5 ms·

Can you add a bit more? It would be great to hear the actual counters of how that industry thinks.

forestrywat 2mo ago
I've worked in the industry and agree with the parent. This person hasn't worked in the industry. AI is a bad for the industry for a few reasons: Players hate it. You think the vitriol over "asset store flips" is bad? AI is seen by players as lazy and low quality. Copyright is uncertain. IP matters a lot to studios. Until that's settled, it's caution. Art is never the bottleneck in games. It's why so much DLC is cosmetic items. Artists finish and gotta be making more stuff, but the rest of the studio is still powering through the final feature list. Games are perceived as expressive, artistic, and creative works. Everyone is working together to build something with their human identity stamped in it. This is what we're making, together. The moment you invite slop in, the product isn't art anymore. It's just a product. Sure, maybe shovelware titles will use AI, but audiences will know. The quality of AI assets is pretty mid. They feel samey and tacky. No one wants to play games that feel like the average game. They want games that are novel or familiar in unusual ways. It's expensive to even try. Studios run on razor thin margins and tight deadlines. You want to spend two months on some spike to see if AI might pay off? Good luck, we'll go bankrupt. Production schedules have orders, estimates, and processes. People do stuff in a particular order and timeframe. Disrupting a machine that works and replacing it with a machine that may work is a risk. Best case it pays off, worse case it's development hell, worst case it's a canceled game. Worker solidarity. It's thin in game dev, but it's growing. There's a sense that the top is keeping the profit, and AI is a management driven tool to keep the worker suppressed. It's not universal, but it's present. There's probably a dozen more reasons. Cost of tokens, tracking provenance (did this artist copy another artists work is really really important to be able to prove), high degree of change in AI ecosystem right now disrupting tool chains, it's uncertain how the market will react in the long term to games with AI assets (gamedev is a conservative industry). Etc.
- CorvusCrypto 2mo ago
  Thanks. It's hard as an outsider to evaluate the counters when you have nothing but vague criticism of the comment. I think you laid out the reasons clearly, thanks for taking the effort.
- cpill 2mo ago
  I've read 'Blood, Sweat and Pixels' and it seems that game dev is grinding for 10 hours days, 7 days a week for months to meet stupid deadlines and then having zero job security or profit share. Does that about sum it up? LLMs are going to make meeting deadlines more obtainable (or just move the goal post on deadlines so you still have to do more while working the same hours). This stuff is going to hit for indie devs, one or two man shows, working part time with no budget. The first one to get a smash hit, which will be because of the game play dynamic not the content, with 100% AI coding and be the proof of concept that will change the whole game. Its great for indie devs. No so great for AAA who will actually have to start having original ideas, not just "What if we make another FPS that copies X and Y" After those indie devs start to make some cash they will spend it on original art. Not for moral reasons, but as you say, for originality, which even for humans is difficult these days. AI doomers are looking at this wrong. Its the democratization of the game industry from the AAA monopolies. Platforms like Steam have made this possible.
  - forestrywat 2mo ago
    No, game dev is not 70 hour weeks most of the time. When it is it's called crunch, and it's increasingly uncommon. Not as rare as it should be, but still, getting less. Agree, there should be profit share and should be ownership and job security. Thats true in all jobs, tbh. Good things for a union to fight for. LLMs won't change the ability to hit deadlines because the problem is that deadlines are being set without consulting the teams. And a lot of game dev is finding the fun - experimenting, basically. Am LLM cannot tell you if a game is fun, only playing it can. You need time to do that. And indie devs don't need it. Balatro, Meccha Chameleon, Peak, Silksong, Megabonk, Yap Yap, etc. There's so many incredible indie games coming out and making waves, building the games their studios can build with the funds they have. They are making art, not slop. And people love them for it. You think Vampire Survivors is technically or artistically difficult when it came out? The bottleneck isn't making the game. Indie devs with no skills but good ideas can already make their games with great tools and little effort these days. Games are already democratized.
    - cpill 2mo ago
      Yeah, but a LLM can help you bang out 10 variations on a dynamic and figure out if its fun before committing to production code. You can iterate faster and your not tempted to get attached to the code. If there is something smaller than indie, then LLM will allow them to get off the ground with a smaller/no team. There is no practical argument against something that makes every aspect of a job easier. The honest truth is that ppl are scared all their years of blood and sweat are for nought, but that just isn't true. The only way they will find that out is if they just give it a go and embrace it.
add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago
Making games is hard! All the flaws and limitations of AI can't be handwaved away like they can with business software, the CRUD app shovelware that gets posted here daily. Or with passages of text that look valid on the surface. There's a reason Amazon and Google failed to get meaningfully into gaming, it's because it's something that can't be bought. The more deeply hands on you've been with making games, the less optimistic you're likely to be about automating game dev. Surely individual slop assets are making their way into a game at a low level but that's different than the vague grand vision of "Player directed assets or procedural world creation, dynamic quests" etc.

