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

The Osaka-based game developer and publisher, known around the world for games like Monster Hunter and Street Fighter, has one of the strongest game portfolios of this generation. Between titles like Resident Evil: Village and Dragon’s Dogma 2, Capcom releases several major titles each year. Now, the company says, they are starting to use generative AI to help them manage some of the hurdles that come with development.

In an interview with Google Cloud Japan and translated by Media automatonCapcom CTO Kazuki Abe explains how Capcom uses generative AI not for gameplay, stories, or character design, but to generate ideas. Abe explains that everything that goes into a video game must be carefully studied and meticulously thought out.

An example Abe uses is putting a TV in your game, something incidental that most players wouldn’t notice. But artists can’t simply copy the design or branding of an existing TV and put it in the game without clashing with its real-life creator. Abe says that a new design and a new logo must be thought out from the ground up, which is how generative AI helps the developer by not bogging them down on incidental things that still go unnoticed.

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

Capcom’s next big release, Monster Hunter Wilds, will hit stores at the end of February. The developer has also announced new games in the Okami and Onimusha series.

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