Each year, GDC publishes a survey of game industry workers ahead of the week-long conference. The survey can serve as a bellwether to set the tone for the conference. On one hot-topic issue through the tech world, the picture couldn’t have been made much clearer. Only 7 percent of respondents described generative AI as “good for the industry,” leaving many of the executives and investors struggling with the issue during their panels.
As reported by PC Gamer, Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Moritz Baier-Lentz said he’s “shocked and sad” about the negativity surrounding AI. Lightspeed holds stakes in multiple AI firms, most major among them is Anthropic. Baier-Lentz hopes that AI skeptics will turn that frown upside down, saying that gaming is often more embracing of “marvelous new technology.”
In the same report, Baier-Lentz suggests that one reason for the pessimism is the same reason for c-suite enthusiasm: layoffs. The investor suggests that staff reductions come naturally, especially after all the COVID-era investments in digital entertainment, but many corporations can hardly hide their excitement over automated labor.
Layoffs are merely one of the major wedges between AI and gaming. Even looking past economic instability, environmental damage and future appearances at the Hague, the resources being set aside for data farms is causing a disruptive RAM crunch, raising hardware prices and turning PC gaming back into a rich person’s hobby.
Elsewhere at GDC, Xbox also had their major appointment to discuss the upcoming console, currently titled Project Helix. Despite Microsoft being heavily invested in AI elsewhere, the controversial tech was rather shy during their GDC presentations. Xbox waited until the tail end of the event to announce that their AI client, Copilot, will be coming to Xbox consoles later this year.