There was a time when video game worlds felt deliberate. Every inch of Hyrule, every crumbling ruin in Dark Souls, every neon-lit alley in Cyberpunk 2077—these places felt designed. Like a real person sat down, thought about what would make the world feel alive, and built it with purpose.
Now? We’re heading toward a future where AI generates everything, and it makes me wonder:
If no human actually designed a world, does it still have meaning?
AI-Generated Worlds Sound Great—Until You Play in One
I remember the first time I played No Man’s Sky and realized what procedural generation really meant.
It was an infinite universe, an impossible amount of planets, ecosystems, and alien species—more than I could ever explore.
And after about ten hours, I didn’t care.
Because none of it mattered. It wasn’t designed to be interesting—it was just assembled from algorithms. Every planet looked unique but felt the same. There were no meaningful landmarks, no intentionality behind the world-building—just an endless expanse of randomly generated content that was technically infinite but completely forgettable.
And that’s the problem with AI-generated worlds.
They feel big but not meaningful.
Why Handcrafted Worlds Still Matter
There’s a reason why people are still exploring Skyrim more than a decade later. Why people obsess over the level design of Bloodborne or Breath of the Wild.
It’s because those worlds were designed with intent.
- The hidden paths in FromSoftware games? Placed there deliberately.
- The ruined temples in Zelda? Meant to tell a story without words.
- The environmental storytelling in The Last of Us? Crafted by people who understood how to make a world feel real.
AI doesn’t have intent. It can assemble, it can optimize, it can create technically impressive landscapes, but it can’t make them mean something.
And that’s why AI-generated worlds feel hollow.
The Corporate Dream: Infinite Worlds With No Labor Costs
The scary part? AI-generated worlds are exactly what game publishers want.
Because why hire a team of level designers when AI can create an entire game world in seconds?
- No need for handcrafted dungeons—just let the AI generate one every time you enter.
- No need for carefully placed enemy encounters—AI can dynamically scale difficulty on the fly.
- No need for actual human creativity—because why pay designers when procedural generation can just “fill in the gaps”?
AI isn’t going to make worlds better. It’s going to make them cheaper to produce.
And that’s a huge problem.
The Future: Will Games Still Have a Soul?
At some point, we have to ask: what makes a world feel real?
Is it just about size, graphics, and technical complexity? Or is it about the human touch—the details that make a place feel like it has history, weight, and intention?
Because if we let AI replace world design instead of enhancing it, future games are going to feel like infinite, soulless playgrounds.
And I don’t want to explore an algorithm’s best guess at what a world should look like.
I want to explore a world that someone actually cared about making.