is to remove DEI and woke from gaming. As is often the case with these arguments, those two buzzwords are for little more than drumming up ideas in people's heads of what they think of as bad. In the short video too, like a failing stand-up comedian, Musk addresses the audience saying he hates it when a game is interrupted by "DEI woke bullshit."

Are some games progressive? Of course, always have been. Do some games have dialogue that feels like HR is in the room? Sure. However, to argue that the art has been killed, or that politics have overtaken gaming is vastly reductive, especially in a medium that allows you to pick and choose what you wish to engage with. It's very interesting to get this argument from someone whose latest obsessions have included Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2, two titles which have released very recently. If the whole purpose of this studio is just to make an anti-woke game, then that simply isn't good enough to compete with the best of gaming we see today, in the exact same way that a game pinning its sales on being woke won't win over a wide audience.

Of course, we're in the early days at this point, but usually when we see the announcement of a new studio, that studio will know what it wants to create. Whether its expansive RPGs, or well-crafted narratives, you'll know what you're in for, at least to a vague extend. But, with the xAI studio, there's no idea - at least not one granted to the public - of what this holy grail of games is going to be. Generate as many images of a white, chiselled man as a knight as you please, it's not going to make it a playable, enjoyable game. People in the comments of Elon's post have all sorts of wild expectations, but unfortunately for them, the most likely option is that none of them will be met.

Even the idea of this being an AI game studio delivers a laughable juxtaposition against Elon's own arguments of the art being destroyed. Nothing says art is back like the involvement of an all-powerful machine generating everything, right? It's not only about the fact that AI is just being considered for supporting game development at this point, it's about once more business-minded individuals stepping into a creative space, thinking two magical letters can act as a substitute for the endless hours it takes to craft a movie, game, or book. The whole point isn't just to make something that looks pretty and plays well. As gamers grow more conscious of what goes into development, it becomes more and more impressive to see just how much care a developer put into the details. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Baldur's Gate III, and Astro Bot are just a few recent examples of games that show now more than ever a human hand can still guide us to our best experiences.

That's something I don't think the AI enthusiasts will ever get. It's impressive technology, and will be used ever increasingly in the future, but to just slap the letters on something to try and generate hype just feels hollow. If this studio comes to fruition, if Elon Musk makes a game, then I can't see how it'll do any less damage to the art than the games apparently interrupting him all the time to talk about woke nonsense.