It is time to face facts: AI is making plenty of our games these days and in the days to come. In some cases, generative AI is making assets (often placeholders) to populate game worlds. In others, it is mimicking the work of actors. But AI is also coming for the programming sector of video games, and I don’t know that we’re prepared for just how bad “vibe-coded” games can possibly be.
In a lengthy feature in Edge Magazine surrounding the rise of AI tools in games development, Clint Hocking, who besides serving as director on Far Cry 2 also led the team on the upcoming (and potentially witch-y) Assassin’s Creed Hexe, shares that he too thinks that it is inevitable that AI will be implemented into games production. He also admits to having used AI to help him learn how to code in the past.
Speaking on the experience, Hocking says, “It was brutal. ChatGPT kind of sucked. It didn’t really know how to code. Everything was broken.”
He continues, “It was mostly me trying to debug code without knowing how to code myself.” After about half a year of untangling ChatGPT’s messes, apparently often into the late of night, Hocking says he finally learned how to code in Javascript and no longer uses AI tools to code.
Though Hocking did ultimately learn the skill he set out to, he “acknowledges in some ways he learned to code despite ChatGPT,” which he likens to a tutor more than an alternative, and a kind of unruly one.
Hocking, who was recently working on the future of the Assassin’s Creed franchise via both Hexe and the Assassin’s Creed Infinity platform, also shares some insights into Ubisoft’s own work with AI, stating that no one at the company lost their jobs to AI as far as he could tell, and that the developer was at one point looking into generative technologies that might’ve powered his last major title at Ubisoft, Watch Dogs: Legion.
Former Square Enix exec says backlash over Final Fantasy 6 AI mock-up shared by the JRPG series’ creator “shows how far down the rabbit hole the madness goes”
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