Masahiro Sakurai, the designer behind Kirby and Super Smash Bros., has warned that artificial intelligence could bury the games industry in copycat titles. In a new interview, he said the number of games released each year will keep climbing because AI makes them easy to produce, and that most of them will add nothing new.
Key points
- Sakurai made the comments in an interview with Japanese outlet Denfaminicogamer, translated by Nintendo Everything.
- He noted that Steam now sees more than 19,000 releases a year, up from about 275 when he started his design award in 2010.
- He predicts that AI will push the number higher and that "the vast majority will be direct copies of games we've seen before."
- He argues AI can imitate past work but cannot create what a designer will invent in the future.
- The interview follows his decision to end the Game Designers Award he ran at Tokyo Game Show for 16 years.
What Sakurai said about AI
According to Nintendo Everything's translation, Sakurai was asked about the growing flood of releases. He replied:
"Although 19,000 titles is a lot, I think that number will only grow from now on, because AI will be used to turn them out. Most of them will end up unplayable, and there will be so many that it'll be impossible to keep track or even understand them. With those AI games, the vast majority will be direct copies of games we've seen before."
He gave a concrete example. He described a game called Librarian, set in a magical world where the player has to put jumbled books back in order. Because its mechanics were simple, "a lot of imitators soon followed," he said, naming games such as Supermarket Chaos and Needle in a Haystack Simulator. "That kind of imitation will be simple for AI to conduct," he added.
Sakurai drew a line between copying and creating. AI might be able to analyse the atmosphere of Fumito Ueda's games, such as ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, and produce something similar, he said, "but AI would not be able to create whatever Ueda himself will create in the future."
The numbers behind the warning
When Sakurai launched his Game Designers Award in 2010, about 275 games were released on Steam each year, according to Nintendo Everything. That figure is now over 19,000 a year. Kotaku adds that this month's Steam Next Fest alone features more than 8,000 titles and says many of them were built with AI tools and copy existing ideas.
Why originality is getting harder
Sakurai's comments go beyond AI. He said the first challenge is coming up with a truly original idea, and the second is explaining it to a team and a publisher. "You have to get staff to understand that idea, and it's difficult to convey that 'this is why it is fun, because you can do this,'" he said.
He also criticised the habit of describing games by comparison. "Nowadays, so many games are described as XX-like, or games that resemble another one. In other words, the thing everyone else already wants. But originality means you have to create something that isn't already what people are after, and be deliberate with that. It's a high hurdle."
The end of the Game Designers Award
For 16 years, Sakurai helped run the Game Designers Award at Tokyo Game Show, which celebrated games for original design regardless of sales. Kotaku reports that past winners included the original Life Is Strange, Viewfinder and Scribblenauts. This year was its last, and Nintendo Everything says Sakurai could not find a suitable successor.
In his speech at the final ceremony, he struck a sombre tone. "Though it may sound rather grave, originality doesn't actually have a strong impact on sales," he said, as quoted by Kotaku. He compared players to shoppers who stick to familiar drinks. "But an industry that loses that sort of originality will only die slowly," he added. "The industry exists today because there have always been new ideas and experiences, and people making them."
Why it matters
Sakurai is one of the most respected designers in the industry, and his warning lands as studios and platforms argue over how generative AI should be used in game development. His point is not that AI tools are useless, but that cheap imitation could make it even harder for genuinely new ideas to be discovered among thousands of releases. For players, that means discovery tools, curation and trusted reviews may matter more than ever. For developers, his message is that originality is still the thing AI cannot supply.
Sources
- Nintendo Everything: Sakurai warns AI could lead to unoriginal, unplayable games
- Kotaku: Sakurai says gaming needs originality or it "will die slowly"
- Shacknews: Sakurai believes AI will lead to unoriginal games
- Nintendo Wire: Sakurai on AI and "unplayable" games
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