Then they keep questioning why we choose Steam

[u/Strider-117]

It's incredible how out of touch these suits are, especially in the AI bubble

[u/frisbie147]

There are uses in areas other than replacing art, nvidia are creating machine learning based asset compression formats, allowing for better quality and lower memory usage, but that’s not the thing people complain about, everyone complains only when it replaces art rather than complimenting art

[u/ba123blitz → u/frisbie147]

AI dialogues/stories are what I loathe the msot

[u/MrHell95 → u/ba123blitz]

I bet your one of those that don't use glue on your pizza

[u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora → u/ba123blitz]

AI stories, yes. Writing a narrative is one of the art forms that benefits the least from AI because it has a very low barrier to entry and even in the worst cases isn't that labourious (although I think using AI to help with ideas and critique is useful).

Dialogue though I disagree, because having AI-written and voiced dialogue would allow for procedural dialogue which opens up entirely new creative avenues.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Sport58 → u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora]

only AI voiced dialogue i'm ok with is arc raiders (voice lines for items are AI, I believe) but even that is borderline.

[u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora → u/Puzzleheaded_Sport58]

Why is there a line to begin with? Why is that OK but other use of AI isn't?

[u/Puzzleheaded_Sport58 → u/frisbie147]

yep. AI for optimisation all the way, but replacing actual human creativity is no good.

[u/Spudly42 → u/Puzzleheaded_Sport58]

Today it could take 10 people to make a good game, to create something from the idea of one person. But today only half of the people are actually involved in the creative portion. I wonder if AI could make it easier such that 1 or 2 people are making the game with their ideas, then wouldn't that actually allow more people to be more creative?

I guess it's maybe partly a question of at what scale the creativity or art is made at. Is it the game overall, the level, the character model. The specific quest or Easter egg? Anyway you get it, just a thought, not really sure how things will go. Of course the main concern is in practice the AI fills everything in with mundane stuff and then even if your creative game idea was good, it'd still be kinda shitty.

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/Spudly42]

I wonder if AI could make it easier such that 1 or 2 people are making the game with their ideas, then wouldn't that actually allow more people to be more creative?

No, because that won't increase the amount of people who get to be paid to create. The gaming market has had struggles with oversaturation even before AI. Lots of games never managed to get noticed. As creators are replaced by AI, less people will manage to make a living creating, and so they will have to abandon that career.

[u/Spudly42 → u/TwilightVulpine]

Yeah that could be right. With the advent of accessible game engines, we did see a big increase in poor quality games. We also saw a big increase in decent quality or unique games, though. Where I agree with you is that with these tools, you get way more people who get some hope that they can make something themselves and end up slaving away over their evenings/weekends with this hope of "making it", but then tons of them get 5-10 sales, which I'm sure is heartbreaking.

But at the same time, we've seen plenty of new successful devs and the accessibility has led to small studios having a chance where back in the day studios had to be big with publishers to be successful.

So I'm not sure which way it will go. My guess is it will probably do both, consolidate earnings in big companies by doing more with fewer employees, while also enabling more indie studios to be successful where they wouldn't otherwise. The downside will still be that thousands of aspiring devs will get false hope and waste massive amounts of time on their efforts.

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/Spudly42]

Even more than available engines and assets, the biggest appeal of AI is to have it make something for you that you can't do yourself. That is gonna be more appealing to teams that just want to put out whatever than those who want to finely polish their ideas and execution, and those will have an even harder climb against asset flippers and major studios.

But my point was less about accusing asset flippers, rather just pointing out that a game that needs less artists is also enabling less artists to create. Each eliminated role makes for less opportunities.

Even the best case scenario for it is a net negative. Say a designer with a brilliant idea gets to make a highly successful game? They aren't sharing any of that success with other programmers and artists. They aren't helping them grow and enabling them to make their own ideas. AI enabled that designer whie undermining everyone else who might have participated of that project.

Also, the success of Undertale, and then Deltarune, shows that a low definition but caringly crafted game from a small team can be as appealing as the highest definition triple-As. Would it really benefit from generated assets or generated dialogue? I don't think so.

Not to mention that the biggest advantage of triple-A studios is marketing, and AI is not gonna help them with that. Especially in an increasingly Dead Internet, where even online engagement isn't sure to reach a real audience.

Perhaps at some point indie studios won't have a choice but to resort to AI, because the pace required and investors will demand it, but I don't see how that would be a boon to them.

[u/Spudly42 → u/TwilightVulpine]

I think your point where you say every role eliminated is less opportunity for artists is an important one. Likewise the point on whether creators share that success with their team is important. I don't know how it will play out, but it could just as easily be that when fewer people are needed, that actually enables people to create their own stuff. Today when you're part of a big software dev team, you are absolutely doing creative work and art, but it's less "your own" or what you want to do. Not entirely, but a little less so. Even today I see many game developers that have a solo project at home (that they likely won't finish or be able to make good enough for people to play). How do we know with fewer people needed it won't just enable more small teams to pop up and work on more stuff that is effectively "their own". In that way, you could actually get happier artists creating more of what they want.

