It's not like someone is going to prompt up "gimme GTA7 based on what you know about all the past GTAs" and similar crazy high level instructions in a few weeks and go, "yep, that's our standard". There are almost certainly thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of little decisions that go into producing something so massive in scope. Anything that could significantly speed up prototyping, world building, character modeling, NPC behavior, etc, should be seen as a massive boon, and probably the shot in the arm the video game industry needs.
And I have the same critique of premium streaming series. Vince Gilligan likes to extoll the benefits of not using AI at all in producing his work, but then he gives us a potentially 3 year span between seasons of his latest entry... where not a lot happened, because it's almost entirely chewing character dev stuff. The idea that a 5-6 season show might take longer to complete than seeing a child born and off to college is absolute bonkers.
well....
What I think is likely is that the cost of many other types of games in the future will be reduced because of AI. It's an open question how useful AI will be but I think its clear that it can make a lot of tasks in game making more efficient.
Games are already too big and too bloated. I'm not excited for anything along these lines. The best outcome would have been if ballooning game budgets required people to dial back projects and spending so that games were smaller in scope.
If this plays out, we'll see the opposite. LLMs are used to offset the costs of games while they become bigger and dumber than they already are.
Cyberpunk has changed my perspective on this. Started last August, now 84 hours in, and I plan to do a completion-ist run of at least 120+ hours. Around hour 50 I could have completed the main storyline which snuck up on me quicker than expected, so I'm trickling in the Phantom Liberty quest-line while chewing thru gigs and side jobs, many of which add a ton of narrative impact.
I remember way back when Sopranos ended and I was fairly sullen for a few months after... similar response to The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, BCS, Succession. Don't watch TV as a rule, but I immediately stopped what I was doing when a new ep of those dropped. Felt almost like I lost a loved one when each ended.
Pretty sure I'll have the same response to this game, I'm dreading leaving this universe. After that I'll get to Baldur's Gate 3 and probably have the same experience. Then after taking a year to finish that off, will likely move on to RDR2. Maybe by then I'll be able to play GTA6 on my Mac.
Basically, my thinking is that - a premium series is going to be roughly 50-60 hours, so if the story and immersion is there... which it certainly is w/ a game like Cyberpunk, the base game should roughly give a similar playtime. The fact that there is so much bonus content that is lovingly crafted gives players the option to stay longer if they so desire is fantastic given these things are now taking 10+ years to produce.
But, I do agree a lot of things could be sped up. Animation and photogrammetry based modelling (widely used for character's clothing) come to mind. And, it should be used in cases such as these, where it is just a tool. Nothing more, nothing less.
They will almost certainly do well with GTA 6, but maybe a game that can compete with GTA 6 will be coming out a lot sooner now.
We are a year away from GTA 6, presuming the HQ boiler explosion causes a delay.
If anything a lot of this is on gamers for continuing to buy shitty games that they complained even at the time were shitty games.
If they'd stopped buying games the lousy companies would have folded, their investors would have eaten a loss, and the game companies that remained would care more about the investors who'd shown more of a long-term focus.
Funny you use "will be" here, because this is already happening. Have you looked at daily Steam releases lately? It's 90% AI-generated hentai games, asset flips, or AI-generated hentai asset flip games.
Right now the limitations of genAI tech are limiting the types of games that can be pumped out, but Genie is just going to be more of the same; instead of a clearly AI-generated, painfully uninteresting hentai game, you're going to get clearly AI-generated, painfully uninteresting Call of Duty clones. You can ask the developers of Concord, Highguard, Marathon, etc. how successful bland shooters are these days.
I'm not saying that video games should be confined to today's paradigms, I'm just happily curious to see what will happen with it.
The self-consistency just doesn't seem to be there to make a coherent playable game (easily, broadly - many types of games, styles, etc).
Music gen AI is pretty good, and with a reasonable amount of finagling, you might be able to pull that off generally.
From a coding perspective, you can probably make simple games with minimal skills already, and I can definitely see it being possible to create pretty sophisticated games with minimal bugginess with minimal coding skills in the near future.
Is that combination good enough? I doubt it outside of niche games for quite some time
Is it? I have quite a few friends that are relatively successful music producers/djs, and they don't seem impressed. A lot of music gen AI fails to match prompts at all. Maybe I am using the wrong tools.
It also seems quite difficult to iterate on a sound.
DLC was the worst thing to happen to gaming, gamers hated DLC, they still hate DLC, but...
They spend a few billion a year on it, and each year spend more and more. Companies follow money more than they follow social media rants.
Games shouldn't cost $70!! [consistently pays $70 for games]
Game sequels suck, they're just rehashes of previous games!! [buys the sequels anyway]
Games shouldn't have AI content! [buys games with AI content]
Microtransactions are terrible! [pays for microtransactions]
Loot boxes are ruining games! [plays games with loot boxes]
Anti-cheats are rootkits. They are unacceptable! [plays games with anti-cheat]
That's it, they crossed the line. I'll never buy that game! [buys the game]
They will continue to buy three reskinned Ubisoft sandboxes a year and two seasonal sports releases.
The industry is already forfeit.
Arc Raiders uses AI in various ways yet it's one of the biggest success of 2025.
Even T2's CEO doesn't dare tell Rockstar what to do (said it himself), they deliver everytime and make him all the money he wants.
I don’t personally know anyone who role-plays, so candid question: have LLMs changed the way people play tabletop RPGs?
There are numerous guides for integrating an LLM as a sort of automatic game master when _also_ following solo play variants of major TTRPGs. You can find these on reddit and drivethrurpg.
AI and gaming is an important topic, but this story is an oversimplification of what has been hitting the games industry for > 2 years .
I would say an impossibly long way.
Unless the idea is to have a new kind of media, distinct from classic games.
I don't trade individual stocks but it does seem like an easy case of "buy the dip" here.