Epic's recent announcement that Unreal Engine 5.8, and even more so the upcoming Unreal Engine 6, include integration with Claude and Gemini (as well as support for custom models) to "greatly reduce the tedious work in authoring content to leave more time for creative exploration, and increase the amount of iterations a team can make to polish their content" was predictably met with skepticism from the anti-AI crowd.
Still, that's not a universal reaction. Other veteran developers, such as Rich Vogel (whom I interviewed a few months ago on the state of the MMO genre), are far more pragmatic and believe that AI could genuinely help in some areas.
In a LinkedIn post, Vogel noted that this is nearly the end of an era for game development (a sentiment echoed by longtime Unreal Engine product lead Sjoerd De Jong, who's leaving Epic), with AI sure to be "entrenched in the overall process". However, he added that there's no chance of real people not being involved in the production of gaming content, particularly as "finding the fun is too complex for AI to replicate, at least not in the next 20 years".
Vogel also reckons that most assets will still be developed by humans, with AI being largely used in pipelines for shaders, textures, animations, rigging, and concepting, as well as in QA and localization. Smaller teams will be able to produce more content faster because AI enables them to iterate more quickly, though the veteran developer also warned about the hidden costs of using AI, such as rising token consumption to generate complex code.
However, he ended on a positive note:
I definitely see many more tools entering game production pipelines in two years, enabling developers to build content faster and create new emergent gameplay never before seen in games. When we see new AI emergent gameplay never before seen in games, that is when the true Renaissance in game development begins.
So far, the most respected gaming studio division to embrace AI is PlayStation Studios. Parent company Sony revealed last month that its first-party developers are already automating repetitive workflows, enhancing productivity in software engineering, and speeding up processes in fields such as quality assurance, 3D modeling, and animation with the help of innovative AI-driven tools.
However, they're far from the only ones. Asian game developers and publishers have been particularly open about it, with Square Enix, CAPCOM, NetEase, Tencent, Nexon, and NC all pushing toward that direction, partly because there is far less cultural backlash over there. If they are successful, the rest of the gaming studios from the West might be forced to follow.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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