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I love Automata too, but if your position on this is "advancements require sacrifices" when the advancements are corporate profits and the sacrifices are people then you might've missed the message in that game
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Serious What’s everyone’s opinion on gaming company using Ai.
- Thread starter Steve
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Shoulder
Koopa
I just mentioned this in another thread, but AI in game development is inevitable.
The key thing is how as a tool it'll be used. Because that’s ultimately what it is. It's just a tool, meant to help assist the developers. But as we know, publishers may use it as a means to benefit themselves, reduce costs, improve their bottom line, enrich the shareholders, and give the little person a big middle finger.
We use automation in the assembly of designing, and constructing automobiles, and have for decades. I see game development following a similar approach where some of the more mundane, and often tedious tasks are left to the vices of AI to handle, such as debugging code, or generating models for an over world. It’s not a question of if, but when it'll all happen, and it’s going to be up to the industry as a whole to decide how they want to proceed from there.
Another way to think of it would be mass producing a pair of shoes for someone to wear. You have a couple different options there. On one corner, you have the fully industrialized, and mass produced looking sneaker from Nike that costs 60 bucks, while at the other end, you have a pair of expensive 600 dollar shoes from Nick's Boots that are completely handmade from scratch, and can be custom fitted to the customer.
So personal opinion is AI can be both good and bad for us, depending on how it is ultimately implemented. I’m not so much as Pro-AI, as I am Anti-Fuck the employees. The engineers, and artists who are making these games don’t deserve to be thrown out on the street because the Board of Directors didn’t make their holiday bonus quota this year. That should be something the Board should have to content with internally, and independent of the workers who put their heart and soul into something, and honestly have done nothing wrong here. They're hired to do a job, they completed said job, and their reward for it is being laid off because the CEO wasn’t able to make that 5% growth YOY happen like they planned for the shareholders In the next quarter.
The key thing is how as a tool it'll be used. Because that’s ultimately what it is. It's just a tool, meant to help assist the developers. But as we know, publishers may use it as a means to benefit themselves, reduce costs, improve their bottom line, enrich the shareholders, and give the little person a big middle finger.
We use automation in the assembly of designing, and constructing automobiles, and have for decades. I see game development following a similar approach where some of the more mundane, and often tedious tasks are left to the vices of AI to handle, such as debugging code, or generating models for an over world. It’s not a question of if, but when it'll all happen, and it’s going to be up to the industry as a whole to decide how they want to proceed from there.
Another way to think of it would be mass producing a pair of shoes for someone to wear. You have a couple different options there. On one corner, you have the fully industrialized, and mass produced looking sneaker from Nike that costs 60 bucks, while at the other end, you have a pair of expensive 600 dollar shoes from Nick's Boots that are completely handmade from scratch, and can be custom fitted to the customer.
So personal opinion is AI can be both good and bad for us, depending on how it is ultimately implemented. I’m not so much as Pro-AI, as I am Anti-Fuck the employees. The engineers, and artists who are making these games don’t deserve to be thrown out on the street because the Board of Directors didn’t make their holiday bonus quota this year. That should be something the Board should have to content with internally, and independent of the workers who put their heart and soul into something, and honestly have done nothing wrong here. They're hired to do a job, they completed said job, and their reward for it is being laid off because the CEO wasn’t able to make that 5% growth YOY happen like they planned for the shareholders In the next quarter.
komicer
Producer @ CDS
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Ok. I gave in to doomscrolling and checked out this depressing thread.
Ya know, I was actually recently quoted in my local (Chinese) newspaper about my thoughts about GenAI (not linking it since it includes my IRL name but you can always try to google it). That article ended with me 'shrugging and admitting that artists gonna need to buck up or get fucked'. THAT interview was conducted many months ago and I think that if the journalist had interviewed me today, I would give an even harsher answer. At one point of that interview, I even quasi-quoted a similar sentiment to this.
The journalist gave a sympathetic laugh and said, 'Don't we all live in a capitalist society?'
It is a very complicated topic. Sure. Indie game devs will benefit from using GenAI since that meant not needing to pay art contractors (like my studio) to handle the design. Even if they do come to us, they come to us with GenAI reference materials to show us what they imagine in their heads. On my end, I'll frown upon seeing those GenAI artworks but... hey, we rather a client share those as reference materials than use those directly.
