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  • There’s a possibility the profit margins could just get that juicy. You could have a skeleton crew work on a game for a shorter amount of time and get it out there making money.

    This is pure speculation, and a very iffy one at that. Large game companies keep betting on larger and larger projects, distancing themselves from niche genres. It's a huge leap to go from "maybe they will try to make smaller games with AI", which is already speculation, to "indie devs won't be able to survive if they don't use AI too".

    An AI can’t condense all of your inspirations and personality and meaning in the same way a drawing tablet can’t. It’s all in how you use it.

    The tablet can be a neutral medium, an AI is trying to condense the outwardly obvious stylistic choices of countless other artists, without an understanding of the underlying ideas that guided them, while you are trying to wrestle something somewhat close to your vision out of it. I suppose that's like being a director, but it inherently means the result less personal. What decided the shapes and colors? What decided the wording and tone? Who can say.

    People with fewer or no skills might get the helping hand they need to fill the gaps in their knowledge and get started.

    I'd say today there are easy enough tools that getting started is fairly easy, but there's some merit to that. Still... that bumps with the uncomfortable possibility that if AI is widely adopted, there will be less game developer and artist jobs available. Sure, more people could get their start, but could they actually get any further than that?

    • This is pure speculation, and a very iffy one at that. Large game companies keep betting on larger and larger projects, distancing themselves from niche genres. It’s a huge leap to go from “maybe they will try to make smaller games with AI”, which is already speculation, to “indie devs won’t be able to survive if they don’t use AI too”.

      Square Enix, one of the biggest game publishers in the world, has several divisions that make gacha games for mobile platforms. These games are very profitable, and almost every one of them is developed in house. These games don't compete with or replace their AAA games, and they keep on making them, so it must be good enough. It's almost a requirement for there to be a mobile game of the latest Square-Enix game.

      The tablet can be a neutral medium, an AI is trying to condense the outwardly obvious stylistic choices of countless other artists, without an understanding of the underlying ideas that guided them, while you are trying to wrestle something somewhat close to your vision out of it. I suppose that’s like being a director, but it inherently means the result less personal. What decided the shapes and colors? What decided the wording and tone? Who can say.

      Don't underestimate what you can do with fine-tuning. There's more to guidance than just text prompts.

      I’d say today there are easy enough tools that getting started is fairly easy, but there’s some merit to that. Still… that bumps with the uncomfortable possibility that if AI is widely adopted, there will be less game developer and artist jobs available. Sure, more people could get their start, but could they actually get any further than that?

      That I can't say, but I hate that this tool with boundless potential to revolutionize the way we communicate, inspire, create, and connect with each other out of the gate has people attacking it with saws trying to get it to fit into the curtain rod shaped box of capitalism. It's a sorry state. Maybe more people will follow cottage creators with a vision they find appealing, like on OnlyFans and Patreon? We're social creatures, we like having shared experiences in that way. Hell, maybe collaborative projects like SCP in the future.

60 comments