Nordic Game Flashback: Human-led AI
ARC Raiders. Life Below. Expedition 33. Jesper Kyd. This week, stay on the Nordic Game YouTube channel for the AI-track panel that asked the awkward question out loud: if role-playing games are going to use AI, who is still in charge?
The NG26 recordings are still working talks, not souvenirs. Watch what you missed. Send this one to a narrative lead, a systems designer, or anyone who has been told that “the model will just write the quests.”
If you only have time for one video this week, make it this one.
Watch: The Future of Role-Playing Games IS… A.I. | But How?
Alastair Chamorro and Alexander Chamorro (Infinity Fiction), Jeff Gardiner (Something Wicked Games) and moderator John Clark take the main theatre through the session the programme called Human-Led AI: the Future of Role Playing Games. Forty-five minutes. The case study is Tidefall, their living-world game. The argument is narrower than the YouTube title: AI can scale story, but only if humans still own the world, the rules and the trust.
This is why it is worth the 45 minutes.
It refuses the demo. Plenty of AI talks show a chatbot wearing armour. This one talks about consistency, memory, control and cost. The unglamorous list. If you are about to put a model in a live game, that list is the job.
It is about authorship, not autocomplete. IP holders, writers and players need to know the world still has rules. The panel’s line is human-led design: AI scales the telling, it does not replace the people who decide what the world is allowed to do.
Tidefall is a case, not a trailer. Lessons from building and running a live AI-driven game. Reactive worlds, NPCs with memory, consequences that stick. You can disagree with the product. The production problems are the same ones every studio in the room is about to hit.
It belonged on the AI track for a reason. NG26’s first AI track was curated for people who ship, not for a keynote about the future in general. This was the Wednesday theatre session. Narrative people and tech people in the same seats.
It sits next to the other Flashbacks. Embark showed a live game iterating on data. Megapop showed a small team building from a system. Jennifer showed how a story holds. Jesper showed how sound stays after you put the pad down. This one asks who still writes the world when the system can talk back.
Then keep going. On the same channel: Jesper Kyd, ARC Raiders, Life Below, Expedition 3×3, Housemarque on SAROS, Planet of Lana, and the rest of NG26’s 179 speakers.
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NG27 is next! Nordic Game returns to Slagthuset, Malmö, 25–28 May 2027. The AI track is coming back. Apply to give a talk right here: https://nordicgame.com/ai-track/
See you in Malmö.
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