In a new capital markets briefing from Nexon, Patrick Söderlund, the newly appointed Nexon executive chairman and CEO of Arc Raiders and The Finals developer Embark Studios, spoke extensively about everyone's favourite subject in games right now: AI. More specifically, he talked about how Embark's approach to game development and AI can be deployed across Nexon's teams in some form.
Under a slide titled "Redesigning game development," Söderlund explains that "every company has a plan" when it comes to AI, but "most will get it wrong."
"AI may be a race, but the winners won’t be the first movers—the winners will be the ones who understood the challenge," by which he means fully grasping how and why certain AI tools are used. Nexon, Söderlund remarks, understands this challenge from decades in the industry. All of this history is "context—tens of billions of data points," he says, and "AI makes it usable at speed, and at scale."
But, as Söderlund points out, Embark Studios didn't have that history back when it formed to make The Finals and Arc Raiders. The studio paid close attention to one question: "What needs to be done by hand versus what a machine can do more efficiently?"
"Yes, some of that involves AI," Söderlund explains. "But it’s really about encouraging people to use smarter processes, better tools, and to let go of habits that no longer serve them."
"The initial outcome of that process is two games: The Finals and then Arc Raiders. Two games, built with significantly fewer people, at a fraction of the cost you’d expect for a AAA game."
Both games took advantage of AI tools during development, such as controversial, cost-saving AI voices, which are now being replaced (at least partially) in Arc Raiders. Söderlund commented that "a real professional actor is better than AI," which isn't something I ever doubted, but it does raise questions about the value of AI-generated assets and in-game content—and, if Embark recognises that real voice actors are better, why it used AI in its games in the first place.
Nexon president and CEO Junghun Lee, who spoke about the company's Mono Lake AI initiative, called Arc Raiders a "Trojan Horse", a proof of concept that AI-powered game development can lead to huge successes. It's "a gift that contains a shift in the mindset about how technology frees developers and live service teams to spend more time thinking and less time typing," he explains.
Söderlund's comments and overall approach to AI and efficient game development are no doubt a big part of the reason for his promotion at Nexon in the face of rising costs. "Every leader, team and individual in this company has to start asking how they can get more done with better tools, smarter workflows, and less time on things that don’t move the needle," he said. "Nexon developers are meeting Embark colleagues to understand our process. They are taking a step back and look at how they work – not just what they’re building, but how."
