Square Enix’s upcoming Foamstars contains some AI art

As reported by VideoGameChronicle, Square Enix confirmed at a recent press event that their upcoming live service game, Foamstars, uses some assets generated by AI. This follows a New Year’s letter from the company’s president, Takashi Kiryu, that stated the company would more aggressively pursue the use of the technology.

VGC asked Foamstars producer Kosuke Okatani about AI, who elaborated on the game’s usage of it. According to him, most of the game was created by humans, but “0.01% or even less” was generated by Midjourney. Specifically, as Square later clarified to VGC, the assets that were created by generative AI are in-game album covers for the game’s music tracks.

Okatani explained: “In this instance, we experimented with Midjourney using simple prompts to produce abstract images. We loved what was created and used them as the final album covers players will see in the game. Everything else was created entirely by our development team.”

The usage of generative AI has been creeping in from all angles despite a variety of different concerns. Among these are worries about hastily generated games flooding the market and squeezing out small developers, the contraction of job opportunities within the industry, the straight-up theft that is central to implementations of the technology, and the impact on the environment from the high energy requirements. It’s a complex subject.

However, it does remind me that Splatoon, a game that Foamstars seems to be trying hard to be, also does album artwork for its songs. Except those are made by real human artists. And it’s just funny to me how this endeavor can be derivative and yet still cut corners in the process. It’s what we get to look forward to.

Foamstars is releasing on PS4 and PS5 on February 6, 2024.