Compulsion Games insists Microsoft isn’t forcing generative AI on Xbox developers
South of Midnight’s developer says it can “absolutely guarantee” AI is not mandated at Xbox
Xbox maker Microsoft hasn’t mandated the use of generative AI across its game studios, despite its recent push for AI use in gaming.
That’s according to South of Midnight creator Compulsion Games, which was asked about generative AI use following Microsoft’s recent announcement of its own generative AI model in gaming, which it’s used to power, among other things, a demo version of Quake 2.
According to Compulsion CEO Guillaume Provost, Microsoft isn’t demanding its first-party teams to use the technology and, according to him, the studio is unlikely to use AI much at all in the future.
“I can absolutely guarantee [that generative AI usage] is not mandated,” Provost told Game Developer. “You’re talking to the studio that literally builds shit by hand. In the DNA of the studio that we have, we’re very craft-oriented. We’re very art-oriented.”
Provost added that he believes it’s up to individual developers to decide where generative AI can fit in their production process.
“I think there are a lot of cases where it could be helpful in pre-production for us to do things like spitting out storyboards for us to see whether it makes sense or not— not really stuff that we use in production, but stuff that we want to accelerate,” he said.
“Just based on the types of games that we make, I would say we are probably not the studio that will use AI the most, and I don’t think that bothers anything at Microsoft. The DNA of our studio is to handcraft things and to make them feel handcrafted, and that involves a lot of manual labor.”
Microsoft’s recent Quake 2 tech demo is powered by its new video game generative AI model, Muse, which it says can generate “game visuals, controller actions, or both.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said it’s planning to have a catalog of video games utilize its new generative AI mode. Commenting on Muse in February, Nadella compared it to the ‘wow’ moment he said he felt when he first saw other generative AI models such as ChatGPT.
Like in most creative industries, Generative AI has become a hot topic in video games, with many voicing concerns about generative AI leading to job losses and widespread plagiarism.
