AI was everywhere at gaming’s big developer conference — except the games

AI was everywhere at the GDC Festival of Gaming this year. Vendors at the event pitched generative AI tools for things like making AI-driven NPCs and even entire games from a chat box. On the show floor, I spent 10 minutes playing a demo of a pixel-art fantasy world generated by Tencent’s AI tools. In a briefing with Razer, I watched an AI assistant for QA automatically log issues in a shooter game. And there were many talks about AI, including a standing-room only presentation by Google DeepMind researchers about playable AI-generated spaces.

Of the many developers I spoke to at GDC, nearly every one disavowed using AI in their projects. But there was one key place where AI was missing: the games themselves. Of the many developers I spoke to at the conference, nearly every one was against the idea of using AI in their projects. “I feel like the human mind is so beautiful,” The Melty Way developer Gabriel Paquette told me. “Why not use it?”

It was a common refrain. Those I spoke to, most of whom were indie developers, disavowed AI, and many said they would never use the technology as it detracted from the human element of development. That’s perhaps not surprising, given that a recent GDC survey found that 52 percent of respondents think “generative AI is having a negative impact on the game industry,” which is up from 30 percent in 2025 and 18 percent in 2024. Some indie developers already go out of their way to show that their games are “AI free.”

The general pitch for generative AI in gaming is that it might benefit both developers and players. Google Cloud executive Jack Buser says that generative AI is “the largest transformation in the games industry I have ever witnessed in my nearly 30-year career.” But for many of those actually making games, the conversation is different. For instance, Adam Saltsman and Rebekah Saltsman, cofounders of Finji, note that their works are defined in part by “a specific person or persons’ fingerprints.” When I asked if they would consider using generative AI, it was a hard no. “Absolutely not,” Adam says.

Many developers told me that, in their view, AI-made games don’t look or feel like human-made games. Audiences “don’t connect” with generative AI, according to Abby Howard from Black Tabby Games. There are also legal problems; the Saltsmans tell The Verge they don’t think there is a legal framework to actually selling generative AI output. Publishers like Panic and BigMode are also not accepting games made with generative AI.

Perhaps what came up most often is that using generative AI removes the craft from making video games. “The only way to get better at things is through the intense concentration of a career of applied craft,” Black Tabby Games’ Tony Howard-Arias says. If you replace humans with AI, “where do you get new talent in the future?” Right now, the developers I spoke with believe crafting games by hand creates a more human connection. “We tell human stories,” Rebekah says. Caring about that connection is “why we do this.”