GS:Virtual currency and microtransactions are hot-button issues in gaming today, and now Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Grand Theft Auto parent publisher Take-Two Interactive, has spoken out to defend his company's implementation of such measures in its games.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick doesn't think AI will reduce employment or lower development costs, and calls it "stupidest thing" he's ever heard.
They already have AI trained to do coding.......
How he thinks it's stupid is beyond me, Especially since we see it happening in real time.
Company A has 300 employees and lays of 200 to replace them with AI to release the same quality game.
Company B has 300 employees and keeps all 300 but instead uses AI to release a game with dramatically larger scale, scope, complexity, short dev cycle etc.
Company B would release a dramatically better product by using humans + AI and consumers would buy the better game.
I actually agree with this concept.
This is key facet. Its how the AI is used. It's actually is impressive as is and really would make an amazing addition to alot of people in their jobs, not just tech. It also has the potential for businesses to use to lay off large amounts of people, as much as they could to save money on labor. I hope too many companies don't go with the latter. But since usually companies are worried about bottom line over people...we will see some try and hopefully fail. But yeah, if its to help workers like in your company B scenario I'm totally down...Just scared Company A may be too enticing to some ceos and businesses.
Value of AI and value of humans will both be increased with human-AI complex. Each, by themselves, will not be independently better than the other. Whether AI will ever be independent from humans is the fear question of humans, ironically because of our doing. At this stage, most of the doing is because of humans, not because of AI. AI is doing exactly that by our design, until we have failed ourselves with an AI development that went awry. The biggest take is that humans have only ourselves to blame when things become wrong, and we have to decide what is the ultimate goal with AI we want to accomplish. It would take a person with high morals and high ethics to make right of AI. I would not want businessman to decide what AI should do or what capabilities it can have. AI should be in the hands of people with high moral fiber, or those operating on love, kindness, and compassion.
AI is SUPPOSED to be used as a tool, not a replacement. It's designed to do two important things artists can take advantage of immediately.
- Make the ideation/reference imaging process much quicker and easier (basically using it as a google search)
- Make mundane and time consuming tasks faster and easier so more time is spent on creation.
Unfortunately, what many have done is used it as a way to replace rather than supplement.
CS7
In the ideal world yes.
In the real world where companies have shown little desire to innovate and spent every effort to maximize profits the end result will be the same quality games (if were lucky) made by less people and more AI.
Company Real World: Fires 200 people and makes the same game cheaper using AI and the executives get record bonuses.
Edit:
Lets look at history, specifically auto manufacturing.
In the 70's and 80's the auto unions tried to oppose automation of jobs (robots) stating that they would take peoples jobs. And the people in charge who wanted to make more money said the exact same types of things that are being said about AI. But we can look at history and see that countless types of jobs were in fact replaced by automation, that was of course even compounded upon by computers.
The net effect was that the rich got richer less jobs were needed so wages were forced down by competition for the jobs that were left.
that concept works in the initial beginning phase of AI but once AI learns and surpasses the knowledge and coding expertise of even the best human employee than this CEO will no longer need competent humans in that line of work.
@Hue_My£D_Long
Yes but that is a choice then by massively increased productivity and this greater income and wealth and stagnating with similar levels of productivity and output and not creating much wealth. Usually the option that creates wealth prevails because a rising tide raises all ships.
You can already make your own SFX with text prompts now as well, of course it will lower development cost and time
WARNING WARNING ‼️ SARCASM AHEAD
Sure Strauss and robots didn’t take jobs from car factories.
Edit:Sad thing is he believes it and unfortunately he won’t be replaced for a long time by AI
He doesn't, he's just lying. These people lay people off so they can get bonuses. If AI takes jobs, their bonus goes bigger and the workforce goes smaller.
Because he sees AI as a tool to aid development. He wants to use AI to help make bigger and better games in the same timeframe. Other CEOs want to replace devs with AI to cut costs and make lifeless games faster for a quick buck. Strauss has the right idea, this is how AI should be used. To extend and expand the capabilities of devs.
