Posted nine months ago.

Well gestated.

We could have done it in a month with 8 more posts.

Gen-AI use is fine if it’s used within good taste and for generating bulk background props and somesuch. It doesn’t make a gamedev any holier or respectable if they torture themselves by hand drawing 1000 unique titles and textures for bookspines for some NPCs bookshelf.

It kind of does though because they aren’t destroying the environment, depriving people of water and electricity, and directly contributing to fascism to make their game.

(If the comment is in good faith then we all know they aren’t using a local AI model run on solar panels for the work)

Not to mention the artistic theft

I literally know a guy who is working on a game using local LLMs and his house runs 100% on solar panels, so I found this comment very funny.

Good for him. I hope he’s also boycotting Nvidia, training his own models, and not using the weights provided by the rent seekers.

Lool I’m like half kidding. It’s actually really difficult to not partake in some form of exploitation if you’re using any modern technology, just because of our fucked up world.

He sounds cool though.

Jesus fucking christ these assmad downvotes and comments on anything that isn’t “AI bad”.

What are you people thinking?! You do know you are as insufferable as the “AGI will solve economy by 2027” crowd?

It’s hilarious, right? Said as someone on solar array power who uses local models.

…so it’s okay if they steal that work from others who did?

Gen-AI use is fine

It’s really not. There’s already enough procedurally generated GACHA crap. Plus the games that are barely more than T&A Simulator. Hooking this up to the AI pipeline and blasting it into Steam or some similar digital games marketplace is bordering on an act of violence.

It doesn’t make a gamedev any holier or respectable if they torture themselves by hand drawing 1000 unique titles and textures for bookspines for some NPCs bookshelf.

I mean, this is what really separates the Men from the Boys when it comes to game development. You come at this thinking “Aha, what kind of dumbshit would have 1000 unique ideas for tiles and textures? How could that possible add to a player’s experience?” And yet this is exactly what makes a FromSoft game or a Hideo Kojima title or a top tier FF title or old school Blizzard or Bioware or Ubisoft or Nintendo game stand out from the pack.

The loving attention to detail. The craftsmanship and creativity and invention, when translating an idea into a digital asset. The fact that it isn’t just a reskinned cracker box CTRL+C, CTRL+V’d a thousand times across a janky looking brick wall.

You begin to see a game’s age and lack of care when an expansion comes out and people are saying “X is just a reskin of Y” in the reviews. You see its strength when you’re on your 100th hour of Eldin Ring or your eighth Resident Evil game, in a location you’ve never been getting blindsided by a creature you’ve never seen before.

And just to extend, this doesn’t just apply to AAA games or anything. Like look how much people fell in love with and lovingly memed the placeholder art in “Slay the Spire II”. Or how much players are still captivated by the story and feel of “What Remains of Edith Finch”.

There’s plenty of examples of solo devs doing it too, just not as shiny. “Balatro”, “Axiom Verge”, “Return of the Obra Dinn”, “Stardew Valley”… I could go on. People like lovingly crafted things of any size

Why would I pay them for something they didn’t do?

I pay for games I enjoy playing personally but you do you.

I pay for games instead of pirating because I believe that the people that worked on a game deserve to be compensated for their work. If these people are using generative AI that was trained with images obtained without the consent of the creators (and right now it’s very unlikely they are using ethically-trained generators), they are not paying the artists that helped create their images. Why should I pay for the game then?

Yes, because the AI generated the game in a bubble, with no direction by a person. It’s just constantly spitting out games of its own volition with no input from people.

/s

You misread what I said. If a game creator is using an LLM that was trained with art obtained without consent, that is, the artists were not compensated for that use, why should I compensate that game creator? They don’t value the works of others, so I won’t value theirs either

No artist’s work is being directly used. It’s like arguing that artists owe Disney or Studio Ghibli money if they learned from watching their animations.

But the artist was supposed to pay in some form to watch these animations because they are not in the public domain

Agreed. That’s why I believe that all business applications of AI should be taxed, and those funds redistributed to the populace. Everyone conceivably contributed, therefore everyone should benefit.

Right, instead ALL artists work are being directly used to train the models. And no, it’s not like if another human person took inspiration from those artists.

Isn’t it? That’s one opinion, sure.

