Earlier this year, I dove deep into the Early Access hit Witchfire and came away so impressed that I had to rethink my entire approach to Early Access games. Not only is it a unique shooter from studio The Astronauts, which also developed 2014’s The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, but it’s an admirable attempt at a team responding to its community feedback as it heads towards a 1.0 release sometime this year.
Wanting to learn more about this team and the development of Witchfire, I interviewed various members of the studio, and I highly encourage you to read my full feature – Hunting A Witch – for all kinds of behind-the-scenes tidbits and more. But, during that interview, I also spoke to the team about generative AI and its place in game development. That’s how I learned that there is no generative AI in Witchfire (though nobody suspected that anyway), and more importantly, especially as the team works towards the 1.0 launch, it will never have generative AI involved in its development. That’s something studio co-founder and Witchfire creative director Adrian Chmielarz, lead artist and technical art director Andrzej Poznanski, enemy and encounter designer Kacper Domanski, and lead designer Karol Krok affirmed to me during my interview.
But that’s not all these four leads at The Astronauts had to say on the controversial topic. Poznanski describes generative AI as a Michelin-starred chef ordering fast food for his guests, stating, “It’s just not going to happen. He loves his kitchen magic too much, and his clients expect a unique signature dish, not the statistical average of a thousand other meals.” Chmielarz disagreed, however, saying generative AI is like a Michelin-starred chef teaching AI to create his own dishes, perhaps nailing the look and feel but lacking the taste and soul of the human hand that mixed the ingredients.
“That human connection is needed, [so] with Witchfire, we are creating it because we love creation; we want Witchfire to be humans talking to other humans,” Chmielarz tells me.
Krok says he can see a future where AI has a more prominent role in game development, whether we like it or not, and says it’s important to find and maintain the human connection in how it’s used. But ultimately, “As a creator, you have to ask yourself: ‘Should we as an industry go there?’ and my answer is, ‘I don’t know.'”
After that, I asked the team about generative AI in Witchfire, and they all told me it hasn’t been used there and won’t be.
Witchfire is currently available as an Early Access game on PC, but is planned to launch into 1.0 sometime this year.
How do you feel about developers who use generative AI to make their games? Let us know in the comments below!