Last year, the studio was already criticized for using AI in its work on ARC Raiders.
Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund has once again spoken about the role of artificial intelligence in the gaming industry, stating that this technology is capable of "rebuilding the game development process". His comments came shortly after being promoted to executive chairman of publisher Nexon.
Previously, the shooter ARC Raiders was criticized for using AI speech synthesis for character dialogues. Although the studio subsequently hired voice actors to record additional lines, it did not completely abandon automatic generation. Embark then explained that they were not seeking to replace actors, but only wanted to speed up production by combining traditional recording with AI.
Now, Söderlund emphasizes that many companies misunderstand the role of artificial intelligence. According to him, success in this area depends not on the speed of technology adoption, but on the depth of their understanding. He compared game development to the work of a car mechanic: the tools are available to everyone, but the result depends on how skillfully they are used.
According to Söderlund, the studio's first projects — The Finals and ARC Raiders — were created by smaller teams and for about a third of the budget of a typical AAA game. He believes that this was achieved through the thoughtful use of AI and process optimization. In the future, a similar approach is planned to be scaled to all Nexon projects.
The company's overall strategy is related to the "Mono Lake" initiative, which was discussed by Nexon CEO Lee Jung-hun. It involves a comprehensive change to all stages of game creation and support. He called Nexon's key advantage the huge array of user data accumulated over decades, which can be used to train and configure AI systems.
At the same time, the company's management emphasizes that the goal of technology implementation is not to replace developers, but to expand their capabilities. However, there is still no consensus in the industry: for example, Capcom has previously stated that it will not use AI-generated assets in its games.
