During a recent meeting with investors, EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson mentioned that they are increasingly using generative AI in their development process. Wilson believes that more than half of EA’s development work could be affected by this technology. Although he recognized that generative AI is still in its early stages, he sees great potential for improving efficiency.
Wilson provided examples of AI’s influence, noting that the time needed to create stadiums for its sports games decreased significantly, from six months to six weeks. Furthermore, the number of animations in the newest version of its soccer series increased, with FIFA 23 debuting with 36 “run cycles,” while the upcoming release will feature 1200. He believes that AI will enable developers to concentrate on the more enjoyable parts of game development.
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I’ve heard nothing but bad things about the animation and models for sports games. However, I was happy to hear that the AI is mostly aimed at the sports section. EA hasn’t really done anything big for that genre in a long time, so it’s expected that they’d try to make things easier and less expensive.
“We’re still very early in the AI revolution, or at least the generative AI evolution… more than 50% of our development processes will be positively impacted by the advances in generative AI.”
Andrew Wilson
As found by GR, The CEO of EA said the company wants to utilize AI to improve its worldwide development procedures. The main priority is to speed up production while upholding the quality of the products. Wilson mentioned the favorable reaction from developers keen to integrate AI tools into their day-to-day operations.
There are two schools of thought on AI; honestly, it’s nowhere near as good as everyone is making it out to be. I don’t know if EA developed their own or maybe worked on it for some time, but I’ve seen plenty of examples showing new things featuring “AI” are just regular tools with a pretty name. So, really, these are probably just tools we’ve seen before with “ai” on them. Look at Grammarly and other regular writing tools now taking on the name AI; it’s not what it sounds like anymore.
Hopefully, this is AI as a tool, not as a replacement for people. Wilson did say that AI adoption isn’t meant to replace developers but to expand possibilities in interactive entertainment. That’s a nice thing to say, but EA isn’t known as the best company around. We’ll have to see how far that comment about “not replacing developers” goes.
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