Capcom testing generative AI to manage “tens of thousands of ideas”

The Osaka-based game developer and publisher known far and wide for games like Monster Hunter and Street Fighter has one of the strongest portfolios in gaming this generation. Between titles like Resident Evil: Village and Dragon’s Dogma 2, Capcom puts out a number of large titles every year. Now, the company says, they are starting to use generative AI to help them manage some of the obstacles that come with development.

In an interview with Google Cloud Japan and translated by Automaton Media, Capcom technical director Kazuki Abe explains how Capcom is using generative AI not for gameplay, stories, or character designs, but for generating ideas. Abe explains that everything put into a video game needs to be fussed over and meticulously thought about.

An example Abe uses is putting a TV in your game, an incidental thing that most players would not notice. But artists cannot just copy an existing TV’s design or brand and put it into the game without running afoul of its real-life creator. Abe says that a new design and a new logo have to be thought of from scratch, which is how generative AI aids the developer by not bogging them down into incidental things that still get noticed.

Abe describes this as “one of thousands” of ideas needed for game development that, by using AI to churn out simple solutions, the developers can spend less time on these individual decisions. Specifically, Capcom is using a Gemini AI model that is fed all sorts of details and information about the game to generate ideas that are internally consistent. That TV problem, for example, would be unlikely to come up during their samurai-era Onimusha series.

Capcom’s next big release, Monster Hunter Wilds, is coming to store shelves at the end of February. The developer has also announced new games in both the Okami and Onimusha series as well.