Palworld Lead Speaks Out Against Gen AI in Games: Artists “Like Doing Stuff Themselves”

There have already been several strong reactions from developers to generative AI in video games and their development—and many large studios advocating for the new tech—and Pocketpair, the developer behind Palworld, has once again clarified its stance on generative AI in a new interview with GamesRadar+ after the studio had to previously defend Palworld against accusations of AI.

In the interview, John Buckley, Pocketpair’s publishing and communications head, once again reiterated that the studio behind the ever-expanding Palworld universe does not use generative AI and has no plans to adopt the tech in the future. He commented that “Gamers don’t want it, and if the gamers don’t want it, I guess that’s it, right? Not much of a conversation to be had.” He goes on to acknowledge that there are many big game developers using AI to save time on their projects, but that Pocketpair has a large team of in-house artists who “like doing stuff themselves,” and that it “seems pointless” to replace them in favor of AI art.

John BuckleyWe have a lot of artists in-house. They like doing stuff themselves. There’s no reason to get rid of them for the sake of an AI doing it. Just seems pointless.

Buckley went on to comment on the prevalence of AI-generated assets in Steam Next Fest game demos, saying that “Even I, who is in the industry, I just felt like a natural, ugh, why? The rest of your game looks fine. Did you need to…? I think that’s going to be the attitude for quite a while. I think people will look at it and say, did you need to do that? Couldn’t you just do it yourself?” Echoing many comments by gamers and other developers online. Despite the rejection of AI art in gaming, Buckley’s strong opinions don’t seem to extend to AI-generated code, although he did say that “it’s hard to imagine where that goes in gaming,” when addressing generative AI in general.

Buckley also thinks that gamers and consumers in general will continue to sour on generative AI, even if some markets are more receptive to the new tech, commenting that “there are some markets that are a lot more willing to adapt than some others, and I think that’s where the clashing will come…two to three years from now, we’ll see a bigger clash in that regard. Certainly in the West, I think people will remain pretty against [AI] for a while.”