There will be few companies who will go overboard and try to replace their employees with AI tech. The ones that will make the most money will be the ones that utilize ai, along with their employee talent, to make the best product possible
AI could handle some of the most time consuming processes. To expediate the development, so in return, costing the publisher's last money end time.
Not reliably they haven't. Coding done by ai is generally abysmal for all but the most generic tasks.
I think maybe sometimes we give people in these positions too much credit when it comes to intelligence.
I think you mean candor, not intelligence.
If you take him to mean what he's saying at face value, sure.
I don't. And I think he's clearly lying.
As long as it doesn't effect his inflated executive salary or his ridiculous bonuses I'm sure he's fine with it.
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick joins 'Money Movers' to discuss the company's quarterly earnings results, how confident Zelnick is in the guidance for fall 2025, and much more.
Take-Two head honcho Strauss Zelnick states every time they establish a price, they want to make sure it's "good news for consumers."
It's the why we close servers after 2 years, why we re-use the same assets every year, and why we bundle our game with enjoyable microtransactions.
Re-using assets is not a bad thing tbh. Development is all about re-using code, assets and components.
Can you please focus on delivering enough quality content to justify the $70 asking price? While I appreciate the idea of over-delivering, it's essential to ensure that the base content itself is worth it. I have concerns that GTA6 might have less single-player content because most of the focus seems to be shifting towards online play and microtransactions
The sleaze oozes out of these gaming CEOs faces. It's honestly disturbing how distorted people look when you've realized how money obsessed they really are. He gives off "in one ear and straight out the other" vibes.
I really don't get it
like
do they think anyone believes what they say?
is it that being in charge surrounds you by so many yesmen that they get deluded into thinking everyone is like that?
Well if you look at the last 10 years you will notice there wasn't as single paid dlc. Every update was free whether you want to complain about sharkcards or not.
They're going to make billions on this game especially if they keep the same formula as last in regards to updates.
Selling Shark cards and removing content are not exactly "good news for consumers" lol.
The last time they released any DLC worth playing was 15 years ago.
GTA V is so broken and unbalanced that people would rather do stupid cringey stunts with than do heists.
I'm sure the player base would disagree, and gta5 is still being supported, much longer then most games, after all I bought gta5 day 1 on ps3....
NBA 2K14 is the prime example of everything wrong with VC/Micro..I'm not surprised that [Strauss Zelnick] supports a greedy & wrong practice that brings in more profit for his company.
Just don't...you can't defend them. They should never be put into games like GTA in the first place
The problem was though they reduced the money you got from missions as a way to try and lead you on to buy MT.
I have to disagree here entirely; there is no defending microtransactions and as soon as I read the title of the article, I rolled my eyes and chuckled. The fact of the matter is, microtransactions are nothing to defend as they are not necessary. They are merely a ploy to get customers to spend more money when they shouldn't be asked to.
With Grand Theft Auto Online for example, which seems to be the hottest topic of microtransactions today, Rockstar Games simply wants to make more money without effort; they have succeeded as they earned a revenue close to their earnings from the game itself and they barely did any work to achieve the proceeds of microtransactions. We're expected to exchange real money for virtual currency to essentially play the game it was intended to be played. It's essentially full/lite versions of games; you get access to enough, but unless you plan on paying more money, you won't be able to experience everything the game offers and that is simply unacceptable.
With Grand Theft Auto V, gamers have already paid between $60 and $150 - depending on which edition of the game they purchased - to own the game; being expected to pay more to experience more is scummy and outlandish.
Bottom line: microtransactions need to go.
I really don't hate Microtransactions as much as the typical gamer. I think they CAN work well if implemented well. The problem is, I don't see many good implementations. Take-2's insistence that they 'delight' there consumers stands in contrast to the reality. 2k14 was gimped by MT's and gta online is unfair because of them.
And I thought games were expensive enough it annoys me that they try to extract even more money from their customers. Gamers need to boycott microtransactions on games that are not free to play