Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has never shied away from sharing its thoughts on the gaming industry. So, when Elon Musk announced his plans to release an AI-generated video game through his studio xAI in 2026, publishing director Michael Douse couldn’t help but fire back.
While Douse acknowledged that AI can serve as a useful tool, he emphasized that it could never replace genuine “leadership” and “vision.”
What Did Michael Douse Say About Elon Musk’s Gaming Plans?
In a post on X and a series of replies, Douse couldn’t help but react to Musk’s gaming plans of using AI to release a video game designed to showcase its ability to independently develop games.
However, as many remain skeptical about the use of AI, even well-known game developers have questioned this move.
“Genuinely, what this industry needs is not more mathematically produced, psychologically trained gameplay loops, but more expressions of worlds that people are engaged with—or want to engage with,” Douse wrote while sharing a post from Dexerto about Musk’s plan.
“AI has its place as a tool, but we have all the tools in the world, and they aren’t compensating for the incredible lack of cogent direction. AI isn’t going to solve the big problem of the industry, which is leadership and vision,” he continued.
He then compared the current state of the gaming industry and AI to the collapse of retail, explaining that “it was retail itself that set the rules,” including “quality, price, availability,” and more.
“When it crashed, the sensible default would have been to enjoy cutting out the middleman and connecting directly with audiences in a sort of 1:1 relationship,” he explained.
However, that never happened, and it became “a game of headless chickens racing to the P&L sheet.”
Douse strongly believed that AI would never “solve that problem,” insisting that true success would only come from “people who are building something for people.”
He suggested that what’s really needed is “more human-human expression,” not another “VC [venture capitalist] cash grab,” but “sustainability.”
“That’s what the tools could be good for—definitely not replacing people,” he said.
“There simply is no resonance without mutual respect. There is no mutual respect without respect for craft. There is no craft without the human touch—the relative skill issue, or ‘the exhibition of otherness.’ To turn games into digital, emotionless content is to abandon all resonance… which is why people play!” he concluded.
What Is Elon Musk’s AI Gaming Plan All About?
It was in November 2024 when Musk announced that xAI would start an AI game studio to “make games great again!”
At the time, he noted that there were “too many game studios” owned by “massive corporations.”
After almost a year, he gave an update that xAI would release a “great AI-generated” game before the end of 2026, while resharing DogeDesigner’s tweet about video games being “dynamically generated by Grok in the future.”
The game studio has even posted an open position for a “Video Games Tutor,” who will train Grok to produce “engaging, fun, and innovative video games.”
The role involves exploring “AI-assisted game design” and fostering “advancements in interactive entertainment through accurate annotations and iterative testing,” with a pay range of $45–$100 per hour.
Naturally, this has sparked debate within the gaming community about the role of AI in game development.
Considering that hundreds of Larian employees worked for six years to complete Baldur’s Gate 3 and another two years on post-launch patches, using AI would surely be much different.
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