It's no secret that Microsoft has been betting heavily on generative AI ever since its early investments in OpenAI. Even on the gaming front, they've partnered with Inworld AI to create a generative AI powered game development tool called Narrative Graph.
However, speaking to Game Developer during the recent Gamescom LATAM, Compulsion Games founder and studio head Guillaume Provost revealed that Microsoft is not forcing its usage on Xbox Game Studios.
I can absolutely guarantee that generative AI usage is not mandated. You're talking to the studio that literally builds shit by hand. In the DNA of the studio that we have, we're very craft oriented. We're very art oriented. Just based on the types of games that we make, I would say we are probably not the studio that will use AI the most, and I don't think that bothers anything at Microsoft. The DNA of our studio is to handcraft things and to make them feel handcrafted, and that involves a lot of manual labor.
Provost later admitted that generative AI could still prove useful even for Compulsion's approach to development.
I think there are a lot of cases where it could be helpful in pre-production for us to do things like spitting out storyboards for us to see whether it makes sense or not— not really stuff that we use in production, but stuff that we want to accelerate.
Compulsion Games recently released the single-player action/adventure game South of Midnight. In another interview with Game Rant, Provost confirmed that the game had already reached over a million players. Granted, its availability on the Microsoft owned subscription service Game Pass certainly helped a great deal. However, it's still a fairly important milestone for the Montreal-based developer previously known for Contrast and We Happy Few.
South of Midnight received a 7/10 score in Wccftech's review written by David Carcasole:
Overall, South of Midnight has excellent storytelling, excellent artistic and visual design, a wonderful cast of characters and voice actors, and an original soundtrack that punctuates each big narrative beat in a way that will stay with you long after you put the controller down. Unfortunately, the same creativity that went into the rest of the game is missing in its combat and platforming, and Compulsion Games does itself no favors by launching you into the same boring combat scenarios again and again in each level.
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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