Dragon Age co-creator David Gaider calls generative AI a "terrible plague" on game development

David Gaider, a former BioWare writer and co-creator of the Dragon Age franchise, told GamesRadar in an interview that generative artificial intelligence is a "terrible plague" that keeps aspiring developers from learning the craft of making games.

Who is David Gaider

Gaider spent nearly two decades at BioWare, where he was lead writer on the Dragon Age trilogy. He also worked on Baldur's Gate II and Star Wars: The Old Republic, two of the industry's best-known RPGs. He left BioWare in 2016 and later co-founded indie studio Summerfall Studios, where he served as narrative director on the musical visual novel Stray Gods. His opinion as a narrative design veteran carries weight precisely because Gaider made his living for decades from the very craft he now warns is being devalued.

What's the problem with generative AI

Gaider argues that generative tools do less to help aspiring developers than to rob them of the hard but necessary process of learning the craft. Writing dialogue, branching storylines, and game systems takes practice, and text generated by a neural network can't replace it. The concern isn't occasional help for an experienced writer. It's the risk to newcomers, who may get used to offloading the thinking itself to a neural network instead of building their own skills.

"It's a terrible plague,"

Gaider said of generative AI's impact on game development in his conversation with GamesRadar.

Why the AI debate in game development is heating up

Gaider's stance reflects broader anxiety across the games industry. Studios ranging from major publishers to indie developers are increasingly experimenting with generative models for text, concept art, and voice work to speed up production and cut costs. Meanwhile, writers, artists, and other creative professionals keep warning that this devalues their work and denies a new generation of developers the chance to learn fundamental skills through practice, rather than just by working from ready-made AI drafts.

Similar concerns have surfaced outside the games industry too, for example during the Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes, which pushed for contract limits on unchecked AI use, and in disputes over AI art, where artists accuse companies of training models on their work without consent.

The games industry as a whole is going through a rough patch. Waves of layoffs in recent years have hit both major studios and publishers, and some laid-off developers and unions directly tie some of those decisions to management's expectations that generative tools will speed up content production. Against that backdrop, comments from veterans like Gaider read not as abstract moralizing but as a warning about a concrete professional risk for people just starting careers as writers or game designers.

What it means

The debate over generative AI's place in game development is far from settled. Some studios see it as a way to speed up routine work, while industry veterans like Gaider warn that today's convenience could become a skills shortage among tomorrow's developers. Until the industry agrees on common rules for using generative models in game production, public statements like this from experienced writers remain perhaps the main point of reference for aspiring writers deciding which tools to trust in their own work.