AI was everywhere at gaming’s big developer conference — except the games

AI was everywhere at the GDC Festival of Gaming this year. Vendors at the event demonstrated generative AI tools for things like creating AI-driven NPCs and even entire games from a chat box. In the exhibition space, I spent 10 minutes playing a demo of a pixel art fantasy world generated by Tencent’s AI tools. During a briefing with Razer, I saw an AI assistant for quality control automatically log issues in a shooter. And there was a lot talks about AI, including a standing-room only presentation by Google DeepMind researchers on AI-generated playable spaces.

But there was one key place where the AI ​​was lacking: the games themselves. Of the many developers I spoke with at the conference, almost all of them were against the idea of ​​using AI in their projects. “I feel like the human spirit is so beautiful” The melty way developer Gabriel Paquette told me. “Why not use it?”

It was a common refrain. Those I spoke to, most of whom were independent developers, disavowed AI, and many said they would never use the technology because it harmed the human element of development. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that a recent GDC survey found that 52% of respondents believe “generative AI is having a negative impact on the gaming industry,” up from 30% in 2025 and 18% in 2024. Some indie developers are already going out of their way to show that their games are “AI-free.” The largely negative reaction to Nvidia’s DLSS 5, which in publicly presented examples added AI-like faces to recognizable game characters, will almost certainly not inspire smaller developers to take more interest in the technology.

The general argument for generative AI in video games is that it could benefit both developers and players. In the most optimistic view of the technology, developers could use AI to facilitate tasks like debugging, quality assurance, and idea generation, while gamers could use AI to customize their games. Jack Buser, head of Google Cloud, who helped launch Google Stadia and worked on PlayStation Now and PlayStation Home at Sony, says generative AI is “the biggest transformation in the gaming industry that I have ever witnessed in my nearly 30-year career.”

But for many who make games, the conversation is different. For example, Adam Saltsman and Rebekah Saltsman, co-founders of the studio and “collaborative” publisher Finji, known for independent hits like Tunic And Chicory: a colorful storynote that their works are defined in part by “the fingerprints of a specific person or people.” In other words, an artisanal, human quality, which can include an element of surprise. “You can show people what it is, but you’re going to shatter all their expectations when they go play it,” Rebekah adds. This philosophy goes against the idea of ​​using generative AI in development. When I asked the Saltsmans if they would consider using generative AI for one of Finji’s games, it was a resounding no. “Absolutely not,” Adam said.

Many developers have told me that in their opinion, AI-made games don’t look like human-made games, at least for now. Public ‘not connecting’ to generative AI, says Abby Howard of Kill the princess developer Black Tabby Games, adding: “I think it’s generic, I think it makes it seem cheap.” Rebekah is more direct, saying that generative AI “looks like crap.” For Matthew Jackson, who works on the comedy game My arms are longer nowthere’s another practical problem: “AI really isn’t fun.” »

There are also legal issues that would make it difficult to sell a game made with generative AI. Setting aside questions such as the environmental impact of AI or concerns about the data the AI ​​is trained on, the Saltsmans say The edge they don’t think there is a legal framework to actually sell generative AI products. (This problem is also exacerbated by the fact that AI-generated artwork cannot be copyrighted.)

Finji is not the only publisher that does not accept games created with generative AI. Panic, the publisher of Untitled Goose Game and creator of Playdate, has “no interest in generative products created by AI,” said co-founder Cabel Sasser. The edge. BigMode, the publishing company created by Jason Gastrow, aka videogamedunkey, requires developers to check a box on their app that says “I confirm that my game is human-made and does not include any use of generative AI.” Even Hasbro, which now develops its own video games, does not use AI in its development pipelines, its CEO Chris Cocks recently said on Decoder.

But perhaps what came up most often in my conversations at GDC was that the use of generative AI removes the business of making video games. “The only way to get better at things is to intensely focus on an applied craft career,” says Tony Howard-Arias of Black Tabby Games. Adam explained how writing code can be “one of those things, like visual art, that influences your game design.” He points out that good programming is also beneficial for players: “Things that are really difficult to program are often very difficult for a player to understand as well. » Alex Schleifer, co-founder of Ball game Developer Human Computer says the process of creating games is just plain fun – and from that process, “you’re going to come up with better ideas too.”

Some worry that AI tools could take jobs away from humans, which would both reduce the pool of available positions in an industry already riddled with layoffs and give new developers fewer ways to get their foot in the door. But despite the promised cost and efficiency savings – and that’s assuming an AI tool can even compare to what a human can do – that, too, would pose problems. If you replace humans with AI, “where will you find new talent in the future?” » Tony said.

Right now, developers I’ve spoken with believe that creating games by hand creates a more human connection. “We tell human stories,” says Rebekah. When you start a game, there’s a person “you’ll never meet in your entire life playing something you’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours thinking about and working on.” Caring about their experience and that connection is “why we do this.”

Some indie developers I’ve spoken with are open to potential that generative AI in games could be useful for development or widely adopted eventually. The film and television industry, for example, is seeing the rise of companies creating bespoke AI models to aid production, which could be a possible future for AI tools for game development. Maybe at some point AI will be more accepted, Paquette says. But for now, he prefers to do “100 percent” artisanal work. “It’s something that’s close to my heart.”