Earlier this week, outlet Eurogamer put out a controversial review on ARC Raiders - one where the game's use of AI voice generation massively affected the site's overall score, which ended up being a 2/5. As you can imagine, this has kicked up a bit of a frenzy online - so much so that Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has waded in on matters via social media.
Yes, on the totally level-headed platform that is Twitter, Sweeney called the Eurogamer review "political" - before going on to reply to a bunch of responses relating to AI, Eurogamer's criticism of it, and the technology's use in the gaming industry at large.
We're just going to throw this series of replies down below:
To shrink all of this down into something a little more manageable, Sweeney is basically arguing that AI use improves human productivity in some areas, and that the review's take on things is a particularly pessimistic one. As you can see above, the Epic CEO also reckons that voice acting work won't be diminished by AI; rather those actors can work with the tech to create "infinite dialog" that's "tuned by humans".
Whatever your stance on this is, it's clear that AI use in games remains very controversial - and docking points off a review score for its presence is also going to cause its own controversy. That's all put further under the microscope on social media of course, where the Epic CEO fights the case of AI helping productivity in game creation.
In terms of a response from the folks behind ARC Raiders itself, parent company Nexon has come out in a new interview and said that "it’s important to assume every game company is now using AI". You can read more about that in the interview link down below, and we'll grab the popcorn as this chatter develops online.