As AI use in game development becomes more prominent, Infinity Nikki and Love and Deepspace developer Infold Games has pushed back against the technology.
Infinity Nikki, an open-world dress up game, and Love and Deepspace, a mobile gaacha dating game, are both filled with high-quality assets lovingly designed by human artists. Both titles have been major hits with players grinding, and paying, to unlock extremely detailed outfits and other items for their characters.
Speaking to IGN Japan, Infold Games CTO Ji Zhang said explained that “Ai is definitely rapidly developing”, adding that the technology “is definitely doing to shape the game industry”. However, Infold is not in the business of pushing AI art into its games, at least for the foreseeable future.
“I think now AI is really in an interesting period where everybody thinks of it differently,” Zhang said. “However, I believe it cannot overcome the fact that it cannot add any soul to content creation. So it cannot replace the jobs of core creators.”
Zhang explained that the developers at Infold “put a lot of efforts into graphics”, explaining that “one goal is trying to ensure the clothing is very realistic”, including “physics-based materials and clothing simulation”. While Infold’s games aren’t visually perfect, they do offer much higher fidelity of clothing that most games on the market.
“On Love and Deepspace, we really focus on facial expressions and the fine-tuning of the characters,” he continued. “Infinity Nikki, meanwhile, is focused on an open world, which was a new challenge for us.”
The use of generative AI has been a major topic of controversy between game developers and game consumers. Last year, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios was lambasted for its use of generative AI during early development on Divinity with the studio announcing it will no longer use the technology for the remainder of development.
Outside of just video games, Warhammer company Games Workshop has announced a blanket ban on the use of GenAI to “respect out human creators”. This ban was backed by former Warhammer designer Jervis Johnson who dubbed the technology the “asbestos of the internet”, adding that “we’re going to be spending decades getting this stuff out again after we’ve used it a lot and found out its actually a bit rubbish.”
While Generative AI is able to cut costs, players by and large do not want the technology in their games, although exceptions have been for massively successful games like Arc Raiders. For games like Infinity Nikki or Love and Deepspace, titles where players invest in handmade outfits, the use of generative AI simply doesn’t make sense.
