5 ms·

Pretty unusual to see the /r/aiwars slapfights (here presented without touching on any of the obvious rebuttals) make it HN, but I guess it makes sense. I'm sur

by bbor 4d ago

Pretty unusual to see the /r/aiwars slapfights (here presented without touching on any of the obvious rebuttals) make it HN, but I guess it makes sense. I'm sure a sizeable majority of the US population agrees that visual art that involves neural networks at any point is dogmatically Satanic, so that probably includes at least ~40-60% of this crowd, too. It's also a little disheartening for me to see people crashing out about philosophy of aesthetics at a time when I'm terrified of grey goo and killer drones, but that's more on me than him. I'm not exactly doing much to prevent it either, so staying on the previous societal crisis seems defensible! On the (well written!) post's particulars: I can't help but feel like this attitude is... "myopic" is too far, but perhaps... intensive? Namely, it seems to be treating the contemporary craft of game design as some hallowed pursuit that artificial claws are ripping away from us, when in fact I'd argue it's one of the most recent and most rapidly-changing SWE subfields around. Yes, a lot of the skills he learned will be useless. Yes, that is inherently embarassing and anxiety-inducing and enraging, and no, none of us saw this coming (don't believe the scruffies, their fingers were crossed up till ~2018, too!). But is a world in which video game designers get to make higher quality games faster really such a bad one? I've felt frustrated with the scope and polish of AAA games for years, and the quintessential indie dev story involves way too many years of toil. Of course that falls apart if you assume that involving neural networks at any point in the process necessarily leads to worse outcomes, but... well, don't? That's clearly just a dogma, so either open it up to actual scientific experimentation or just adopt a different, more reality-amenable dogma. Living life as an anti-AI purist (or Luddite, I say with the utmost respect for King Ludd) puts you in a cognitive place where the soul of humanity is under seige by shadowy, chrome figures, and the only way to get to a healthier place is to examine that assumption. Like, clearly, software made with Soul and Taste and Intuition and Experience and Consciousness can still be published -- and I'm glad the author and his friend are doing so! The threat is that they might not perform as well in a marketplace ruled by capital, but, I mean... did they ever? Writing your own game engine in C++ was already the equivelant of going to university for Tuba, or striking out as a full-time landscape painter; it was mostly for the children of the rich. *TL;DR:* Would a radical shakeup of the video game world really be such a disaster? Assuming we aren't just assuming a disaster, that is.

johnnyanmac 4d ago
>It is a world in which video game designers get to make higher quality games faster really such a bad one? If that's what was happening it would be great. But we already saw the mobile market as a canary in the coalmine for how this shakes out, and the Steam marketplace is going that direction too. Lots of stuff out there very much not even worth a download, let alone worth paying for and hoping to derive enjoyment from. It may be hedging on overused at this point but: it's a sea of slop right now and curation is needed more than ever. That's not a future you get with more quality games coming out. Steam is a great example because objectively you can assess some hard figures on if these are "quality". I'm not doing such a study, but I wouldn't be surprised if key metrics like revenue per game have cratered in the last decade in part because there's just so much generated slop that is getting very little attention, but accumulates to make browsing for new releases a pain. People aren't biting per game, but it's so cheap that even a few purchases is enough for asset flip essque games to keep on going and roll the slot a thousand times over. This isn't a tastemaking assessment as much as a cold, hard assessment of how consumers are reacting to the current situation. >Would a radical shakeup of the video game world really be such a disaster? With current consumer sentiment: yes. Frustrated consumers who still demand quality will simply not buy new games without a lot of social momentum. Everyone loses out except the asset flippers.

by bbor 4d ago

johnnyanmac 4d ago

>It is a world in which video game designers get to make higher quality games faster really such a bad one? If that's what was happening it would be great. But we already saw the mobile market as a canary in the coalmine for how this shakes out, and the Steam marketplace is going that direction too. Lots of stuff out there very much not even worth a download, let alone worth paying for and hoping to derive enjoyment from. It may be hedging on overused at this point but: it's a sea of slop right now and curation is needed more than ever. That's not a future you get with more quality games coming out. Steam is a great example because objectively you can assess some hard figures on if these are "quality". I'm not doing such a study, but I wouldn't be surprised if key metrics like revenue per game have cratered in the last decade in part because there's just so much generated slop that is getting very little attention, but accumulates to make browsing for new releases a pain. People aren't biting per game, but it's so cheap that even a few purchases is enough for asset flip essque games to keep on going and roll the slot a thousand times over. This isn't a tastemaking assessment as much as a cold, hard assessment of how consumers are reacting to the current situation. >Would a radical shakeup of the video game world really be such a disaster? With current consumer sentiment: yes. Frustrated consumers who still demand quality will simply not buy new games without a lot of social momentum. Everyone loses out except the asset flippers.