AI-generation tools and tech continue to be the hottest thing in the world as seemingly every company tries to shove them into more apps and products, even if the results are bad. The CEO of Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnick, says that while genAI will have a place in game development, he finds it “laughable” that anyone thinks it can create something like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, set to launch in November.
On the latest episode of The Game Business, Zelnick was asked if AI-generation tools, like Google’s Genie, could level the playing field and make it easier for anyone to make a big budget GTA-like experience. His answer was blunt: “Not even the littlest bit.”
“There’s already plenty of technology out there that allow people to create video games, and as a result, thousands of video games are created every year,” said Zelnick. “And yet the hits all cluster among the large entertainment companies, almost entirely, and now and then, an indie, which is generally speaking well-funded and pretty robust in and of itself.”
“The notion that somehow new tools would allow an individual to push a button and generate a hit and bring it to many millions of consumers around the world, it’s a laughable notion. It’s just never been the case with entertainment. Right now [in music] there are programs that allow you to put out a prompt and get a professionally recorded song spit back out at you. It sounds like a song, but I defy you to listen to it more than once. It’s great to send as a greeting card to your partner on their birthday, but that’s about it.”
Creating a big, hit game requires ‘human creativity’
In January, a bunch of video game stocks took a hit when Google revealed Genie, an AI-powered tool that allowed people to create very basic, video game-like interactive 3D experiences. While nearly every video game developer and journalist around was quick to point out that Genie wasn’t producing anything even close to a video game, and certainly nothing like a big GTA-style experience, it didn’t matter. Investors panicked and prices dropped, something that caught Zelnick off-guard.
“I was kind of stunned by the market’s reaction,” said Zelnick when asked about the situation. “Because its reaction was somehow seeing it as a threat to what we do, when it’s quite obvious that creation tools are beneficial for our industry.”
“I think the bear case for big entertainment companies is somehow that AI tools will mean everyone can create hits, but that doesn’t stand to reason. These tools may help you create assets, but that won’t help you create hits. There are loads of assets out there now. It doesn’t matter if you push a button to create an asset, or it takes you six weeks, at the end of the day, you have an asset. And thousands of mobile games are launched every year, and there are only a handful of hits.”
“Equally, you can create assets that might look like a big release, that might look like NBA 2K or EA Sports FC,” added Zelnick. “But creating a hit of that magnitude is a completely different animal and does require human engagement and creativity.”