Games made by single devs still trying to learn, get completely review bombed if they use placeholder assets or mentioning using AI generated code, but there's games like this that are doing just fine? To be clear I don't like AI either, but I find it funny how people act around these tools.
I think there's a difference in how much outrage people will feel if it's between devs trying to sneak AI in and use it as shortcuts (and lie about it), compared to like, a core mechanic of a game openly featuring AI. The concept is obviously an experiment in using AI so it will attract the people who are already interested in that sort of thing, as opposed to attracting everyone and having a number of them get really mad when they realize it's not human-made.
Thats one of the big ones I think. Expectation, and feasibility of doing it without AI. Something can easily be done no AI, but is done with? People no like. Something like this or a modernized Facade though, would probably draw more interest and less outrage since it's explicitly using AI and is something very hard to do without it
I just said the same thing as you but more verbose lol. AI allows us to do things we couldn't do before. If that's how you use AI in your game, fine. Hell, even better would be if AI was used to create deterministic tools based on what it was trained to do, which allow us to enhance games beyond what we could have done before.
But yeah... if you're using it for the things that humans have always done, then you're part of the problem. Although I'm also more lenient on indie devs, or just general use cases that would usually be too expensive for individuals. I have no such tolerance for teams with any funding beyond tiny teams at indie salary level.
One of the use cases I think would be fine for AI is mouth animation and unique dialog. Basically resolving use cases that were never being done without AI, and that AI is uniquely equipped to solve. AI has the potential to enhance games just like it has medicine, math, and robotics - but the corpos are trying to use it wrong.
This game looks like a perfect use case for AI. I wouldn't play it, but it's the sort of thing that is only possible recently.
What I was talking about would be like: taking bespoke voice acting, and using AI to ensure that the mouth moves correctly for every spoken language. Or modifying voice lines to use player self-insert names. For RPGs, allowing the player to say/ do whatever they want, but each character has a defined personality, memories of you, opinion of you, etc (Obviously this would be a huge undertaking but the first studio to crack it is gonna be the next WoW) - another one not really to my tastes, but objectively a technological marvel.
Anything that was possible to put in games without AI - art, music, gameplay, level design, story, etc - should remain untainted. I think that's a fair line. I don't mind it as a research tool or even an assistant in tools (it's damn near impossible to totally avoid AI use at this point), or as a rubber duck. And I don't mind it in experimental games like this where the AI is the point - again, it would be impossible without AI. Just as long as anything that could be created without AI still is.
Ever since I heard of AI TTS as a game dev I really wanted to try to find a way to allow for a voiced NPC to seamlessly say the player’s custom name. I know there’s issues culturally and maybe ethically with AI voice acting, but using it to supplement a single word from an already voiced character feels like the perfect intended use for the tech. To improve immersion rather and enhance the game rather than as a shortcut and cost cutting measure.
My thoughts exactly. The ethics surrounding VA work are certainly one issue there, the other one is "how do we naturally incorporate the word into voice lines without modifying the rest of the line?" I'm sure there's an answer to that but I suspect it will take a bit of work to get right.
Another example would be pattern recognition, for a game like Scribblenauts. There are thousands of options there but I'm sure that AI recognition would make the devs' lives easier on the parsing side of things.
A third idea I've been toying with is "smart controls". Something I experience a lot is sometimes, a character will do something dumb. It's my fault for barely messing up the controls, but sometimes it's not my fault that I messed up the controls (sweaty thumb slip, verh difficult order of things, etc). The idea is, a character should "know" what you're trying to do. If I've been hit off the stage as Sheik, and I have a consistent pattern of using bouncing fish to get closer to the stage, then vanish to get to the corner; sometimes, due to how the controls are set up, she will accidentally fly away from the map, or more egregiously, toss out her grenade instead of using one of her mobility moves. That one almost always results in a death. If Sheik were actually the one fighting, she would never do that, because that action takes a lot more effort to do wrong than a minor thumb slip.
If the character "knew" what you were trying to do, we might be able to have "smart controls" that work more with player intention than raw button input. Now, on the one hand, I understand that this may affect skill expression of fingers on the controller. On the other, I think that these games are supposed to be about outwitting your opponent and having better spacing or timing. There's a huge difference between "damn it my character just killed herself" and "damn I attacked too soon and got myself killed". If the character always does what you're trying to do, then games would probably feel better (except we'd have to own our failures, but I'm okay with that). AI might empower us to do something like this. However, I'm not totally confident that competitive gamers would be okay with it - you'd really want it to have very minor influence, like if a control position was in an "ambiguous" window, it would look for the goal and modify the controls as such.
In any case, all of these would need to be localized AI, none of these high powered online llms.
Anything that was possible to put in games without AI - art, music, gameplay, level design, story, etc - should remain untainted. I think that's a fair line.
