A conversation about using AI to explore game worlds and early ideas without losing player trust, creative ownership, and the human judgment that makes a game feel worth playing.
Context
Jing Li is a game designer, product designer, and AI product design consultant with a background in game design, systems design, rapid prototyping, cross-functional team leadership, and AI-powered worldbuilding.
Her experience is interesting because it connects two very different parts of game development. She has worked inside traditional game production, including design roles on shipped and unannounced projects, and she now works with AI-powered tools for worldbuilding and imagination.
↓ Provided by Jing Li
That makes the central topic bigger than “AI in games”. The real question is how designers can use new tools without losing the human part of design: empathy, taste, playtesting, iteration, team communication, and the ability to turn vague creative ideas into something people can actually play.
This interview focuses on game design, AI worldbuilding, rapid prototyping, product thinking, and what changes when designers can explore ideas faster, but still need to make those ideas meaningful, testable, and emotionally clear.
Main Topics
- AI worldbuilding
- AI in game design
- Rapid prototyping
- Player trust
- Human-centered game design
- Creative ownership
- Player experience
- Cross-functional collaboration
- AI ethics in game development
- Game design for small teams
Interview
Q: Your background combines game design, product design, systems design, and now AI-powered worldbuilding. How has your view of design changed over time?
My core design philosophy remains the same: Design has always been about crafting an experience—whether that’s navigating an app, playing a game, opening a box, or things we do daily like picking the right water temperature when showering.
The fundamental purpose never changed. What has evolved is how I bring that vision to life.
Working with modern AI tools has shifted my role from being more in a builder mode to being more in a vision holder and director mode.
I now spend more time iterating, exploring new ideas, and guiding the overall direction, using AI as a thought and implementation partner to bring high-detail concepts to life faster.
Q: "Al-powered worldbuilding" сап mean many things. How do you personally think about АІ as а tool for imagination?
I view AI as the ultimate sounding board and creative amplifier—it possesses a breadth of knowledge and rapid execution capability that no single human can match.
However, AI can simulate an experience, but can never actually feel one.
Thus in my worldbuilding workflow, AI handles scale and speed—stretching my research, challenging my cognitive biases, and generating possibilities at lightning speed.
My role remains clear: I am the vision holder, curator, and emotional core that grounds those infinite possibilities into a cohesive human experience.
Q: Where do you think АІ is actually useful in early game design, and where is it still easy to overestimate?
In the early stages of game design, AI is an incredible force multiplier for iteration. It excels at rapidly prototyping simple mechanics, writing baseline scripts, conducting broad thematic research, and even generating quick test assets.
It’s also fantastic for building internal utility tools—helping small teams automate repetitive workflows so creators can stay in a flow state and explore possibilities faster.
Where it’s easy to overestimate AI is in its ability to understand all contexts and deliver the core emotional player experience.
AI models are essentially master translators who don’t actually speak the language—which is why they should be treated as partners, not vision holders.
Q: You have worked а lot with rapid prototyping. What makes а prototype useful, not just interesting?
A prototype is created to answer a clear question—whether that’s testing a player fantasy, a core mechanic, or a very abstract idea that can’t be fully captured in words.
What makes a prototype useful, not just interesting, is getting a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from playing it. If the answer comes back as a ‘meh,’ it isn’t useful yet.
A ‘meh’ usually means one of two things: either you haven’t pushed the execution far enough to find the fun, or you were asking the wrong question to begin with.
A good prototype strips away the noise and cuts straight to testing that single hypothesis so you can learn quickly and make a clear decision.
Q: When а team has а big creative idea, how do you decide what should Ье prototyped fi rst?
When tackling a big creative idea, I break down what to prototype first into three distinct phases:
The Fantasy (First): It always starts with the core player fantasy. I prototype to pass the “vibe check” and find that initial “a-ha!” moment—the spark where, if you saw this game on Kickstarter, you’d immediately want to back it.
The Pillars (Second): Once that magic is proven, I shift to prototyping the core pillars and key mechanics that actually sustain that fantasy over time.
The Reality (Third): Only after the core loop and pillars are locked do I prototype for reality—testing technical uncertainties, edge cases, and production risks to make sure the game is actually buildable on schedule.
Testing the fantasy first ensures we don’t spend months solving complex technical problems for an idea that ultimately isn’t fantasy-fulfilling or fun.
