‘Zero Escape’ Series Creator Says Human Video Game Devs Hold Significant Advantage Over AI Because The Technology Can’t Create, Only Imitate: “It May Sound Cliché, But It All Comes Down To Originality”
As the debates continue to swell around the topic of artificial intelligence-based generators and their application in creative endeavors, Zero Escape series creator Kotaro Uchikoshi has opined that while such technology does have a future in the realm of video game development, it will never serve as a proper replacement for the “originality” of human minds.
One of the co-founders of the recently established Too Kyo Games studio and the esteemed director-slash-writer of such titles as AI: The Somnium Files, World’s End Club, the Zero Escape games – Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors [despite the commas, this is one title], Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward, and Zero Time Dilemma – and the upcoming The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-, Uchikoshi offered his thoughts on the highly-contentious subject while speaking to a group of Chinese game developers on November 15th, 2024.
Delivering an aptly-named special lecture regarding The Future of Game Design ahead of that year’s entry of China’s WePlay video game fan expo, Uchikoshi took to the stage and presented attendees with a wholly original, albeit very, very simple visual novel/adventure game in which all of its assets, from its character art, to its story scenarios, to its gameplay mechanics, were created within roughly an hour via ChatGPT.
Pointing to the AI-created game as an example of how the technology could break down various barriers to game creation, the esteemed developer asserted, as recapped by Japanese video game news outlet Famitsu and subsequently machine translated by DeepL, “We are now in an age where, as long as you can use AI effectively, you can make games easily by yourself.”
“Even amateurs with almost no prior knowledge can make games easily,” he said. “Up until now, game production has been a group effort, but from now on, it may become the norm for people to make games alone, just like novels and manga. As a result, we will probably see a large number of short indie games made by individuals. There are already many such games, but I think that in the future this momentum will accelerate and the world will be flooded with a huge number of indie games.”
However, despite the ‘ease of access’ afforded by AI technologies, Uchikoshi does not believe that large-language models, image generators, or any likewise tools will ever serve as a full replacement for human creativity, but instead facilitate the creation of a sort of ‘parallel economy’ to the Triple-AAA film industry, as is currently seen in the dichotomy current relationship between YouTube and major motion picture studios.
“While individually produced content is becoming popular, it is my personal opinion that big games made by a group of people will not disappear in the same way that movies will not disappear,” he argued.
As to his reasoning behind this sentiment, Uchikoshi explained, “In particular, it is still difficult for AI to fully produce games […] such as RPGs and adventures with strong narrative (storytelling) genres.”
To this end, one area in particular where humans notably held an advantage was in writing, as the near-limitless contexts that could be applied to any given sentence, and the resulting connotation changes, prove “difficult for AI”.
“I personally think that it will be difficult for AI to generate ‘excellent’ full-length sentences for at least the next five years,” he opined. “I think that the ‘frame problem’ is related to the reason why AI has trouble generating excellent sentences.”
(A colloquial term for this phenomena, ‘frame problem’ refers to the tendency for AI to solely look at one frame of a story and ‘understand’ it simply according to its surface level presentation. For example, if presented with an image of, say, Alice and Clover from Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward giving each other a hug, an AI may describe it as ‘two women fighting’, ‘two women wrestling’, ‘a woman giving another woman the Heimlich Maneuver’, and so on and so forth.)
Building upon his argument, Uchikoshi then explained that despite the technology’s potential, this ‘frame problem’ presents a major roadblock to AI’s creation of narrative-heavy games, such as those found in his own Zero Escape titles or in fellow Too Kyo Games’ studio founder Kazutaka Kodaka’s Danganronpa series.
“I think it is difficult now because there is a large amount of ‘compressed information’ [i.e. contextual and historical information] in each of these works that is not explicitly stated in the main story,” he told his audience. “However, if it is within 10 years, it may be possible to create a sequel surprisingly easily.”
On this note of uncertainty, Uchikoshi then admitted, “To be honest, I don’t know what will happen 10 years from now. Just like a goldfish doesn’t know what it is like to be human.”
“I wonder what will happen when all creations are created by AI,” he added. “I think to myself, ‘This was created by a human being, not an AI. That’s why it’s valuable!’ I feel that the future is waiting for us.”
“How can we prove that it was created by a human being?” Uchikoshi then posited to the crowd. “I think it is absolutely impossible, unless you paint in front of an audience, like a live painter.”
“For example,” he continued, “what if I said, ‘Everything I am talking about now was written by an AI.’ Of course, this is something I have thought up myself, but even that cannot be proven. What if a few years from now, a mystery novel with a superb trick that no one has ever seen before is born, or a great historical invention is made, or a difficult mathematical problem is proved, or I create a game that is more interesting than ever before? Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re probably thinking, ‘Maybe they used AI.’ Don’t you think?”
“I think that would lower the level of excitement to one level,” he lamented. “Somewhere in the back of everyone’s mind, the suspicion that ‘maybe they used AI’ naturally arises. I think this is a psychological effect that I have been trying to explain in my book [The Doubt]. I named this psychological effect ‘Gishin Aiki’.”
Capping off his ‘slang unveiling’, Uchikoshi humorously asserted, “I encourage everyone to use this word in various places. I am secretly aiming for the ‘buzzword of the year’ award in a few years’ time. Oh, I came up with this word myself, not AI. Of course, I can’t prove it.”
Finally, after coming to terms with the less-than-savory aspects of the video game industry’s potential future relationship with AI, the director ultimately closed out his time by reassuring his fellow devs that regardless of the technology’s improvements, humans will always have one specific advantage: “It all comes down to originality.”
“In order to beat AI, it is also important to have as much information as possible that is not available on the Internet,” he detailed. “AI cannot obtain information that is not available on the Internet, no matter how hard you try. This can also be called ‘an experience that only you can have’. There is no need to exaggerate, but the memories and sensations of having a drink with friends at a pub, seeing your child sleeping after returning home, or walking hand in hand with your lover are your own unique assets that cannot be imitated by an AI.”
“Please cherish these unique experiences in the future,” he concluded.
At current, Uchikoshi’s next game, The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-, as written and directed by himself and the aforementioned Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka, is currently set to draw its blade on April 24th.
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