// PC GAMER — GAMING
Peter Molyneux speaks candidly about AI: 'We, as the industry, are pretending we're not using AI, but the reality is, it's almost impossible to code now without using AI'
The father of the god game weighs in on AI use in the gaming industry
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Recently, I travelled to Guildford, England, to interview developer Peter Molyneux, the legendary game developer behind Populous, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and Fable, among others.
And, as part of that interview, which covered everything from Molyneux's brand-new god game, Masters of Albion, which has just got a huge game-changing update, through the moment he conceptualized Black & White's famous titan creatures, and onto the bombshell news that a Black & White remaster could be incoming, I also asked the father of the god game genre about AI use in the video game industry.
Molyneux is a gaming industry veteran, having been active in the gaming industry for over 40 years, so naturally his take on the rise of AI in game development was of interest. This is what he said when I asked if the gaming industry should embrace AI.
"Right. So, it's such a hot topic. Yes. It's such a hot potato. You've got to be very, very careful what you say, because, you know, I think the latest survey said that 12% of people would never buy any game under any circumstances if it had any AI at all.
"The first question we've got to ask is actually why does 12% of the people have this incredibly polarized view of AI? And the answer, I'm going to blame ChatGPT, I'm going to blame Gemini. They did this criminally ridiculous thing. They released those models that produced those repulsive images of 10-fingered hands and incredibly inappropriate materials which anybody could generate, and that locked into people's minds AI equals AI slop.
"So we've got consumers [who] are annoyed. We've got this technology which ain't going to stop. You know, if you think it's going to stop, it isn't. And then we've got Steam, which is almost everything in the industry at the moment. Steam, as a developer, you have to tick the box. Does this game contain AI? And if you tick it, you know instantly 12% [of gamers are] gone, and probably a further 18% would probably look at it and go, 'Oh, not for me.' So we are pretending. This is the truth, Rob. We as the industry are pretending we're not using AI, but the reality is, it's almost impossible to code now without using AI. Almost impossible. I mean, the efforts you have to go to extract AI from line completion stuff and from generative stuff is very challenging. So everyone, every title that's come out in the last year has been using that, but we're still able to not tick the AI box. AI is going to be, when it's sorted out and not producing AI slop, it is the most… This is very controversial. It is the most, the biggest advance in creativity for smaller studios, for medium studios and bigger studios. The biggest step forward in creativity."
At this point, I asked Molyneux how AI was such a big step forward for studios, as, at least from my point of view, that has often been something not clarified well over the past few years of AI discourse. What are the everyday game development examples of how AI is being such a transformative tool for game studios of all sizes? This is what Molyneux said.
"I'll talk in general terms. I won't talk about ourselves. Let's say you and I thought about a game, you know, let's set it in an old Carpathian mountain village. And it starts in a graveyard, and there's this young girl wandering around the graveyard looking lost. Now, traditionally, what you would do is you'd have someone… like there was a genius concept artist at Lionhead called Mike McArthur, and I'd sit down with Mike McArthur [and] I'd say, yeah, there's this girl, and she's wandering. How old is the girl? Mike might say. I don't know, maybe she's about 12. Okay, and is it an old church, a new church? You know, we'd have this conversation.