↓ Provided by Jing Li
Q: Your profile talks а lot about empathy, connection, and meaningful experiences. How do you bring that into game design without making it abstract?
I actually don’t avoid abstraction at all. I embrace it—there’s something genuinely playful and romantic about writing a poem that takes time to sit with to fully understand. Sometimes, the most powerful emotional experiences are the ones that can only be felt, not neatly explained.
For example, I designed a game about love and its bittersweetness, which used colors, shapes, and sounds to communicate with players instead of words.
↓ Provided by Jing Li
To me, a meaningful connection in design doesn’t require a heavy narrative overlay; it happens when the emotional frequency of a game perfectly aligns with the player, and when a game serves as a bridge connecting multiple players and their frequencies together.
We bring empathy into design not by spelling everything out, but by creating a space with enough nuance and breathing room for players to project their own feelings, memories, and personal reflection into the experience.
Q: You have led cross-disciplinary teams. What usually helps designers, engineers, artists, and product реорІе stay on the same page during early development?
Keeping cross-disciplinary teams aligned during early development comes down to three things: shared ownership, clear goals and process, and relentless playtesting together.
↓ Provided by Jing Li
- Shared Ownership from Day One: I involve artists, engineers, and product managers with a flat hierarchy right from the initial idea generation phase—not just after a spec is written. When everyone contributes to the vision, they own the goal together.
- Clear Process & Agreed Goals: Establishing clear design pillars upfront creates a shared language across disciplines so everyone knows what success looks like, even if their day-to-day execution looks different.
- Relentlessly Playtesting Together: The single best tool for alignment is playing the build together on a strict routine—whether that’s daily or weekly. Grounding discussions in an actual playable build replaces abstract debates with real, shared player experience.
When you remove ego, set clear goals, and play the game as a team constantly, creative energy stays aligned instead of scattering into confusion.
Q: What do small teams often get wrong when they start from а strong concept but still need to build а real рІауаЬІе game?
When small teams transition from a concept to a real game, they may stumble across four different dimensions:
- Vertically (Depth): Failing to build a focused prototype that actually proves the core player fantasy before scaling out pillars and systems.
- Horizontally (Breadth): Lacking a clear progression plan for how to scale and flesh out the full game after the initial prototype is ready.
- Outwardly (Perspective): Not having a clear picture of who the game is designed for.
- Inwardly (Alignment): Having a fragmented vision—where everyone loves the initial concept, but every team member is secretly imagining a completely different final game.
Q: lf а studio wants to use АІ tools in game development, where should they start carefully?
A studio should start by turning to their team and asking one simple question: “Which tedious tasks would you like AI to speed up?”
Even developers who are strongly opposed to AI-generated assets are usually thrilled to have routine, repetitive tasks automated so they can stay in their flow state.
From there, I suggest starting carefully in three key areas: tooling, prototyping, and ideation. Using AI to build custom internal utilities, rapidly test code logic, or explore broad thematic references offers massive leverage without compromising human creativity.
The critical rule is that AI should never be a shortcut without a vision. You can use it to generate raw material and explore possibilities faster, but the development team must always circle back to curate, review, and assemble the final product to ensure quality, taste, and emotional coherence.
Q: Looking ahead, what part of game design do you think should stay deeply human, even as АІ tools become more powerful?
What must stay deeply human is taste, emotional intent, and meaning.
AI operates on pattern prediction, not comprehension. It can generate a brilliant narrative arc or a complex algorithm, but it has no concept of why those choices provoke joy, tension, or nostalgia.
Because AI lacks emotional context, it can’t evaluate its own output. That’s why the human designer remains critical—we act as the soul and the filter, injecting purpose, empathy, and taste into the raw material AI generates.
People often worry that AI will take our jobs, and while the industry is undeniably transitioning, we sometimes overestimate AI’s ability to truly understand human experience.
Humans are irreplaceable as long as we know who we are. We are complex and creative beings whose nature is to constantly redefine what it means to be human.
Ultimately, AI isn’t a threat to our creativity—it’s a challenge pushing us to elevate it.
↓ Provided by Jing Li
Conclusion
AI can help game designers explore ideas, build prototypes, and automate repetitive tasks faster, but it cannot replace human taste, empathy, or emotional intent. The designer must remain the vision holder who decides what feels meaningful and worth building.
For studios, the best approach is to use AI as a creative partner—not a shortcut—while grounding every decision in clear goals, shared ownership, playtesting, and a deep understanding of the player experience.
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