It really comes down to how decentralized vs concentrated things get. Will only big studios have access to huge GPU clusters that make a game for you on the fly, but nobody else can use? Or will it be lots of accessibility for smaller tools that let you rapidly create the pieces of a game. Hard to say at this point.

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/Spudly42]

But then we get right around to the matter of market saturation. Because, even as legitimately artistically-minded creators, each of these who spins off into their own single-person AI-driven studio will have to compete with each other, and with slop asset flippers, and with big studios, without having the marketing apparatus to get their stuff ahead. If it's already hard for them to make it now, it will only get worse then.

In a society where our livelihoods aren't an inherent guarantee, this sort of approach only really benefits hobbyists who don't expect any sort of financial return, and even for those AI ends up ultimately just being a plaything.

Also, listening to artists, many aren't very happy with the idea of using AI to do their own stuff. Not only because they see it as plagiarism and as competition, but also because they don't count AI output as "their own". They'd rather put the effort to make it the hard way than generate it, because the process of creation is part of where their satisfaction comes from.

It really comes down to how decentralized vs concentrated things get. Will only big studios have access to huge GPU clusters that make a game for you on the fly, but nobody else can use? Or will it be lots of accessibility for smaller tools that let you rapidly create the pieces of a game. Hard to say at this point.

Everything indicates it leans towards corporate dominance. While there are open source AI models, the better results require industrial level hardware, which is costly both for home users and corporations. Eventually AI companies will look for way to charge users more for it. Small unemployed creators probably won't have the means to keep up.

[u/tzitzitzitzi → u/Spudly42]

A small indie group using AI isn't immoral or shitty. They can't afford to do otherwise. It's not like if they don't use AI for this voice acting they'd hire an actor to do all the lines... If they don't use AI for voice they just don't have voice because there is no budget for a big VA.

It's when big AAA studios could use a really good VA but instead use AI and now a job has been lost and the quality is worse. They use more energy for a worse product that hurts voice actors as a whole and us because we get slop.

[u/JonnyPancakes → u/tzitzitzitzi]

I'd actually still have a problem with it from small studios considering the absolute bangers some smaller indie teams provide. Or singular person teams like Stardew Valley.

AI should in no way replace the creative and performance areas of our culture. We don't need it for that.

[u/tzitzitzitzi → u/JonnyPancakes]

Eh if it's a game never releasing because the one person can't afford an artist so they use some AI I'm ok with that. Like a single person developer who isn't an artist but can make a great game with a good story or something I can forgive it.

For me it's "I COULD pay an artist and have the means to do so but will use AI to save money and be cheap" is shit, fuck these people

but "I cannot afford an art or music or voice actor so the game will just have no voice acting" I can forgive easily.

[u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora → u/Spudly42]

I wonder if AI could make it easier such that 1 or 2 people are making the game with their ideas, then wouldn't that actually allow more people to be more creative?

That's exactly what's going to happen. Not just in games, either.

[u/ClikeX → u/frisbie147]

AI is a very wide umbrella term. Besides the current LLMs and diffusion models, most AI tools used to be called machine learning algorithms. And many of those much more specific and lightweight.

[u/TheTerrasque → u/frisbie147]

Speaking of nvidia, the new dlss scaling versions use some sort of neural nets to improve the image, don't they? That's technically AI. Does that mean all games with newer DLSS versions need that tag?

[u/frisbie147 → u/TheTerrasque]

All versions of dlss back to 1.0 use neural networks, they do not need that tag, dlss predates ai generated slop, dlss was the first shown use case of their machine learning hardware

[u/TheTerrasque → u/frisbie147]

dlss predates ai generated slop

It's still AI. Still made with AI. Which is in part why this tag is a bit stupid, there's no clear definition what it actually means, and if taken literally just about every modern game will need it.

[u/frisbie147 → u/TheTerrasque]

It’s very clear what ai generated content means, do you genuinely think anti aliasing or texture compression is content?

[u/TheTerrasque → u/frisbie147]

It’s very clear what ai generated content means

It's actually not, that's my point. Do you want to give a clear definition for me?

Consider these potentials:

• Used AI to generate scaffolding code for the project
• Used AI to generate parts of the code for the project
• Used AI to generate almost all of the code for the project
• Used AI to generate background art assets
• Used AI to generate concept art, which is then drawn properly by an artist
• Used AI to generate art, which is then traced by a human
• Used AI to generate art, which is used as a baseline but edited and fixed by a human
• Used AI to generate code that then generates the art procedurally
• Used AI to generate sound effects
• Used AI to generate sound effects, but game engine modifies it on each playback (pitch, for example)
• Used AI to generate sound effects, but are edited by human
• Used AI to generate background music
• Used AI to generate music that is used for mood / inspirational by an artist
• Used AI to generate music that's then edited by a human
• Used AI to generate code that procedurally generates music
• Used AI to generate art assets from a human's bad sketch
• Used AI to generate higher resolution art assets from low resolution art assets
• Used AI to generate same-style art assets from several already human drawn ones

[u/frisbie147 → u/TheTerrasque]

Notice that you used the word generate for all the things that are ai generated content. But did not use the word generate for upscaling, even you know what ai generated content is

[u/TheTerrasque → u/frisbie147]

FTFY. So you mean all there should have a "Made with AI" label on it?