Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Nintendo franchises Super Smash Bros and Kirby, believes that the rise in AI game development will lead to an era of “unplayable” games.
Sakurai, who is one of the most iconic game developers of all time, has commented on the rise in the number of game releases every year in an interview with Japanese outlet Denfaminicogamer. Part of a much larger interview, the game designer and programmer explained that AI will result in an even larger wave of game releases, but many of them will be of low-quality.
It’s undeniable that more games are releasing faster than ever, but AI-led projects are becoming more prevalent. This year alone, Steam Next Fest demos were increased in number from 4,000 this July to over 8,000 this October with a barrage of AI slop games hitting the online marketplace.
In the interview, Sakurai claimed that “so many games are described as x-like, or games that resemble another one. In other words, the thing everyone else already wants. But originality meas you have to create something that isn’t already what people are after, and be deliberate with that.” Unfortunately, with the rise of AI, which is built entirely on pre-existing ideas, the Smash Bros icon believes it will only get worse.
“Most of them will end up unplayable, and there will be so many that it’ll be impossible to keep track or even understand them. With those AI games, the vast majority will be direct copies of games we’ve seen before. There’s already many of them, even now,” Sakurai said.
The Smash Bros creator used the game Librarian: Tidy Up The Arcane Library as an example, adding that the game’s success meant a tonne of clones immediately popped up on every platform. “A lot of imitators soon followed. Games like Supermarket Chaos or Needle in a Haystack Simulator have multiplied like crazy,” he said.
Sakurai explained that AI can only copy, but strong original ideas need a creative person with passion behind them. “Even if AI can create all these sorts of works, such as by analyizing the atmosphere of games from Fumito Ueda, like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and use that to create something similar, which could happen, AI would not be able to create whatever Ueda himself will create in the future.”
In a simpler phrase, they explained that gaming needs originality to survive, although they note that “originality doesn’t actually have a strong impact on sales”. Nevertheless, original ideas are what keeps an art form from atrophy. “An industry that loses that sort of originality will only die slowly,” they said.
The Smash Bros developer’s comments are not too dissimilar to those from Konami president Hideki Hayakawa who recently argued that AI won’t bring “significant change” to the games industry.
In their recent statement, Hayakawa explained that they “believe that the most important factors in producing entertaining and innovative video games are people and creators”, not rapid output by AI. Super Smash Bros and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai believes that the rise in AI game development will lead to an era of “unplayable” games.
