Because I am nothing if not a huge idiot, this week I wasted several minutes of my one precious life on this Earth reading a company blog from Google called ‘Level up: How AI is unlocking a new golden age of games‘.
The shape of this blog is entirely predictable, given it’s published on Google’s Cloud site and was their Global Director for Games. It’s a sales pitch written by a Company Man, full of low-calorie, Linkedin-bait lines like:
We need a structural shift to revive the ecosystem where creative risks are sustainable again. Fortunately, AI has matured enough to help drive that renaissance.
But what I’d like to draw your attention towards was a section near the end, where Buser specifically highlights three “exciting” use cases for AI in game development:
This opens up exciting new creative possibilities that will forever transform player experiences, and we’re already seeing this reflected in gameplay today:
Square Enix is integrating “Chatty Slimey” into Dragon Quest X Online, creating a real-time, multimodal companion that builds a personal, evolving relationship with the player based on their shared journey.
10Six Games launched YOU vs. Zombies this summer, a time-traveling horde-survival roguelite game where players use a custom AI generation system called “The Ritual” to turn anyone or anything into a personalized, spell-slinging playable hero to fight through the zombie apocalypse.
Ubisoft’s Teammates prototype replaces traditional command menus with natural voice-directed play, allowing players to coordinate battlefield tactics with AI squadmates who react immediately to human intent.
Do you mean to tell me that we are 3-4 years into this collective descent into madness, and this is all you can come up with to support your sales pitch? These three minor, annoying and deeply unpopular gimmicks? This is your ‘Golden Age’?
The only relationship Chatty Slimey is evolving with Dragon Quest’s fanbase ishow much theyhate the idea. This is literally the first I’m hearing about YOU vs Zombies, a game I just looked up and which looks like complete shit. And you might remember Teammatesfrom our November 2025 blog titled ‘Ubisoft, Face Covered In Bruises, Once Again Confidently Extends Foot Towards End Of Rake‘.
The fact this is all Buser could point towards in such a slick company blog is just so deeply embarrassing. Developers and studios all-in on AI in their production pipelines have had yearsto come up with something that makes normal people care about the technology (AI was supposed to let you release games in a fraction of the time!), and all Buser has to talk about are three wet farts. I thought AI was supposed to speed up development and liberate our creativity!
Where’s the pioneering RPG with AI-generated characters, whose witty and contextual responses have made gamers the world over fall in love with them? Where’s the trailblazing space sim where an AI-generated universe gives players limitless worlds to explore (and ones that are worth exploring)? Where’s the life sim where AI creates a friend who is interesting, and not just responsive?
They’re nowhere, because it can’t do any of this. AI cannot and never will be funny, or unique, or be able to create a damn thing, because it’s a crude machine that eats actual creative endeavours, digests them into a casserole and shits it out on a plate. And I don’t think it’s significantly helping speed up or streamline the development process on the backend either, because surprise surprise, the biggest problems facing video game developers (and release schedules) are not mild limitations on the available technology, butthe ineptitude and shortsightedness of everyone’s managers and owners, who are usually the onespushing AI on their workers in the first place.
It’s fitting that Buser ends his blog with an analogy, saying:
I think of AI as an exoskeleton — an Iron Man suit for developers. The armor does the heavy lifting, but it does nothing without the intent of the human pilot inside.
Because Iron Man suits are a fantasy that don’t actually exist.
