In a recent survey, we explored gamers’ attitudes towards the use of Gen AI in video games and whether those attitudes varied by demographics and gaming motivations. The overwhelmingly negative attitude stood out compared to other surveys we’ve run over the past decade.
In an optional survey (N=1,799) we ran from October through December 2025 alongside the Gamer Motivation Profile, we invited gamers to answer additional questions after they had looked at their profile results. Some of these questions were specifically about attitudes towards Gen AI in video games.
Overall, the attitude towards the use of Gen AI in video games is very negative. 85% of respondents have a below-neutral attitude towards the use of Gen AI in video games, with a highly-skewed 63% who selected the most negative response option.
Such a highly-skewed negative response is rare in the many years we’ve conducted survey research among gamers. As a point of comparison, in 2024 Q2-Q4, we collected survey data on attitudes towards a variety of game features. The chart below shows the % negative (i.e., below neutral) responses for each mentioned feature. In that survey, 79% had a negative attitude towards blockchain-based games. This helps anchor where the attitude towards Gen AI currently sits. We’ll come back to the “AI-generated quests/dialogue” feature later in this blog post since we break down the specific AI use in another survey question.
We were told that games were “art”, and that this new “creative” medium that we grew up with really mattered. Many of us (gamers and gamedevs alike) happily agreed…
But where is the artistry in outsourcing your assets to the big tech slop machine? What is creative about outsourcing your design, code and storytelling to an LLM?
Is it easy? Sure… Quick? Maybe… Cheap? For now, while big tech is happy to prop it up with other people’s money.
But it’s not cool and it’s not “art”. Like every piss filtered Studio Ghibli knockoff, there’s no artistry or creativity in it whatsoever. (They know that too, which is why companies are trying to hide or understate their use of AI.)
I just hope that they aren’t naively expecting people to pay full price, or even at all, for AI slop games.
Regardless of AI – capitalism doesn’t care if it’s “art”.
Exactly. If we thought the companies would fold in AI thoughtfully as one tool of many for game creators to consider when implementing their vision I doubt people would be negative. As it stands we trust companies to continue doing what they’re doing: forcing workers to incorporate AI into their workflow because they’re rich friends at google/meta/openAI really really need the technology to succeed to make back anything on their investment even though the profit step still reads ??? in their master plan anyway.
To be perfectly honest, I’d still be against it as long as it is trained on the stolen work of regular people.
Not only is it devoid of artistry and creativity, generative AI as it is today is cultural exploitation and plagiarism on an unprecedented industrial scale. It’s incredibly unethical on top of being slop.
Funnily enough, the Arc Raiders team “did it right” like this. They paid artists and made special models to pre-generate some voice clips, none of it is used at runtime, and people were still upset!
The well is beyond poisoned at this point.
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