If you need any evidence that the push for AI tools is akin to drinking some brainworm-filled Kool-aid, you need look no further than remarks made by Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson, who used his time in a business conference to espouse the benefits of AI tools and tech, presumably while as glassy-eyed as a stoner in a planetarium laser show. Or as PC Gamer so eloquently put it, he “says the usual stuff before the bong rip hits and he starts blabbing about a future where 3 billion people are creating EA’s games with it.”
Wilson confirmed that the prospect of AI in game development was “incredibly exciting” and something that his company is “embracing deeply,” with a focus on “efficiency, expansion, and transformation.” According to Wilson, generative AI will cut down long dev cycles for new games, help to create more revenue by way of “personalized content,” and open the potential for “3 billion players around the world creating personal content and expanding and enhancing the universes that we create.” None of this is backed up by any real hard evidence, naturally, but it’s very obvious that he believes it’s all real.
It wasn’t just AI-powered peyote dream rambling from Wilson, as he also talked up expansion of the battle royale shooter Apex Legends: Here Wilson talked up Season 20 angling towards being new user friendly – and of course “drive more acquisition and more engagement.”
Wilson also offered vague hints at plans to add more play modes and aspirations to bring Apex to other global markets like Europe and Asia. “[H]ow do we think about more modalities of play, how do you expand beyond the traditional battle royale universe? And we’ll start to see that in the coming year,” he promised.
