Former Naughty Dog artist fears new tech could erase handcrafted games
Matt Radford says new production tools could make today’s heavily handcrafted games look like lost architectural marvels to future players.
Matt Radford, a VFX artist who worked on The Last of Us and Uncharted 4, says he worries today’s games could eventually be admired as historical artefacts because new technology is changing how they are made. 1
Speaking on the Kiwi Talkz podcast, Radford said he hoped large, heavily handcrafted productions would continue to exist, while comparing their labour and expertise with the craftsmanship behind historic cathedrals. 2
Why Radford is concerned
Radford did not name artificial intelligence directly, but he described a future in which audiences might look back at games such as Uncharted 4, The Last of Us Part II and Intergalactic and ask how they were made by so many people using hands-on skills. 1
His comments arrive as generative AI and other production tools become a contentious part of game development. Critics fear they could reduce creative roles or encourage a sameness of style, while studios are also under pressure to control costs and shorten development times. 1
Radford also defended the people behind Naughty Dog’s games, saying that figures including Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley had devoted their lives to making work players love. He questioned whether the industry would always be able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a story-driven action game made at that scale. 1
A familiar argument in a new industry
The cathedral comparison is deliberately dramatic, but it gets at a real tension in modern game production. Better tools can make development faster and more affordable; they can also make certain forms of specialist craft less common if studios stop paying for them.
That does not mean technology automatically makes games worse. It does mean the people choosing how to use it will decide whether efficiency replaces creative judgement or gives artists more room to experiment. Radford’s warning is less about rejecting new tools than about remembering what could disappear when an industry treats labour only as a cost.
Our opinion
Radford’s concern is worth hearing because it is rooted in the work itself rather than a vague fear of change. Games do not become meaningful simply because they are expensive or handmade, but the judgement of artists, writers, performers and designers is not interchangeable with a faster production pipeline. The best future is probably not a choice between old craft and new technology: it is technology that leaves room for people to make the decisions players remember.