Compulsion Games Insists Microsoft Isn’t Forcing Generative AI on Xbox Studios

Compulsion Games, the Xbox first-party studio behind We Happy Few and this year’s South of Midnight, insists that Microsoft isn’t forcing generative AI on its studios. Despite its recent push for AI gaming – resulting in a pretty ugly generative AI demo of Quake 2 being mocked online – it seems like Microsoft hasn’t mandated the use of generative AI across its gaming divisions.

According to Compulsion CEO Guillaume Provost, Microsoft isn’t forcing generative AI to be used at any of its Xbox studios. Compulsion Games is unlikely to use AI at all in the future. “I can absolutely guarantee [that generative AI usage] is not mandated,” said Provost to 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 had more to say on the use of generative AI in gaming, adding that it’s ultimately up to developers whether they want to use it or not:

“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. 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.”

The online discourse surrounding generative AI and its usage in game development has been heated, with many standing against its use. However, other Microsoft-owned companies like Activision has openly admitted to using generative AI for some of Call of Duty‘s in-game assets – a new Steam rule requires publishers to disclose whether its games have used AI or not.

Source: Game Developer