this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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Almost a third of developers think generative AI is a negative for the games industry, says new survey (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Negative for some yes but what i see is a net positive.

To the untrained Ai appears like a super cheap shortcut to make something that looks good at a glance. You know the same glance a shareholder may take at the tripple A game in development.

Its not hard to see where that is going. Tripple A is already full off enshitification, add ai slop and the result will be one stink of an overpriced mess after the other.

Actually non ironically wonderful, i hope they choke on their own fucking budget.

In the mean time actually passionate artists will also be using these tools, not as a cheap shortcut but as a way to get closer to their inherent perfectionism. To deliver what they could never afford to create before.

The video game industry is dead, long live the video game industry.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

For me, ironically, the best use is useless NPCs. Use Generative-AI to make the crowd look huge and unique and not copy-pasted. But don’t use it for anything else.

[–] PixelatedSaturn 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How about open world forests? Any landscape? Big cities? Textures? Sky? Space?

Ai is amazing for all of that and more. Saying it's a negative is soooo dumb. Everything can be done so much easier, quicker and because of it better.

I don't understand why anyone would be against using it in games. I kind of understand with copyright material and we all have ai slop, but for videogames it's brilliant!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But if you put someone with no experience in game design in charge of making this, it will just be another boring generic city or forest. I don’t want the city to look like something I’ve seen before - I want a cool experience. Minecraft and games like these only work because they are sandbox games in the first place and open world in the second. And they also don’t use AI but rather an algorithm and a seed to calculate the worlds.

Xenoblade, Zelda, the Witcher, GTA - they all have handcrafted worlds. Every tree is placed with meaning, every hill used to keep you wondering what you’ll find next, every quest fleshing out to the game‘s world and its characters.

But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt if you show me a single game where AI made something better, heck, it only has to be somewhat acceptable, than a simple seed based algorithm could have done it.

[–] PixelatedSaturn 1 points 1 week ago

Placing each tree by hand is stupid and a colosal waste of time. It doesn't make any sense. Of course you get people to design certain details after, but doing everything from scratch, no one is doing that anymore.

I don't need benefit of the doubt from you. I don't know where they used ai and where they didn't. Asking me to show you that makes no sense.

[–] spankmonkey 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Games and movies have already used algorithms for background crowds and hair movement, AI would just be a continuation of that kind of thing. One reason to be against it for that purpose is because of the concern of how it will be implemented, since those old algorithms were seen as a tool for professionals to use instead of something to replace those same professionals.

The main concern with generative AI is the 'replace your workforce' mentality that is associated with it. The copyright one is secondary.

[–] PixelatedSaturn 1 points 1 week ago

That is surely the case. Iin gaming, ai will save time and hopefully that will only unburden the developers and designers to create even better games. Better graphics, better physics, better computer characters,

[–] Buddahriffic 2 points 1 week ago

I think there's also potential for more organic and dynamic NPC interactions. Perhaps even an AI GM type thing, which would allow players to use information they shouldn't yet know without just ruining the game because if the main mystery is solved in act 1, the GM could just make a new plot.

Not that I think we're anywhere close to an AI that could do that well, but it's just a matter of time (assuming things don't collapse entirely before that, which is unfortunately looking more likely than reaching the tech singularity... Or fortunately, since I'm not sure how humanity will continue after tech makes all of the work we can do redundant, as sweet as it could be for entertainment).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hang on... So could this title have also been written as "A majority of developers think generative AI isn't a negative for the games industry"?

[–] MurrayL 9 points 1 week ago

If you want the exact context from the article:

Almost a third of respondents felt Gen AI was having a negative effect on the industry: 30%, up from 20% last year. 13% felt the impact was positive, down from 21%. "When asked to cite their specific concerns, developers pointed to intellectual property theft, energy consumption, the quality of AI-generated content, potential biases, and regulatory issues," reads the survey.

So yes, the title is an oversimplification, but there are still far more saying it’s currently a negative than a positive. I’m assuming the remaining 57% are undecided/unsure or declined to respond.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Only a third?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Like any tool, it's about how it's used.

But it'll make some real shite possible, cheap.