Video game production is a big, expensive process that now tends to involve a bunch of people working across a whole lot of different studios. According to Stephanie Arnette, who serves as senior external development manager on Fortnite, AI isn’t coming to kill jobs, whether that be at Epic itself or for its co-development partners.
“Epic has been exploring different AI tooling that we can use to help support our games,” Arnette said at a recent Gamescom Latam panel attended by GamesRadar+. “I know everyone’s biggest fear is, ‘Oh my god, AI is going to take all our jobs.’ That’s not our goal. The goal is to make us more efficient.”
Arnette suggested that if “the thing that takes you 10 hours to do” suddenly “doesn’t take you as long,” that’s a compelling use case for AI. Part of that “tooling” is being explored “in the art realm as well,” she added, but didn’t detail exactly what shape that might take.
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Regardless, Arnette insisted that Epic is leading the charge on whatever AI is implemented in Fortnite’s development process. “There really is no opening for a partner to try to put their AI info or tooling into ours,” she explained, “because it’s such a massive, massive company, so it would always be from our direction outward, and not the other way around.”
This notion that AI is going to be used to make things more efficient for developers is one we’ve heard over and over again – including just today, when Sony detailed how Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered made use of a new AI animation tool. We’re already seeing games that have been built using AI tech coming to market, and while many players are holding firm against obvious AI-generated content in their entertainment, those quieter uses of the tech are difficult to pick out.
Of course, the actual power of AI tech to make developers “more efficient” is difficult to measure, and the real question is whether those efficiency gains will be used as justification for layoffs remains to be seen. After all, you’re not technically being replaced by AI if your boss decides that with all these new efficiencies that your co-worker can do your job too.
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