Blizzard is a game studio that has always been renowned for its fantastic art direction. From World of Warcraft to Diablo IV, the historic game studio always delivers on the art front. As part of this, Overwatch game director Aaron Keller has pushed to keep AI-generated content out of Blizzard games for the time being.
Following the recent rebranding of Overwatch, Keller explained that the anti-AI stance of Blizzard is not a “forever policy” for the studio. However, for now, the Overwatch team will not be pushing AI content to players.
“We don’t want to put AI-generated content out in front of players,” Keller said in an interview with GameSpot. “That’s just not something that we’re comfortable doing. We want this to feel like a handcrafted universe, and it is a handcrafted universe.”
Right now, the push against AI generated content is large. Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios recently announced a ban against AI during development of Divinity due to backlash, and Warhammer company Games Workshop has also banned the technology to protect human workers.
Keller explained that the current anti-AI stance is not a “forever policy”, later explaining to Eurogamer that Blizzard will not use AI to “create characters or gameplay”, at least in Overwatch for the time being.
This means that Blizzard is open to creating content with AI depending on the reception from fans. While the common sentiment right now is that AI is poor quality and ugly—Activision’s Black Ops 7 showed this in full—and that means the technology will not be used in its current state.
While AI may be able to churn out quick variations of content, Keller explained that “it is more important to get the details right, and to make sure that gameplay is as impeccable as it can be and withholds to the Blizzard standard, rather than trying to make something as quick as we possibly can”.
Right now, fans are all prepped for the Overwatch Season 1 update as its release time nears. As the first stab at a brand-new overhaul for the multiplayer hero shooter, the upcoming Season is the first hurdle for the next era of Blizzard’s long-running series.
