Comment by chefandy

The problem is what it takes to implement that. I've seen companies currently trying to do exactly that, and their demos go like this "ok, give me a prompt for the environment" and if they're lucky, they can cherry pick some stuff the crowd says and if they're not, they sheepishly ask for a prompt that would visit indicate one of 5 environment types they've worked on and include several of the dozen premade textured meshes they've made, and in reality you've got a really really expensive procedural map with asset placement that's worse than if it was done using traditional semi-pre-baked approaches. A deceptive amount of work goes into the nitty gritty of making environments, and even with all of the incredible tooling that's around now, we are not even close to automating that. It's worth noting that my alma mater has game environment art degree programs. Unless you're making these things, you can't easily see how much finesse and artistic sensibility it takes to make beautiful compositions with complementary lighting and nice atmospheric progression. It's not just that nobody has really given it a go— it's really difficult. When you have tooling that uses AI controlled by an artist that knows these things, that's one thing. When they need to make great results every time so players keep coming back? That's a very different task. I've never met anyone that thought it was remotely currently feasible without lacking knowledge of generative AI, game development, or both.

Automating the tools so a smaller workforce can make more worlds and more possibilities? We're already there— but it's a very large leap to remove the human creative and technical intermediaries.