Neil Druckmann hypes up using AI for storytelling, but plenty fellow devs disagree

Update: Neil Druckmann has since responded to this interview, saying his answers were edited and did not accurately reflect his statements. You can read more about Druckmann’s response here.

In a recent interview with Sony, Naughty Dog president and The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann commented on the potential of using AI to “push the boundaries of storytelling in games,” suggesting it could be used for writing dialogue and creating characters. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people don’t like this, including several of Druckmann’s own peers within the games industry.

As a writer himself, you’d think Druckmann would be one of the last people to approve using AI tools for storytelling. And yet, in the Sony interview, he talks about how AI will “allow us to create nuanced dialogues and characters,” which makes it sound like he and his team didn’t achieve that with The Last of Us games. This is despite the fact that the series has been lauded for its storytelling and characters, and they didn’t need an AI program to earn such praise.

Admittedly, Druckmann never talks about replacing human writers wholesale, arguing how important it is to “direct these tools to achieve the intended outcomes.” He also acknowledges there are “ethical issues we need to address,” but he never cites exact examples. All in all, his arguments have done little to sway the minds of industry people who don’t see AI as this exciting new tool for storytelling in games.

On Twitter, Max Krieger, who developed puzzle game CROSSNIQ+, made his feelings clear by saying he’d like to “Push The Last Of Us Director To Retire,” while Eric Bourdages, lead character artist on Dead by Daylight, has called Druckmann’s comments “disappointing to see,” adding, “Creative people want to create, they don’t want to play babysit/tune the robot.”

Des Walsh, senior environment artist at Sumo Digital, wrote, “Well I bet his team loves to read this after doing all the heavy lifting on them [sic] games.” Meanwhile, Venba‘s creative director and writer Abhi has outright called Druckmann’s comments as only being for shareholders: “Much like Uber/Lyft, AAA is desperately betting on being able to replace their labour force with AI for their business model of giant games to be feasible.”

Bioware veteran and Summerfall Games founder David Gaider also didn’t pull his punches, saying “It’s pretty telling that [Druckmann’s] idea of storytelling is all about direction. The only thing preventing AI from improving on Naughty Dog’s own writers, apparently, is the ability to provide it nuanced direction. … I guess I’d hope he’d know better than to look at AI as some kind of magic wand.” Obsidian’s studio design director Josh Sawyer (who also directed Pentiment) may have the best response of all, though, simply tweeting the Mourinho Disgust meme.

AI being used for game development remains a very contentious topic, and for good reason. There are genuine and well-founded fears of studios replacing human creatives (artists, writers, voice actors etc.) with AI programs (there was a whole voice actors strike over it). Companies like Ubisoft and Blizzard have shown an eagerness for using these sorts of AI tools, despite the fervent backlash from regular gamers and the fact that AI generated content is always inferior to something a real person made. If Druckmann wants to improve storytelling at Naughty Dog, then he should support his actual writers, and not saddle them with a machine that pumps out dialogue and character ideas for them.