It seems like every few weeks, we’re finding out about another developer using generative AI to create assets for their games, or at least strongly considering it. So I’m pretty intrigued at the latest interview from the dev team behind Pragmata, wherein they said they’re hand-crafting one of the levels in the game to look like it was AI-generated, despite it being fully made by humans.
This comes from an interview published by 4Gamer and translated by Automaton, which has director Cho Yonghee and producer Naoto Oyama from Capcom talking about Pragmata’s New York City-like stage, which was designed intentionally to feel AI-generated to the player. (You can see some snippets of this stage in the trailer below.)
“For Pragmata, we set the premise as ‘a fake New York generated by AI,’” said Cho. “When familiar locations appear, players can relate more easily. On top of that, to make it clear that this isn’t the real New York, we wanted something slightly distorted.”
“It mirrors reality, but its unique appeal comes from the setting errors and how they feel out of place, such as taxis sinking into floors, or buses sprouting from walls,” said Oyama. “Although the premise is that it generated by AI, actually, our human developers painstakingly worked to incorporate mechanisms that express this AI-like uncanny feel.”
Cho goes on to say that this “distortion” of the world is actually very hard to get just right. You want things to look off, but not too off. There’s a fine line between something looking like an AI made it and something just being sloppy work – and the latter can be distracting to players. “Distortion is when something takes a shape that people have never seen before, and things unseen before are considered unique,” Cho said. “But if the shapes are too unusual, players might think they’re related to puzzles or that the terrain has some hidden meaning. Balancing distortion to be both unique and merely background was difficult.”
I’m curious to see Capcom’s interpretation of AI-generated worlds, especially after speaking to them at Tokyo Game Show last year about how real-life AI had seemingly surpassed their ideas of fantasy AI during the process of developing Pragmata. AI doesn’t have too much more time left to outstrip Pragmata, though, as the game’s got an imminent April 24, 2026 release date. As of earlier this month, over 2 million people had downloaded Pragmata’s free demo.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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