Then there's the triple A game studios. Nintendo. Sony. Xbox. The bigger indie devs (that have bigger budgets because they dabble in Web3). These are the studios that on paper should have more than enough budget to keep proper human creatives on their payroll to get the art side of games done. Human wages cost a lot, especially those for senior creatives with experience.
At the end of the day, there will be winners and there will be losers. If GenAI proliferate, then the winners will be those who controls capital and get to decide to spend capital on machines instead of humans. And the losers will be human creatives. As a producer for creatives, I don't have an ideal solution other than shrugging and hunkering down. I find GenAI fuckin' ugly but it is efficient. And more often than not, cheap and effective trumps GOOD in the eyes of executives and the masses. Do you rather a $40 game or one that cost $80 (because so much expenditure go into monthly wages for creatives)? Even I, with the benefit of insider financial thoughts, can't answer that truthfully.
As consumers, you can vote with your purchasing power. If you don't mind GenAI in games... then just continue doing what you want. If you DO MIND that GenAI is replacing human creatives in game development, then... you just have to show your support by putting money into your beliefs. Games will cost more and that will be a bitter pill to swallow. But in a capitalist society, the only way to sway the capitalist executives will be with your meagre capital. Show them that GenAI is so TOXIC that the gamer backlash and more importantly, NOT SPENDING is not worth the 'cost savings' of utilizing the tech.
PixelKnight
Observing the process
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This is an extremely vague stance. Which deaths are you talking about in the advancement of medical knowledge here? How are they justified, relevant or comparable to the dangers of AI? I don’t see countries having summits to keep an eye on the medical science community in the same way that AI is almost entirely in the throes and control of tech bros. There is zero comparison between the sum fundamental benefit to humanity of medical knowledge leading to wiping out or being able to treat diseases that plagued us for thousands of years, and the technological advancements in AI so we can make androids paint or whatever daft anime sci-fi thing you’re on about. Sure, both are ‘advances’. So are ‘advances’ in the arms industry. Some ‘advances’ have a greater or lesser positive effect on things than others. AI that lets soldiers target people for death much more efficiently (while flagging the wrong targets, as seen in the death of aid workers in Gaza) isn’t quite the same as the discovery of DNA and vaccines, of wiping out polio or curing malaria. This comparison that is leaning on ‘the benefits outweigh the cost’ just doesn’t work.
For what it’s worth, there are many many uses of AI and it’s good to be specific. AI does have its uses in healthcare, in data/image analysis, flagging up patterns for further analysis, in assisting staff in spotting diseases early, in the raw maths of drug development. But these are extremely specific use cases of tech support that need careful oversight to avoid bias in what they are doing. ‘Advancement’ for the sake of advancement, of handwaving people hurt along the way ‘for the greater good’, isn’t acceptable in the development of AI. If a program assisted in spotted 90% of red flags on a medical scan but turned out to be really, really shit at spotting them in a certain group of people, we wouldn’t say ‘acceptable losses’, we’d say it’s bias was lethal if it led a group of underfunded medics, used to AI support instead of their specialists or whatever, to think that wasn’t a problem. This kind of data bias, of small problems leading to exponentially large issues, is exactly why extreme oversight of AI is needed, and why objecting to using it as a cheap way to cut the jobs of veteran staff most likely to spot those issues is reasonable criticism.
You aren’t being reasonable and ‘in between two extremes’ by dreaming of a fantastical anime android future while saying ‘acceptable losses’ to actual real people impacted. AI is being added to every possible field of technology and science. Constant criticism of corruption, misuse and harmful consequences (or potential consequences) of those uses is not ‘extreme’. It’s very reasonable.
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Mer.Saloon
Tingle
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With these corporations leading this "innovation" they don't give a damn about supporting or caring for those laid-off or denied a future in their field as a graduate/new employee.
Much like the robber barons and sweatshop owners of old who squeezed out this talent, they use this "survival of the fittest" mentality to crush all.
You'd think in this "modern society" we'd have serious support systems helping transition workers into new paradigms and protecting everything they've built up from just being destroyed overnight. Especially when it's their greed driving this destruction instead of nature.
Much like the robber barons and sweatshop owners of old who squeezed out this talent, they use this "survival of the fittest" mentality to crush all.
You'd think in this "modern society" we'd have serious support systems helping transition workers into new paradigms and protecting everything they've built up from just being destroyed overnight. Especially when it's their greed driving this destruction instead of nature.
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Megafan96
Born to be Wild~
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This is how I feel. If crunch can be alleviated, then, good.
