Level-5 president Akihiro Hino believes that 80-90% of video game coding is being done by artificial intelligence. The news comes from a recent interview with Japanese gaming site Famitsu. He went on to say that on order for developers to be the best in the business they will need to be “fully proficient at using AI tools, and to use their aesthetic sense to further refine their work.” Here’s what Mr. Hino had to say:
“Through this program, I hope many of you will get to soar to the global stage as game developers. While I am also actively working as a developer, I’ve recently found myself thinking that AI technology is encroaching upon the creative world.
Currently, around 80~90% of codes are written by AI and then fixed up and finalized by human programmers. In other words, it means that right now, around 80~90% of games are made by AI.
And it does not just stop at programming – AI technology is encroaching on art, music and even game design on a large scale. Not to mention that it’s already becoming common sense in the creative world to rely on the power of AI to boost work efficiency.
That is why I believe that “aesthetic sense” is a necessary skill for game developers.”
If done correctly AI can be good, unfortunately people assume all of AI is bad just because bad actors use it for wrong and nefarious reasons. I’m not going to jump on the hate on AI bandwagon but I will see how this plays out before making a judgment.
I doubt you’ve actually engaged with critiques of A.I.
It’s just a repeat of the past with people disliking AI. I’m pretty sure painters thought they were screwed when instant pictures (cameras) became a thing. Same with radio guys when televisions popped up. But these things have coexisted just fine. AI will find it’s place sooner or later as a booster or aiding tool, not a replacement.
Ah. I’ll be avoiding games from this publisher, then.
They’re so washed. Another company should buy their IPs.
As a developer not of games but applications. Writing all code from scratch is a waste of time. AI can provide the structure/base and you can adjust and refine way faster and better.
Honestly, I am a little ambivalent about Level 5 relying AI: but I’ll wait to see the finished Product before I pass judgement
Y’know, if this was anyone else, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and say the term “AI” is so vague it’s essentially meaningless, and that they probably weren’t refering to the much-despised “Generative AI”, but… Level-5 dialog is so boring that I think this checks out lol
Yeah, no, this is completely untrue, bordering on libelous.
That proportion may be AI assisted, as in you have tools generating your unit tests and potentially making completion suggestions, but Copilot/Cursor/etc are not yet anywhere near capable of producing usable code for games, despite what media hype might have you thinking.
Believe me, there have been attempts, but there are far too many moving parts in a AAA game for an LLM to handle (yet).
We tried, and it completely ignores context (for example if you implement function A in one file and function B in another, the LLM for function B will be unaware function A exists) and it completely falls apart at about 3-400SLOC per file (many of ours are 2000+).