In an interview looking back on the development of early Final Fantasy and Mana games, Square Enix veterans Hiromichi Tanaka, Kouichi Ishii, and Yoshinori Kitase discussed the development of these franchises and working for Square during its illustrious SNES era, while also sharing the similarities between developing games in that era and doing so in today’s modern, increasingly AI-driven world of game development.
The interview, conducted by Famitsu to mark the 35th anniversary of the Mana series, saw the developers reminisce about their early work. Kitase, notably, directed Chrono Trigger, numerous Final Fantasy games including VII, VIII, and X on PS1 and PS2, and was also one of the producers on the original Kingdom Hearts.
Secret of Mana was originally planned to be a game for Nintendo’s canceled CD add-on for the SNES, with character designs by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, they said, before it was reimagined as a standard SNES game. Toriyama did not end up working on it, but did work on Chrono Trigger, which was spun off after this shift in Secret of Mana‘s development. This turbulence during development, along with Nintendo’s decision to not shift to discs for Nintendo 64, led to the decision to turn Final Fantasy VII into a PlayStation exclusive.
The gang says the fact that back then, games required smaller teams and took less time to be made than they do today gave them the flexibility to make many shifts in the development of a game. And as they see it, AI could empower smaller teams to make games that might otherwise be beyond the scope of what they could achieve. “Just as various technologies have supported game development previously, I feel we may see AI play an increasingly important role in game development,” Kitase noted. “However, we will need to carefully consider how to make the most of it.”
To the group, AI could be a useful tool along the lines of generalized engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, which made it so that developers no longer needed to make their own tools to create a game. That doesn’t, however, mean that AI can take over all the work required to develop a new game. For the next generation of creators, a human must know how to turn an idea into something worthwhile.
“Nowadays, with engines like Unreal and Unity available, the foundation for game development already exists for many people,” Kitase adds. “Combined with support from new tools and other technologies, this makes it easier even for those with little experience to create games, which is a major shift as it allows them to gain the experience of developing and completing work on a game. However, when it comes to creating something and taking it from 0 to 1, you absolutely need people. That will never change, so the next generation of developers must have the ability to make something from 0.”
Ishii adds that even if AI were to be used in prototyping, the final game needs a human touch or it will not resonate. “While we must carefully consider how to incorporate AI into games, I have to admit I’m pretty excited about it,” he adds. “If we can develop prototypes quicker, we have more time to test and refine them, thinking about whether we should try it another way instead. But, humans will need to still define the beginning and end of the working process. If we rely solely on AI, the result may appear polished, but it may feel cold and lack the needed human touch.”
It’s this need for a human touch—Kitase gives an example of this, remembering that two years ago he considered using AI to help him draft a speech for his eldest son’s wedding before deciding it did not feel right to do so and writing it himself—that holds the group back from the technology overall. Yet in terms of how the technology, if implemented, could change the role of a creator and redefine what it means to create in the future, their comments mirror those made by Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto while receiving an Order of Culture for his contributions to game development last week.
Discussions of AI usage in Japanese development circles broadly are shifting toward responsible use, rather than questioning whether it should be used, which makes sense considering recent surveys have concluded that over 85 percent of developers in Japan are actively using or considering using the technology. Whether developers find that balance between the tech itself and the human touch, as well as whether audiences can accept its use, remain unclear.