While it can’t be denied Glen Schofield (of Call of Duty and Dead Space fame) is a recognizable name in the Western games industry, we read about his scorching hot takes far too often, and his new comments on AI won’t go down well with most developers and members of the industry and games media, I’d say.
During an interview for VGC’s Andy Robinson following his talk at Gamescom Asia this week, he dug deep into his thoughts on how AAA development can successfully move forward, whether he’d change things of the tremendous disaster The Callisto Protocol turned out to be, and how AI could help developers who know how to use it. The full interview is worth a read, but we’ve collected the bits that stood out to us.
He believes the industry “needs to be healed” and that one of the ways to push forward is responsible use of AI, though he can’t quite define how that would look like: “First, let’s train everybody [with AI]. We know this new wave is coming. And people will say “well, the software isn’t ready yet”. If you’re telling me about it, it’s ready. I mean, ready to play with at least. You play with it. You learn it. You grow with it. Right?”
He also underlined how important it is to have someone who can actually captain a ship and ship games, something that developers at Revenge of the Savage Planet studio Raccoon Logic also expressed recently: “I bet every single one of those that you see that failed wildly, and I can name five, six – look at Bungie. How much did they spend? Billions? What did they turn up? 31st Union. What did they turn up? $300 million. Six and a half years. Nothing… You picked the wrong people. Right? You ask a couple of these people that I’m talking about, how many games have you shipped as director? “Well, none, but I was a creative director. Same thing.” Yeah, you probably had no reports.”
While it’s true plenty of big-budget projects aren’t even getting to the finish line, all this talk about high-profile failures and ridiculous budgets for games that could be done cheaper also remind us of Schofield’s last venture: The Callisto Protocol and Striking Distance Studios. That fits the description he’s giving of a misguided project, so, uh, yeah…
Anyway, he later returned to his comments on AI and how he’s personally toying with the technology: “Then make your own rules on how you want to deal with it. So, if I… I don’t do this too much. I do a lot of prompts. But if I’m going to mash pictures together to try and make something, I’m going to use my paintings and drawings. And that’s what I do. And then I’m going to just make, you know, big prompts. So, you know, use your own rules. If you have rules like that, that make you feel comfortable, then do that. The other thing is, use it. Let the lawyers figure it out. It’s going to be figured out someday. Because the work that I will show you, thousands and thousands and thousands of files, you will not find that online anymore.” Again, this sounds like he’s just throwing ideas against the wall without a clear pitch for both developers and executives. Then again, all this chaotic reliance on what many are calling the Plagiarism Machine also explains many of The Callisto Protocol’s issues.
During the rest of the interview, Schofield went on to admit AI is also quite limited in what it can reliably do and that people don’t care about a lot of what it’s producing, which contradicts many of his words on the subject. He even had time to criticize Call of Duty after he departed Activision, a franchise which last year put out its biggest launch ever. Meanwhile, he’s left Striking Distance Studios in shambles earlier this year.
Regardless, he’s not letting go of Dead Space, and more specifically Dead Space 4, yet. “I have quite a few ideas that I’m ready to go with and one of them is Dead Space 4… The fact that EA just got bought, I think there’s an opportunity. I’m already making calls,” he told IGN at the same event.
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