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"Every AAA single player game since Bioshock is basically the same collection of fetch quests," says ex-Square Enix suit, while Roblox games evolve "as fast as Tiktok trends" and create "overnight millionaires"
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Jordan Gerblick
2026-03-04
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! The future of video game development is in game-creating platforms like Roblox, reckons Jacob Navok, former director of business at Square Enix and current CEO of Genvid, "the studio-grade AI production platform for film, TV, and branded video." Being at the top of a company explicitly specializing in generative AI for entertainment, it's unsurprising that Navok has repeatedly painted a picture of a future in which the total merging of game development and gen-AI is inevitable. This is the man who made headlines for saying things like "Gen-Z loves AI slop," "AI is a one-in-a-generation change in the entire digital order," and Microsoft needs to "get on board, or perish." Navok's latest dystopian canvas depicts a future full of 15-year-old millionaires with games they built on Roblox using AI prompts. Roblox brags about its experimental AI tech, shows it off with a disorienting AI-generated Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead says AI "may mean the demise of humanity" but he's "all for it" if it helps "make epic games" As other devs commit to AI as a development tool, Ubisoft is doubling down on "player-facing generative AI" "Unclear to me what stops Roblox from being a trillion dollar company in the future," Navok says on Twitter. "Users are there, monetization is there, the lawsuits will be worked out (as they were for every major social media company before this) and as fidelity improves, the audience will age up." Navok points to Square Enix's long-defunct cloud-based service Core Online as his former employer's answer to Roblox, but as it was limited to "good browsers on good PCs," it never took off. Regardless, "these game building platforms are definitely where Tiktok goes," argues Navok. "Prompt based instant experiences, AI algorithms providing suggestions, creators able to quickly enable experiences that people play with them together at scale. "Add fidelity realism that's coming from AI rendered textures + meshes, animation libraries called on demand and Lua managing repeatability + consistency, plus Roblox having the most scaled matchmaking services on the planet, and you have a very strong moat." Roblox is indeed frighteningly massive, with a record concurrent player count higher than all of Steam combined as of August 2025. Navok predicts the platform's increasingly child-friendly AI prompts will result in "an explosion of creativity" that'll make traditional AAA games look downright dated, if they don't already, in his view. "Already Roblox games are innovating in game design way faster than AAA- every AAA single player game since Bioshock is basically the same collection of fetch quests bookended by fight scenes," Navok says. "But the speed by which the tycoon genre has been evolving on Roblox (GaG to Steal a Brainrot to Tsunami) moves as fast as Tiktok trends and mints overnight millionaires." In this incredibly harrowing vision for someone in his 30s who wants to make games one day, Navok says instead of becoming a programmer, you can just "be 15 and making a Roblox game and have access to the entire world instantly." Gen AI has proven extremely controversial among both gamers and game developers, and there's a spectrum ranging from complete rejection and utter embrace. Navok seems to generally position himself on the latter end of that spectrum, while prominent game makers like Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone have committed to never using AI in game development. Meanwhile, many big names in game dev say the best approach lies somewhere in the middle, with Bethesda's Todd Howard recently saying AI is a useful "tool" in making games but "not in generating things" because "the human intention of it is what makes our stuff special." "We here at Blizzard feel very lucky and happy that we're not using generative AI": World of Warcraft Midnight composer says devs are making "what we think is cool"
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404catnip
Mar 04, 09:32 PM
😺
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halfError
Mar 04, 09:02 PM
never top-notch 🦄
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weirdVibes
Mar 04, 07:42 PM
I smelled it
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plantZombie
Mar 04, 07:02 PM
That's it, okay. Terrible soundtrack. Boring characters. bet my pc is too weak for this.
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breadMachine
Mar 04, 03:32 PM
Loads slowly this is dark. 🎮 gtg
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