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> I’ve spent years learning how to make games, and it’s been hard, and now it feels like that might have been a waste of time? Generative AI is really awful at

> I’ve spent years learning how to make games, and it’s been hard, and now it feels like that might have been a waste of time? Generative AI is really awful at building games that are fun to play. It is a masterclass at reproducing Minecraft clones and shiny HDRP demo scenes in one shot. But, unless you are a total novice at game dev, you should be able to see through these cheap tricks for what they are. 99% of the game dev AI doomer posts seem to spiral out of vacuous demos posted to social media. None of this AI generated slop is actually playable or marketable. I just got done talking to chatgpt about progression sequence for a horror game and it is beyond hopeless. It would absolutely ace any mono behavior scripting, but it's totally ass at directing anything that would make it to the front page of Steam.

9dev 4d ago
Are you saying Assassin's Creed 87 or Far Cry 32 aren't cheap clones of its own previous incarnations? The gaming industry is, to a huge extent, just an optimisation problem for MBAs running the major publishers. Most gamers don't really value creativity, but easy rewards and familiar tropes in eternal regurgitation. AI is going to be able to pump out a never-ending stream to satisfy that market rather sooner than later. That obviously still leaves some space for the occasional streak of creativity or very talented game devs, but that is by and large just a tiny sliver of the industry even today.
- FridgeSeal 4d ago
  Yeah those games exist, and most gamers don’t want them. We’ve not been able to convince the industry to stop bothering to make them, so they still do dumb stuff like, making Concorde, then realising nobody wants it. Indie and non-triple-A studios keep having wind, because they’re the ones producing interesting and fun games which people _actually want to play_.
- bakugo 4d ago
  > Are you saying Assassin's Creed 87 or Far Cry 32 aren't cheap clones of its own previous incarnations? If your goal was to prove that people don't care about how derivative games are, I think you picked some pretty bad examples, because Ubisoft is not in a good place right now. And I'd argue that the main reason behind it is precisely that lack of originality. Hell, even the biggest titans of the "release the same game every year" part of the industry, such as Call of Duty, have been stumbling in recent years due to people inevitably getting bored of playing derivative slop made by people who don't understand what made the originals good, and can only mindlessly copy it over and over.
  - 9dev 4d ago
    That "boredom" has raked in billions so far, and I don’t see that shifting in the market yet you describe to be honest.
    - sph 4d ago
      There is more to creative arts than raking in billions.
someguynamedq 4d ago
No, you're just seeing what it looks like when more people are able to make games. It's not the AI that is bad, it's the person who's not putting a lot of work in that's bad. It's just camera phones.
- dofm 4d ago
  This is interesting because again I think the camera phone comparison is a category error. Camera phones are with you when inspiration strikes — when something reaches you as a person in your actual life — and there is an extraordinary battle to get a camera phone to take a really strong picture. In so many ways they are much more challenging than non-phone cameras. They genuinely have created deep and meaningful new art traditions, provoked and annoyed photographers, shown us new real things we have not seen before, communicated experiences that were until then completely fleeting. Their limitations are obvious and frustrating and provocative, and they place the artist directly within the work. It's acutely social artwork because phones have social permission DSLRs do not. I am probably an above average photographer but still a terrible phone photographer; people make marvels with them, and there is a community of artists pushing to make better things with them, and learning to use them can make you a better photographer in a deeper way. One of my favourite photos by someone I know is a phone camera image, and I have begun finally to get phone photos I like (and several that have been creatively useful in other ways). AI image generators just do not have this strong a place in culture, because they derive only from creative work that already exists. There is one, more narrow place for generative AI that I am maybe slightly more prepared to concede: they have some use in instantaneous internet parody because they communicate using the average of all things already known; parody is inherently derivative. But I still find myself preferring the things bolted together in a frenzy in photoshop, because someone had to make very rushed, knowing choices to do that. They are less forgettable than AI memes, and as a general rule they have more cultural back story and heritage. (Whereas AI "heritage" is usually a back-and-forth modifying a single AI image) In that sense, the medium is the message. AI is being used to trash-talk.

9dev 4d ago

Are you saying Assassin's Creed 87 or Far Cry 32 aren't cheap clones of its own previous incarnations? The gaming industry is, to a huge extent, just an optimisation problem for MBAs running the major publishers. Most gamers don't really value creativity, but easy rewards and familiar tropes in eternal regurgitation. AI is going to be able to pump out a never-ending stream to satisfy that market rather sooner than later. That obviously still leaves some space for the occasional streak of creativity or very talented game devs, but that is by and large just a tiny sliver of the industry even today.

FridgeSeal 4d ago
Yeah those games exist, and most gamers don’t want them. We’ve not been able to convince the industry to stop bothering to make them, so they still do dumb stuff like, making Concorde, then realising nobody wants it. Indie and non-triple-A studios keep having wind, because they’re the ones producing interesting and fun games which people _actually want to play_.
bakugo 4d ago
> Are you saying Assassin's Creed 87 or Far Cry 32 aren't cheap clones of its own previous incarnations? If your goal was to prove that people don't care about how derivative games are, I think you picked some pretty bad examples, because Ubisoft is not in a good place right now. And I'd argue that the main reason behind it is precisely that lack of originality. Hell, even the biggest titans of the "release the same game every year" part of the industry, such as Call of Duty, have been stumbling in recent years due to people inevitably getting bored of playing derivative slop made by people who don't understand what made the originals good, and can only mindlessly copy it over and over.
- 9dev 4d ago
  That "boredom" has raked in billions so far, and I don’t see that shifting in the market yet you describe to be honest.
  - sph 4d ago
    There is more to creative arts than raking in billions.

someguynamedq 4d ago

No, you're just seeing what it looks like when more people are able to make games. It's not the AI that is bad, it's the person who's not putting a lot of work in that's bad. It's just camera phones.

dofm 4d ago
This is interesting because again I think the camera phone comparison is a category error. Camera phones are with you when inspiration strikes — when something reaches you as a person in your actual life — and there is an extraordinary battle to get a camera phone to take a really strong picture. In so many ways they are much more challenging than non-phone cameras. They genuinely have created deep and meaningful new art traditions, provoked and annoyed photographers, shown us new real things we have not seen before, communicated experiences that were until then completely fleeting. Their limitations are obvious and frustrating and provocative, and they place the artist directly within the work. It's acutely social artwork because phones have social permission DSLRs do not. I am probably an above average photographer but still a terrible phone photographer; people make marvels with them, and there is a community of artists pushing to make better things with them, and learning to use them can make you a better photographer in a deeper way. One of my favourite photos by someone I know is a phone camera image, and I have begun finally to get phone photos I like (and several that have been creatively useful in other ways). AI image generators just do not have this strong a place in culture, because they derive only from creative work that already exists. There is one, more narrow place for generative AI that I am maybe slightly more prepared to concede: they have some use in instantaneous internet parody because they communicate using the average of all things already known; parody is inherently derivative. But I still find myself preferring the things bolted together in a frenzy in photoshop, because someone had to make very rushed, knowing choices to do that. They are less forgettable than AI memes, and as a general rule they have more cultural back story and heritage. (Whereas AI "heritage" is usually a back-and-forth modifying a single AI image) In that sense, the medium is the message. AI is being used to trash-talk.