Square Enixrecently announced that its new online 4v4 third-person shooterFoamstarswill be launching on February 2 and will be available on Playstation Plus from day one. It’s not really my thing, and I’m fully expecting it to have a short shelf life considering the recent pattern of live-service games flopping monumentally, but I felt pretty neutrally about it regardless – lots of games come and go, trying to hop onto disappearing trends and failing.
However, the game has recently come under fire after producer Kosuke Okatani admitted that generative artificial intelligence was used to make some of the game’s art. This comes after Square Enix said that the companywill be “aggressive” in using AI over the coming year, so it’s not a surprise, but I still hate that it’s happening. Okatani insists that “all of the core elements” in the game are made by hand, and that Midjourney was used to generate art for a small number of in-game icons. Later, Square Enix made a statement that AI was only used to create in-game album covers for the game’s original soundtrack. In total, Square Enix estimates this is 0.01 percent of content or less.
It’s pretty obvious, given the context and its statement, that Square Enix is testing the waters with Foamstars. It fully intends to lean into the use of AI in the future, and a lack of backlash now will indicate that audiences are willing to overlook the ethical issues as long as they get to play a new game, especially if it’s for free. The loud backlash from artists and games media does not matter to the company because it’s more interested in increasing productivity, even if that increased efficiency leads to a worse product.
Let’s consider the direct, immediate repercussions of Square Enix using artificial intelligence to generate art. Firstly, many (maybe even most) AI-generated images have visible flaws in them, quickly identifying them as being generated instead of hand-made. Players in the know will be able to tell. This may not be an issue for long, as generators get better at imitating artists’ work, but it is for the time being, still a problem.
Secondly, that’s work that could have gone to a junior artist who needed the job or the experience, and would have done a better job too. It would have cost a little more, but it would look good, be specific to the game, and wouldn’t scrape from other artists’ work without their permission. It’s important to be giving jobs to early career artists to develop their talent and have them eventually have the experience to lead projects – without them, there will be fewer senior artists in a decade or two. Thirdly, it helps to normalise the use of generative AI in the games industry. This is a net negative for everyone in the long run, down for the purpose of short term gain.
Now let’s say that, hypothetically, the use of generative AI does become more prevalent in the games industry. The artistic potential of games will be limited not by our imagination and skill, but by how well we can manipulate an AI tool into creating what we actually want to see from an unethically scraped database of existing art. We will see less innovative, inventive art – how can you create something new when your tool only knows how to adapt what already exists?
Corporations will believe that this is good enough – or rather, that they will not face repercussions – and will use this as an excuse to fire artists en masse, ensuring that development costs go down. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the costs of games will go down, or that the extra profit will go to the employees that remain. What happens when profits increase is that stock values go up and CEOs get fatter bonuses. That is, historically, and for the foreseeable future, how game development works.
Yes, it sucks, and the only way to slow its approach is for us to make a racket now. Square Enix is smart in launching its game for free at first, because it’ll pull in players unfamiliar with or who feel neutral about their unethical practices. Those of us who know and care have to say so now, so the company and others dabbling in generative AI know that there are people who care. I only fear that it’s not going to be anywhere near enough to stop the tide.
