EA is eager to start using artificial intelligence in all its games. So much so that CEO Andrew Wilson can’t stop talking about it: In March, he envisioned a dystopian future in which 3 billion people would use the technology, and recently, he excited investors with news that EA developers seemed to be “hungry for. “Start using this technology yourself.
Now, former Dragon Age writer David Gaider has come out with a scathing critique of the EA boss and his breathless praise for AI. Responding to Wilson’s comments, Gaider wrote that “the ‘drought’ referred to here is the illusion of a spreadsheet in which labor costs suddenly appear as a small bar relative to other bars, and a bunch of executives around the table pointing and repeating ‘ROI’ and ‘okay, yeah, okay’ over and over.”
“They want you to believe that the developers under them are thrilled to apply next-generation AI to their processes,” Gaider continues, “but I assure you it’s a cry What they thought was happiness, not like this team, we were told about a “really cool” command to live.
Gaider is a BioWare veteran who left the company and its owner, EA, in 2016. His name is on classic role-playing games: Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate 2, KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights. Anthem, the BioWare survival shooter that died in 2021, is also named after him.
Gaider wrote for Anthem before he left BioWare, though the game’s story was restarted after his departure, and this infamous live-service venture he’s referring to appears to be part of a previous “order” from management.
For all the talk about the unparalleled potential that AI offers developers, it has yet to become widespread in gaming, at least not in a way that is obvious to gamers (in a study (GDC, 31% of developers said they were already using AI in games).