I would be ok with AI usage in those if this would be a smaller indie dev. I don't see the problem here - you can't reliably learn all of that yourself and you aren't going to have budget to outsource everything like that. So if a dev is more technical and they do want to use their technical skill to generate those, I will not judge the fact they use AI, but rather I would judge the outcome - whether they actually put work and effort for that AI to generate his vision or did they quickly generated some slop that looks like any other AI crap.
I can accept AI as a way to overcome budget problems. I can accept use of AI as a technical skill that allows to overcome lack of skill in different area. But I won't accept half-assing things - if you want to use AI, then put some work into it to be used well. Otherwise you are just doing a fancy asset flip.
I want to lean toward agreeing - as a solo indie dev myself, though, and considering the fact that there are multiple successful solo devs who have absolutely learned all of those things - I have to say that I still wouldn't be okay with AI art or music. But I'm absolutely okay with AI assisted things - I remaster my music with AI, for example. And it's unavoidable in the pipeline - you can't even google something without some AI assistance. But things like animation tweens for your own art would be fine at the indie level.
considering the fact that there are multiple successful solo devs who have absolutely learned all of those things - I have to say that I still wouldn't be okay with AI art or music
Isn't that just another type of bootstrap argument? "X were able to, so you also should"? There are people who are more gifted in arts and there are those who aren't. Former will learn this stuff easily and latter won't.
From my POV, AI should be the equalizer - artists often have problem with things like code, QA or algorhitms, while tech-minded people often have issues with decent art. Rarely people can do both well. So it should be good to use technology to help you with things that you aren't that great at - to more effectively put effort and achieve the goal, which is your own game as you envisioned that players can experience.
I think we will need to wait for some time for this to be possible, as current AI is largely taken over by big business. But we already see OSS local models emerge and AI is being used to fuck up the corps - so there are first signs that winter may end. Bubble needs to pop, heads need to cool and people need some time to realize that they have largely vented their frustrations on corps usage of technology on technology itself.
AI art is not an issue, the issue is the fact that bunch of grifters and corps jumped on it as a way to stiffle artists and make more profit. But corps and grifters are inherently incapable of using it well. Corps will always cut corners (resulting in mostly slop being produced) and grifters don't want quality, they want to capitalize on trend while it's stil hot. And those games would go in the way of the same attempts of cheaply catching lighting in the bottle. AI Slop games will simply join their older siblings - shitty movie tie-ins, mas produced shareware capitalizing on trends, games that copied whatever mechanic started to be popular and hasty asset flips.
True, and I agree. But I'm still not gonna play a game with AI slop art. There's a difference between AI assistance and giving it the reins.
There might be a little bootstrap argument. After all, I had to learn everything, so it's only fair if everyone else does too. Maybe bitterness if an AI can churn out a better game than the one I've spent years on. Because of that, I am reluctant to support devs that take such shortcuts - especially because Steam was already filled with indie slop that they churned out to make a quick buck. Now it's even more egregious.
True, and I agree. But I'm still not gonna play a game with AI slop art. There's a difference between AI assistance and giving it the reins.
I don't want to sound like I am forcing you to play or sth, it's just that that difference is already within AI use. There is a difference between prompted slop that gives AI the reins and people who actually put in effort to control the output to a high degree (which isn't less effort than actually doing the art yourself, it's just a different type of effort that people may prefer or be better at it). But you make a fair point - there is no point to play slop, why put effort into playing game that even author did not put effort into?
There might be a little bootstrap argument. After all, I had to learn everything, so it's only fair if everyone else does too.
Did you learn and code in assembler? Did you use physical supplies to make physical art and then worked on digitizing it? Did you create your own engine?
Those were things that indie developers had to learn before - so is it fair that nowadays indie devs use higher level code with compiler, make digital art or use an existing engine?
There is always a point in time where new tech takes away some effort - and devs who are living through that are in a position where they can feel shafted. Because they had to do it hard way and new devs can skip some of that work. It can be frustrating - but would you prefer to also forgo the same advances that happened in the past and code in assembler, build the engine from scratch or digitize hand painted art for assets?
Maybe bitterness if an AI can churn out a better game than the one I've spent years on.
It can't. Period. It's just a tool - one that can to much things, but without human guidance it would only generate some half-assed incoherent slop, an equivalent of cheap asset flip.
Because of that, I am reluctant to support devs that take such shortcuts - especially because Steam was already filled with indie slop that they churned out to make a quick buck. Now it's even more egregious.
I mean, there was always slop games since I can remember. Old cover CDs were packed with questionable quality shareware, nearly every 90s-00s movie had a crappy movie tie-in game in the past, when internet had boomed it was also flooded with crappy games that capitalized on you watching ads on site you downloaded it in and when engines started to allow for selling assets - asset flips started to become a flood.
Same happens with AI - because there are always humans who want a quick buck with low effort. It's just new, so most are still deluding themselves that lot of people will buy a generic slop, despite it never working like that before.
