A Naughty Dog veteran who’s worked on everything from The Last of Us to Uncharted 4 worries that we’ll one day look back at modern games and “marvel” at the human craftsmanship on display.
Speaking to Kiwi Talkz in an interview embedded below, Matt Radford points at ancient cathedrals to make this point: “The example of the cathedrals in Cologne and, you know, you see these old amazing buildings, these architectural marvels across so much of the world. And that exists as a product of a very unique time where all this art, all this beauty, all this time and suffering went into making something that you don’t make now. You just wouldn’t make an old cathedral like the one in Cologne. And you never will again because the talent doesn’t even exist.”
Radford then wonders if today’s games will eventually be thought of in the same way, as new technologies disrupt game development. “Like, we’ll look back at some of these – at a game like Intergalactic, at a game like Uncharted 4, The Last of Us 2 – and just see the amount of acting by real by people, by humans, the writing, modeling, sculpting, painting, and we’ll marvel at it,” he explains.
The veteran VFX artist doesn’t call out generative AI specifically, but he does mention that “a lot of new technology” could really change “the way that games are being made” and “how many people are making games.” Gen-AI tech has already led to a decrease in junior job roles for many industries, so it’s not hard to imagine the knock-on effects for future generations of game dev.
“One day maybe there won’t be the ability to spend $600 million or some astronomical figure to make a really cool action game with a good story,” Radford adds.