this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
114 points (97.5% liked)

Steam

3121 readers
65 users here now

Steam is a video game digital distribution service by Valve.

Steam News | Steam Beta Client news

Useful tools:
SteamDB
SteamCharts
Issue tracker for Linux version of Steam

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
all 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Well... Who's ready for an endless stream of low quality AI asset flips?

We've already seen what AI-generated books have done to platforms like Amazon. I suspect that this will eventually be the end of "open" uncurated digital storefronts, since AI will eventually allow for crappy content to be produced at a faster rate than it can be consumed and it'll become impossible to discover anything worthwhile.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (2 children)

There are also good stuff done with AI, for example there is this game called Suck Up where you are a vampire and you go door to door trying to get people to let you in. People you are trying to convince are basically chatbots and it works a lot better than you'd expect

[–] big_slap 3 points 11 months ago

haha! I'm def going to try this game out

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

This sounds awesome. Wishlisted!

[–] 8uurg 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am not sure whether AI will make the creation of asset flips much easier though, given that store bought assets are already being dropped into a 'game' already.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

There are only a finite number of easily purchasable game dev assets out there, but in theory there is a nearly infinite of assets that can be generated by AI.

Mark my words, soon we're gonna be inundated with lot of really shitty, mostly AI-generated games by con artists trying to make a quick buck.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

AI struggles to make a complete, composite product. This is the limit on game creation as it is anyway, not number of assets available to steal/download/buy. There are thousands of options for near-complete games out there that can be easily customized further with the millions of art assets out there as it is.

Even then, Steam isn't completely without moderation. It's been possible to automate the creation of asset flips for a while (and we've seen it done plenty of mobile), but Steam makes some effort to remove the lowest quality games and make it ineffective to publish low-quality shovelware. AI is still quite a ways off from being even remotely faster or more effective than just buying a template and filling in the resources with cheap or free assets.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

There are only a finite number of easily purchasable game dev assets out there

So? There is an infinite ability to reuse these assets over and over. You dont need fresh assets to create a shitty game.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Why take already created assets if you can generate everything the way you want it? I found lumalabs.ai yesterday wich makes text to 3D. Right now it could be a good base for someone to generate an idea of the final product and then have a 3D artist re-do them in more details for the final project or just clean them up a bit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

AI is okay to use if you make it do the chores, not in creative part. Otherwise it would be an insult to people who create original content.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As if anyone trying to make a quick buck cares if they are insulting anyone?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

I meant Valve for allowing AI. Hope they can make it right. It's a gray area in my opinion.

[–] CleoTheWizard 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don’t see people talking about AI in games enough. It is indeed a tool but it’s one that I’m very excited about.

So long as the people who record lines are adequately compensated and the tool is used correctly, I’m very excited about its use. It allows games to feel more unique and random without a huge tax on developers.

It’s possible that instead of generic quests in the form of radiant garbage quests, we can get generated quests and storylines in open world games.

What do the artists do? Well, their writing is still imperative to what the AI says. Rather than writing line by line dialog for NPCs, they can focus so much more on world building and characterization of NPCs.

However, I expect this use to be rare and far out. In the meantime, we’re about to see a mountain of garbage. Lots of indie games are going to use this to great effect though I would bet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

If anyone is interested Corridor Digital has been doing experiments with AI and games, and has documented it on their YouTube channel Corridor Crew. It's definitely worth checking out if it interests anyone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

It's cool that we might see titles like "Suck Up" on Steam.

[–] Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug 6 points 11 months ago

That sucks.

[–] Voyajer 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lotta commenters in there citing laws that don't exist.

[–] MindSkipperBro12 3 points 11 months ago

Internet lawyers are at it again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah I can't get too all fired about this honestly. I think llms and the like could be a great tool in a game designer's belt provided it's used well.

And you CAN use it well. Don't believe the hype. If you're a programmer or designer, play with this stuff yourself, preferably using open source models run on your own machine (it's falling off a log easy now with tools like Ollama, even have AMD GPU support these days!).

Of course AI generated drivel is corrosive and horrible, and we should consistently downvote it and educate people about it so it stops being profitable.

For an alternative and erudite take on why all this AI generated crap may not actually spell doom, give this a read if you feel like it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Overall a good idea. Yeah, there are potential legal issues that could potentially come up if court cases go against the AI gen companies, but that's the bridge that will get crossed if (not necessarily when) it comes to it.

One thing I don't get though is the whole "guardrail" thing on live-gens. There is no system that is 100% preventable from someone getting it to say problematic stuff.

If Anthropic and OpenAI can't screw it down all the way, how can some game company do it? In practice, this'll mean that basically no game will come with a live service AI. This is like tying people saying stuff in voice chat to the company running the multiplayer servers.

Well-intentioned idea, but not gonna actually work.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Ima need an AI filter. I don't want that shit in my games. If it starts being in every game, I'll just dig my old Xbox up. 🤷