Honestly, we need time for this hype to die down before AI use in development can be more civilized - because I do see the state of gamedev right now. But give it some time, let corps burn themselves on shafting artists and wait for thing to calm down.
I think that current problems will result in better gamedev in the future. When people no longer see AI as this new tech that is there to replace them, but rather see the potential that they can use by supplementing things they aren't good at - that's when we wil have another indie boom.
Which will be needed, because AAA development is dying for good reasons - and it would be great if indie and smaller dev studios take their place, using AI workloads to reach AA, if not AAA quality.
Apart from goomba fallacy, you also have to remember the complaints against AI are largely not against AI as a whole. There are certainly people who think the technology is problematic (ethical or environmental reasons often), but a lot of people just don't like how you are replacing human art with automatically generated slop. The perception is if you are willing to do it during dev, you are willing to do it for the release. Additionally, on the coding side AI coding is largely associated with not actually reviewing the code and no one wants to use software where the developer themselves is not backing their own software.
Yep I dislike it if a dev uses AI generated art. But if AI is used for instance to make npc’s act really smart or you can communicate with them. Then I’d see that as a good use for it.
Edit: same goes for AI that solves math we humans can’t figure out, or do medical stuff that is literally humanly impossible. There can be a lot of benefit from AI if used correctly. Sadly, capitalism…
Things like solving medical problems sounds fine, but I doubt I could enjoy a game where the NPC reactions are based on AI. It would be too easy for it to take me out of the game and break any immersion.
To add there are a lot of AI games which also simultaneously notes your reactions to add to the AI, and aren't always upfront about it.
Sort of Goomba Fallacy, but also not like I'm not identifying a strong and growing pattern. I'm not assuming they are the same people who are acting in opposite ways. Just interesting how some people can't get enough of it, and others out right want anyone who has ever touched it to suffer. Like I said, I don't like AI (in its current use) either.
The perception is if you are willing to do it during dev, you are willing to do it for the release.
This mentality just enables larger game studios, while making it harder for indi devs. I don't know if it's an actually authentic sentiment from people, but it only hurts the little guys.
Meanwhile you have people who still think a developer and publisher that allows their IP to be in Fortnite, the game heavily focused on AI production pipelines, is somehow actually against AI in practice. It's weird.
I'd say it's authentic. People are fed up with fly-by-night "look what I made" sloppers, so it's hard to take a nuanced case by case basis like "well I can tell they only used AI to generate some art, but I'm confident they closely reviewed the rest of the game code and didn't generate that with a single prompt."
Alright maybe I jumped the gun there. I assume there must be some reasoning as to why they want to keep the demo running at a loss. Like if it is getting good attention and interaction, we could call that "doing fine", even if the game isn't in a release state yet.
Some of the people playing this game are probably doing it because it costs the vibe coding dev money. The demo being popular is probably not a sign of a successful release.
That is actually a very good sign for the business. It means demand is very high, but they didn't have an extra $100k lying around to keep the thing running until it properly releases in January. They are presumably intending to a) monetize the success and b) pay back the loan once they do. It's normal to need capital to start a business.
i got review bombed by a combination of sock accounts/bot/paid at early access.
I also received a death threat within hours of early access launch.
And then same week we found out my wife had cancer which needed rapid treatment.
Most of that hate is because i sent a cease and desist to a competitor for camping my game's name which none of the developers of our niche had done, but yet i still get negative reviews each update.
Valve wouldn't delete the obvious throw away account reviews, nor stop the obvious copycat effort that basically stole my game and ran, but that's ok because all we can do is...
No one is complaining about using AI to have smart NPCs. People complain about using AI to generate soulless dialogue, voice acting, characters, and shitty ripoffs of other games. Like what did you want the indie dev to do? Program an AI that can follow instructions?
I am noting that there is a community where those people have greatly different reactions and opinions on a related topic. Please explain Goomba fallacy to me.
No idea why its called that, but its the fallacy of assuming a entire group is uniform. A lot of times when people point out a group keeps changing their mind, the reality is a noisy part of the group had one opinion than a noisy different part had another opinion.
There are some gamers who are against AI and some gamers who are pro AI. The ones against sound like they speak for the whole group, but then those who are neutral or for it play games like this.
Every day there is a simulator game that is full on AI. They are somehow allowed a hall pass on the AI boycotting. Very curious on the blanket demographic for things like Wrap House Simulator and why that audience gives free passes.
To be clear, "so popular" in this case is 500 concurrent players.
Surely a big hit for a first time indie dev, but it's not insanely popular, they just weren't prepared for literally anyone to play this game apparently, and are using this as a marketing stunt.
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u/N0t_my_0ther_account 1d ago
Games made by single devs still trying to learn, get completely review bombed if they use placeholder assets or mentioning using AI generated code, but there's games like this that are doing just fine? To be clear I don't like AI either, but I find it funny how people act around these tools.