The use of AI in game development is a heavily debated topic among gamers and developers alike, but the industry seems to be opening up to the idea.
Square Enix’s upcoming 4v4 shooter Foamstars contains AI-generated elements, producer Kosuke Okatani told VGC. While maintaining that most of the game was hand-developed, generative AI tool Midjourney was used to create some in-game icons.
Okatani added,
“In terms of the content in the game, this makes up about 0.01% or even less, but we have dabbled in it by creating these icons in the game.”
Square Enix further clarified that the studio tries to leverage new technologies to improve game development. The team confirmed that the AI elements in Foamstars are limited to the in-game album covers for the soundtrack.
The statement further read,
“We loved what was created and used them as the final album covers players will see in the game. Everything else was created entirely by our development team.”
Midjourney has gained massive popularity as a tool that converts text prompts into visuals (often stylish, abstract images). However, many professional creatives criticize the use of such tools, alleging that such tech infringes their copyrighted material.
AI tools are trained using dataset which is more often than not scraped from unique work (text, images, videos) published across the internet. This has heated up the conversation around royalties and fair usage, and how the video game industry navigates these waters will be interesting to witness.