Do you work for Anthropic or something? Lmao

I’m sure I would enjoy playing GTA6, I really want to play it, but I’ll be abstaining because of Rockstar’s union busting bullshit, the exorbitant price, and the fact that you don’t even get a real physical game for the insane amount they’re asking.

As far as I know they didn’t use any AI, but that’s not the point.

The point is that some things are more important than a game, regardless of how enjoyable it might be. Things like class solidarity, artistic integrity, and other elements of real life.

With how controversial genAI is, you may as well stick with the free asset store for that stuff

You are correct but Lemmy doesn’t like anything that’s not “AI bad”

You are both incorrect and you should reflect on why that makes you a bad person.

Seems so. Nothing I can say rn for my defense, for I am guilty for breaking the circlejerk.

Cop-out for not having a defense

Defenses get downvotes. Ask me how I know.

Who gives a shit about fake internet points? Especially on lemmy. Complaining about downvotes is probably getting you more than anything ai related.

A downvote implies your contribution has no merit - why bother offering something that others will not value? It’s pretty simple.

You’re not guilty, you’ve just come across honest disagreement. Not everyone who disagrees with you is part of a “circlejerk”

No, lemmy is definitely a circlejerk. There’s no room for nuance whatsoever.

I’m nuanced and I’m on lemmy. Try me

If we apply nuance to that reasoning, then Lemmy has some circle jerking and some nuance.

meanwhile, asset packs:

also, the problem you describe is part of the reason why hyper realistic games are a problem and expecting all games to fit that mold is bad. your bookshelf is a background detail, it’s fine if all books are just flat colors. using ai for this is the worst of both worlds: it looks unimpressive (half the reason people like hyper realism in games is that they can go “whoa look at all the effort they put in!”), and it takes a massive amount of space on people’s hard drives for no reason!

Counterpoint: procedural generation in computer games existed at least since Rogue (1980) and is accepted as a well defined way to efficiently make randomized assets and asset combinations via set rules. It aces the tasks with trivial variation like said bookspines, but can go as complex as you set it up. Not everything can be supplemented by proc gen, but it’s usually the answer when you have troubles with quantity of pieces as a priority rather than quality/uniqueness of individual ones. Examples range from Borderlands guns constructor set and Diablo maps, to Minecraft-alike sandbox worlds, to overcomplicated life sims like Dwarf Fortress where multiple systems of algorhytms shape every playthrough in a different way while also reacting to player’s input.

Building such systems needs planning and thinking, but it is a potentionally endless source of intentionally designed stuff, that returns a piece on command.

GenAI though is unpredictable, unintentional and, as long as you don’t build it into the game itself, consists of fixed resources you bake in.

The niche it primarily threatens is not background props, but high effort pieces like visual novel scenes, loading screens art, character’s likeness, strings of dialogs and lore books that couldn’t be proc gened and are created piece by piece by an artist. Making LLM create bookspines is a waste of tokens, and a waste of hard drive space too to pregen them all, it only makes sense if used in place of unique assets. And, these are the things most would prefer handcrafted for they form the face of the game more than anything else.

Also the background props that can’t be generated with procgen techniques due to their complexity, are generally used as training exercises for juniors. Taking them away doesn’t give juniors different work, it takes away juniors completely.

What happened to CC0 assets?? Any problem “”“solved”“” by generative AI already had solutions before.

What if you need or want something custom that doesn’t come from an assetpack or store? Humanity also had solutions for digging holes before excavators came around. “Right tool for the job” is a concept.

Well you just shot your argument in the balls because your original comment talked about “bulk background props and somesuch”, not in-universe unique/important objects that will obviously require custom-made assets from scratch.

And if anything, I’d rather play mindless generic asset flip games than play a single game with AI-generated assets and possibly code as well.

“Things you just made up”

There is no arguing with you people on this issue. AI is just bad and useless on any and all fronts and use cases. and I hate humanity and art apparently.

Welcome to the party, fellow rational person. Enjoy the AI-hate mob that is Lemmy!

Just like Mom used to make

The good old strategy of doing nothing and letting your competition screw themselves

Well, just like China they’re not doing nothing, they’re just making sure to do none of the dumb thing…

UNBEATABLE MENTIONED!!!

I figured this would have happened sooner for every industry.

People resent AI in every way imaginable. I would not even be shocked to find companies who do use AI to be lying about it like this because it is such good advertisement.

The “handmade” label has been used in marketing before. I saw it far more often a few decades ago than now.