The debate over AI use in game development has raged across the industry over the past year or so, with some developers swearing they'd never touch it, others openly embracing it, and quite a few placing themselves somewhere in the middle.
Epic famously opened the gates to Claude, Gemini, and other LLMs with Unreal Engine 5.8 (and 6)'s MCP server, with a mixed reception from the development community. In our recent exclusive interview with Thomas Mahler, CEO of Moon Studios and Game Director on the Ori games and the upcoming No Rest for the Wicked, we asked him what kind of stance the Austrian developer has settled on when it comes to AI tools.
I think there’s a big difference between using generative AI for tasks that a human could obviously do better and letting a computer do what a computer should do. For example, I just caught one of our gameplay designers putting together a big Excel for our animators that contained information they needed… but then I jumped in and had AI write a little exporter that just gives them all that information without even having to open up our editor.
So… letting a computer do the insanely laborious tasks that we had to do in the past is A-OK in my book. Those are the tasks we always dreaded to do anyway. When it comes to AI creating art or telling stories… we’re just not there yet. I actually tried it a few times and the result is always the same. The art is generic and the stories and dialogue are laughably bad compared to what talented artists can do. And even if the results would be there, I think at Moon we just enjoy crafting things by hand so that we’re in total control of the quality of our work.
So, Mahler is taking a pragmatic approach: generative AI can help a lot with many repetitive tasks, but not with creative work for art or storytelling because it's just not good enough in those areas. He then added that the folks at Moon Studios want to be in complete control of the quality of their work, suggesting that even if tools improved, they might not use them anyway.
Mahler's position is clear: AI can streamline the boring stuff, but when it comes to art, writing, and overall creative direction, Moon Studios would rather keep the wheel in human hands.
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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