Labor or Judgement

The game industry is going through a really rough patch right now with a lot of people losing their jobs. While many people worry that AI is the reason for these layoffs, it’s not the only cause. During the pandemic, gaming got huge, and studios hired way too many people very quickly. Now that things have calmed down, those same companies are cutting back to fix that over-hiring, which makes it hard to tell if jobs are being lost to robots or just bad timing.

There is also a lot of confusion about how AI will actually be used. Some studios are starting to use AI tools to handle boring tasks and save money, while other studios promise they will never use it because they value human work. I stayed away from this discussion for a while, but I recently saw a video from a creator who teaches Blender that really changed my perspective. They showed how new AI tools can be controlled by artists to speed up making things like 3D models and concept art, which lets a single person do in a day what used to take months.

These tools are very interesting because they focus on automating "labor," like the tedious technical work, so artists can spend more time on "judgment" and creative design. While it’s scary to think that some skills we spent years learning might be automated, it also means we can get to the heart of designing faster. However, it does raise a big concern: if these tools make the process so fast that you don't need a giant team anymore, it's easy to see why the industry is feeling so much pressure.