Nier Automata director thinks game devs will lose their jobs to AI

Nier Automata director Yoko Taro believes AI will lead to mass unemployment within the game development industry. 

During an interview with Famitsu, Nier Automata director Yoko Taro shared his thoughts on AI and how he thinks it will impact game development. 

“I think that AI will make all game creators unemployed. In 50 years, game creators may be treated like bards. I think that in the near future, we will move from an era where we have to imitate the style of our favorite creators to an era where we can have our favorite scenarios generated,” he explained. 

The critically acclaimed director also noted how AI could be used to determine the preferences of a game’s audience, and even go as far as to make recommendations based on players’ particular tastes. 

Nier Automata director believes AI will take over games

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“AI will determine the preferences of users and skillfully generate route branchings that they would want to read,” he added. “The recommendation capabilities will continue to improve.” We’ve already seen these “improvements” first-hand with ChatGPT’s image and text generation, with the infamous Studio Ghibli trend taking the world by storm.

While Taro believes that AI could create “fantastical worlds and stories,” Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka isn’t 100% sold on the idea. During the interview, Kodaka noted that:

“Even if you can imitate a writer, you can’t act like the author. For example, I think you can generate a game scenario that director David Lynch might write, but if it were him, he would probably make changes to it based on his own characteristics or style.”

While Kodaka was a little more hopeful in his view of AI, he does believe that shared experiences surrounding big moments in gaming could be a thing of the past. “I think it will become less common for everyone to have the same experiences, so the phenomenon of something becoming a huge hit around the world will probably disappear.”