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The Last of Us co-director Bruce Straley recently publicly expressed his strong opposition to the use of generative AI in game development, arguing that the technology cannot “grow and think on its own.”
According to an interview with Polygon quoted by foreign media GameSpot, Straley said that generative AI “will only consume and try to imitate what it consumes”, and even described this technology as a “snake that is eating its own tail”, meaning that it lacks originality and is trapped in a cycle of self-consumption. “This is the limit of what it can do right now,” he stressed.
Straley further clarified that differences in the definition of AI in the gaming industry are one of the reasons for the controversy. He believes that AI such as NPCs have been in games for decades. In the new game he is currently developing, “Coven of the Chickenfoot,” although players will interact with a biological partner that can “observe, learn, and develop new behaviors based on the situation,” this has triggered speculation about whether it uses generative AI.
Straley categorically denied this and emphasized that the biological companion was completely “carefully crafted by human beings.” He gave an example: “If you feed it too many rotten apples, it will have indigestion and poop in the forest. These are interactions that players can discover, and this is only possible because we created a world and crafted these moments ourselves.”
Straley pointed out that the team’s goal was never to create a “human” partner with “human intelligence.” He praised the human brain as a “miracle” and had no interest in replicating that miracle in a machine. “I don’t know who wants it, who’s asking for it, or who’s pushing for it, but I don’t think this is the direction our species needs to go,” he said.
He confirmed that Coven of the Chickenfoot was developed without any use of machine learning or large language models. “No, we didn’t use that at all,” Straley said. “The game was made through hard work, a lot of problem solving, and a lot of creative thinking.”
Finally, Straley admitted that perhaps within the constraints of a specific game world, generative AI has the potential to create engaging content, but he has “no interest at all” in exploring this possibility. “I have no interest in looking at computer-generated art. I don’t think prompting is art. I hate AI!” he said bluntly.
Straley left Naughty Dog in 2017 after 18 years and founded his new studio, Wildflower Interactive, in 2022.
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