I've worked in the industry and agree with the parent. This person hasn't worked in the industry. AI is a bad for the industry for a few reasons: Players hate it. You think the vitriol over "asset store flips" is bad? AI is seen by players as lazy and low quality. Copyright is uncertain. IP matters a lot to studios. Until that's settled, it's caution. Art is never the bottleneck in games. It's why so much DLC is cosmetic items. Artists finish and gotta be making more stuff, but the rest of the studio is still powering through the final feature list. Games are perceived as expressive, artistic, and creative works. Everyone is working together to build something with their human identity stamped in it. This is what we're making, together. The moment you invite slop in, the product isn't art anymore. It's just a product. Sure, maybe shovelware titles will use AI, but audiences will know. The quality of AI assets is pretty mid. They feel samey and tacky. No one wants to play games that feel like the average game. They want games that are novel or familiar in unusual ways. It's expensive to even try. Studios run on razor thin margins and tight deadlines. You want to spend two months on some spike to see if AI might pay off? Good luck, we'll go bankrupt. Production schedules have orders, estimates, and processes. People do stuff in a particular order and timeframe. Disrupting a machine that works and replacing it with a machine that may work is a risk. Best case it pays off, worse case it's development hell, worst case it's a canceled game. Worker solidarity. It's thin in game dev, but it's growing. There's a sense that the top is keeping the profit, and AI is a management driven tool to keep the worker suppressed. It's not universal, but it's present. There's probably a dozen more reasons. Cost of tokens, tracking provenance (did this artist copy another artists work is really really important to be able to prove), high degree of change in AI ecosystem right now disrupting tool chains, it's uncertain how the market will react in the long term to games with AI assets (gamedev is a conservative industry). Etc.

CorvusCrypto 2mo ago
Thanks. It's hard as an outsider to evaluate the counters when you have nothing but vague criticism of the comment. I think you laid out the reasons clearly, thanks for taking the effort.
cpill 2mo ago
I've read 'Blood, Sweat and Pixels' and it seems that game dev is grinding for 10 hours days, 7 days a week for months to meet stupid deadlines and then having zero job security or profit share. Does that about sum it up? LLMs are going to make meeting deadlines more obtainable (or just move the goal post on deadlines so you still have to do more while working the same hours). This stuff is going to hit for indie devs, one or two man shows, working part time with no budget. The first one to get a smash hit, which will be because of the game play dynamic not the content, with 100% AI coding and be the proof of concept that will change the whole game. Its great for indie devs. No so great for AAA who will actually have to start having original ideas, not just "What if we make another FPS that copies X and Y" After those indie devs start to make some cash they will spend it on original art. Not for moral reasons, but as you say, for originality, which even for humans is difficult these days. AI doomers are looking at this wrong. Its the democratization of the game industry from the AAA monopolies. Platforms like Steam have made this possible.
- forestrywat 2mo ago
  No, game dev is not 70 hour weeks most of the time. When it is it's called crunch, and it's increasingly uncommon. Not as rare as it should be, but still, getting less. Agree, there should be profit share and should be ownership and job security. Thats true in all jobs, tbh. Good things for a union to fight for. LLMs won't change the ability to hit deadlines because the problem is that deadlines are being set without consulting the teams. And a lot of game dev is finding the fun - experimenting, basically. Am LLM cannot tell you if a game is fun, only playing it can. You need time to do that. And indie devs don't need it. Balatro, Meccha Chameleon, Peak, Silksong, Megabonk, Yap Yap, etc. There's so many incredible indie games coming out and making waves, building the games their studios can build with the funds they have. They are making art, not slop. And people love them for it. You think Vampire Survivors is technically or artistically difficult when it came out? The bottleneck isn't making the game. Indie devs with no skills but good ideas can already make their games with great tools and little effort these days. Games are already democratized.
  - cpill 2mo ago
    Yeah, but a LLM can help you bang out 10 variations on a dynamic and figure out if its fun before committing to production code. You can iterate faster and your not tempted to get attached to the code. If there is something smaller than indie, then LLM will allow them to get off the ground with a smaller/no team. There is no practical argument against something that makes every aspect of a job easier. The honest truth is that ppl are scared all their years of blood and sweat are for nought, but that just isn't true. The only way they will find that out is if they just give it a go and embrace it.

add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago

Making games is hard! All the flaws and limitations of AI can't be handwaved away like they can with business software, the CRUD app shovelware that gets posted here daily. Or with passages of text that look valid on the surface. There's a reason Amazon and Google failed to get meaningfully into gaming, it's because it's something that can't be bought. The more deeply hands on you've been with making games, the less optimistic you're likely to be about automating game dev. Surely individual slop assets are making their way into a game at a low level but that's different than the vague grand vision of "Player directed assets or procedural world creation, dynamic quests" etc.