A video game executive has sparked a fierce debate surrounding the widespread use of generative AI in the industry by claiming that “Gen Z loves AI slop.”
In a recent tweet, interactive video game company Genvid CEO and former Square Enix director Jacob Navok said that “for all the anti-AI sentiment we’re seeing in various articles, it appears consumers generally do not care.”
Navok pointed to the “biggest game of the year,” called “Steal a Brainrot,” which, as its name implies, is filled with AI slop characters. The game, which is based on the extremely popular online gaming platform Roblox, became the first game to surpass 25 million concurrent players on any platform last month.
“Gen Z loves AI slop, does not care,” Navok wrote. “The upcoming generation of gamers are Bane in ‘Dark Knight Rises’ saying ‘You merely adopted the slop, I was born in it.'”
The exec’s inflammatory rhetoric fueled a fiery debate. Just because people are playing a game called “Steal a Brainrot,” does that mean they’re voting in favor of AI slop?
As companies continue to double down on the use of generative AI, audiences have often become alienated by the trend, sparking widespread outcry.
The use of AI in video games, in particular, has already led to plenty of blowback. Most recently, the developers behind a highly popular third-person extraction shooter called Arc Raiders came under fire for using AI to generate character voices, sparking a debate over AI replacing human voice actors — and human creativity wholesale.
The developers of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 7” were also heavily criticized this week for featuring AI-sloppified artwork that unabashedly ripped off the style of iconic Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli.
And “Assassin’s Creed” publisher Ubisoft was also forced to remove lazily AI-generated artwork for its upcoming title, “Anno 117: Pax Romana,” following widespread backlash.
Nonetheless, Novak said that the industry’s embrace of generative AI was inevitable and that gamers should get ready for a lot more slop coming their way.
“I should add that in-game art and voices are merely the tip of the spear,” he wrote in his tweet. “Many studios I know are using AI generation in the concept phase, and many more are using [Anthropic’s AI chatbot] Claude for code.”
Novak claimed that a “lot of AI sentiment is being driven by emotion rather than logic.”
Unsurprisingly, those accusations didn’t sit well with many. After all, making the leap from “this Roblox game has a lot of concurrent players” to “Gen Z loves AI slop” is certainly a stretch.
“Zero nuance posts is just bait slop,” one user replied.
Others accused Novak of comparing apples to oranges.
“Just because McDonald’s has thousands of locations around the world doesn’t mean people don’t care about good food,” a separate user added.
“I think comparing a Roblox game with a Steam game doing [average revenue per user] of $30+ is a mistake,” another user wrote. “It’s like comparing cars and bicycles.”
“Well-executed games (or other media) will be accepted and adored,” a different user argued. “Poorly executed will not, no matter how many no-AI stickers they’ll wrap themselves with.”
“Yet here we are, needing to say the obvious that the most important conclusion for every creative in the field: self-importance and Twitter wars don’t convert into happy audiences,” they added.
Despite the widespread backlash, many gaming execs remain convinced that AI slop is the future. For instance, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson recently said that “AI is the very core” of its business and could give developers “richer colors” to paint “more brilliant worlds.”
Sure, while there are plenty of ways to implement AI in the development of a video game, like AI-generated code, that likely won’t prove nearly as controversial as replacing human voice actors’ performances, presupposing that an entire generation “loves AI slop” seems at best like a vast oversimplification — or at worst, a provocation.
Besides, not every gaming exec is convinced that pumping games full of AI slop is the future.
Case in point, video game developer Pocketpair CEO John Buckley announced last month that the company doesn’t “believe in” AI-generated games.
“We’re very upfront about it,” he told Game Developer. “If you’re big on AI stuff or your game is Web3 or uses NFTs, there are lots of publishers out there [who’ll talk to you], but we’re not the right partner for that.”