More of a chance that it'll be used for faster turnover and the crunch will remain though.
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Yeah yesterday I tried to show my dad what Google searches were doing with AI and suddenly they weren't doing it anymore. It's spotty, like sometimes on low-stakes stuff they'll still pop up but I'm not getting it on every damn search anymore.
Mer.Saloon
Tingle
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It'll be back. Scary how quick Google was able to turn it off. It'll be back slowly like an encroaching tiger.
All this AI situation shows is how when you take away the need to "brute force" finish a game by burning out devs, you'll find a much smaller crew of consistent talent.
Most of 6th gen AAA was unsustainable for that reason. The solution to a game needing to make that final hurdle? Hire more people furiously and then let them go before they have to be compensated properly with bonuses and such. Burn out your talent.
All this AI situation shows is how when you take away the need to "brute force" finish a game by burning out devs, you'll find a much smaller crew of consistent talent.
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Huh, you're right. Good riddance, the answers it gave were so fucking bad. But who am I kidding, this shit will be back
It kept giving so much blatant misinformation, even to simple facts with only one right answer. Like the other day I googled NBA teams who never won a championship and one of the answers it gave me was Boston Celtics, which was doubly hilarious to me because they're the team with the MOST championships and a friend of mine is a diehard fan of them lol
Last time I tried to use Google Oracle or whatever the hell it's called now, it kept saying it couldn't answer any of my questions, no matter what I asked. And at work I was trying to get product support for one of our vendors, and literally anything I would type into their chatbot would cause it to outright crash. Which is ironic because it was an error processing system
And that's not even getting into AI telling people to drink urine or put glue in their pizza or whatever
Hailinel
Musou Mania!
I don't think it's scary that they could turn it off. They probably have it living behind a feature flag they can flip, which is the smart thing to do for any public-facing experimental feature in a website.
If it wasn't that simple, they might have done a code reversion, which can be much, MUCH MUCH more painful.
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- 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖞 / 𝖘𝖍𝖊
oh fuck, I'm sorry for my unbridled fucking rage against this bullshit.Too many swear words. I don't want to read it
bad fucking move on my part, I should have considered adapting my fuck-laden tone to appeal to the fuck-and-shit-averse.
I want to make sure that my facts and opinions about the fucking nightmare scenario we find ourselves in don't shit the bed on the inclusivity front — I'm sorry for making it difficult for you to read in good faith.
I won't let this shit happen again, you can fucking count on that!
It's too broad of a term today, but my default take is that the popular modern "AI" toolsets are horrible for the environment and, currently, seen as a way to reduce worker overhead.
That being said, I see a lot of value in some of the tools being created. I don't think "Company X/Y/Z uses AI" is a bad thing, so long as it's not negatively impacting workers and, instead, takes the form of toolsets that allow them to do better work. I don't want to see blatantly AI-generated materials in a final product instead of an artist being utilized, for instance.
It's a lot of technology still in its infancy, fueled by insane speculation on what it will or won't do.
That being said, I see a lot of value in some of the tools being created. I don't think "Company X/Y/Z uses AI" is a bad thing, so long as it's not negatively impacting workers and, instead, takes the form of toolsets that allow them to do better work. I don't want to see blatantly AI-generated materials in a final product instead of an artist being utilized, for instance.
It's a lot of technology still in its infancy, fueled by insane speculation on what it will or won't do.
TomNookYankees
Koopa
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I think trying to stop the technology is a losing battle and the energy would be better spent dealing with the underlying problem which is that labor movements are going to eventually need to more forcefully take back power and property from the billionaires and police state.
Blue Monty
Inkling
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In every single field AI is being pushed by executives and videogames will not be an exception, it’s now part of the world we have had the good (or bad) luck to live. I think a lot of companies will make a bad use of it trying to cut corners and it will take a while for it to be established as a part of the industry but is inevitable
Darkred401
Cappy
AI has to be seen as a tool/automation that ultimately depends on the intention of the user. it can be used by a developer to help make progress quicker and more efficient for their project but from a company perspective it could be used to drop quality and workers.
it's inevitable and while I see the future potential, it's probably going to have similar growing pains as 3d animation
it's inevitable and while I see the future potential, it's probably going to have similar growing pains as 3d animation
juliotendo
Rattata
Bingo. As long as it is used as a tool to facilitate development, and not a replacement for human creativity, it’s fine.
