AI as a Tool, Not a Creator

Ji Zhang, CTO of Infold Games — the studio behind global hits Infinity Nikki and Love and Deepspace — drew a firm line at this year's GDC: Festival of Gaming in San Francisco. While acknowledging AI's rapid advancement, he argued it cannot perform the one thing that matters most in game development: adding soul.

"AI is definitely rapidly developing, and it is definitely going to shape the game industry," Zhang told IGN Japan. "However, I believe it cannot overcome the fact that it cannot add any soul to content creation. So it cannot replace the jobs of core creators."

Why This Statement Matters Now

AI adoption in the games industry has accelerated sharply. From background generation and voice dubbing to QA automation and localization, AI tools are embedded throughout production pipelines. Against a backdrop of significant layoffs across the Western games industry since 2023 — a wave many attribute in part to AI-driven cost-cutting rationales — a CTO of a commercially successful studio publicly defending human creators carries weight.

Also prominent at GDC was the rising cost of RAM, which threatens to push next-generation hardware out of reach for many consumers. With Valve pausing its Steam Machine rollout and Xbox teasing a high-spec new console, component price inflation is emerging as a structural risk for the industry.

Zhang was unfazed. "High demand for the best memory is really common, just like the demand for CPU iteration, which continues to increase. We believe that the increase in cost is only temporary."

From 2D to Open World: Infold's Technical Evolution

Infold's technology story begins in 2019, when the studio transitioned Shining Nikki from 2D to 3D — a foundational step that shaped everything since.

The two flagship titles diverge sharply in their technical DNA. Love and Deepspace is built on Unity, with a focus on refined character facial expressions and emotional nuance. Infinity Nikki, built on Unreal, tackled the open-world challenge for the first time. Both are free-to-play with frequent content drops, and both demand physics-based materials and clothing simulation for realistic costume rendering.

Rather than relying on commercial engines alone, Infold layers proprietary in-house tools on top and works directly with hardware partners on optimization. "No pipeline at the beginning will reach the perfect state," Zhang noted. "We identify bottlenecks and do the adjustment and fine-tuning."

Implications [Expert Analysis]

Infold's stance reframes the AI debate from a question of capability to one of philosophy: what is the source of value in a game?

AI is likely to consolidate its role in repetitive and assistive workflows — asset variations, testing, localization — but the emotional architecture of a game: character motivation, tonal consistency, player resonance, is likely to remain human-led for the foreseeable future. This is especially true in relationship-driven genres like Love and Deepspace, where the core value proposition is emotional intimacy.

On hardware costs, smaller studios may face disproportionate pressure in the short term. Studios like Infold, with multi-platform reach and in-house optimization pipelines, are better positioned to absorb the volatility.

Ultimately, Zhang's invocation of "soul" is less a technical claim than a design manifesto — and a signal that for Infold, human intent remains the irreducible ingredient in game creation.