Submitted 2 weeks ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to gaming@lemmy.zip
https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/ai-disclousres-debate-valve-dev-response
A Valve artist has defended AI disclosures on storefronts like Steam, saying they only scare those with “low effort” products.
I look at the same way I look at game engines. It’s a tool, which if used in the production of the game should be disclosed and let people decide if they want to buy that product or not.
I’d much rather buy a game made with Godot than Unity. So yeah, list the ingredients
Or UE5, since it’s an unoptimized mess
Yes, we should celebrate transparency. Even if every game includes Ai in development in some shape or form, its good to know what exactly was done. In some cases its even a little less harmless or even acceptable (like generating meaningless terrain) than in other cases.
Check out demos, read reviews. If it’s good it’s good, if it’s bad it’s bad. What does it matter how it was made?
Which demos? Those are long dead on Steam. Demos are now basically paid early access releases…
It’s one of the quality indicators. Just like the game engine. E.g. I know Bethesda games will have shit performance and be bug ridden because they use Creation Engine.
Because AI-gened voices and graphics are terrible in their own right. They’re super unnatural and casually wander into Uncanny Valley.
Also I’m not paying for a product that wasn’t human-made. I don’t want to support those who waste their time talking to a chatbot like a moron.
Nobody who wants to hide information from you has your best interests at heart. Sweeney is a creep.
Stop it, Valve! I can only get so erect!
Good shit, I hope we keep seeing headlines like this nonstop, because you know for sure those AI assholes have bots spamming inboxes with the opposite message.
good response from Valve
I’m a one man team making a game.
It’s a management game and indirectly you control characters, which you don’t see as in-game models because instead you control the ships they’re in or you order them to work in specific positions in the space station.
I would like to actually have distinct recognizable characters with their own voices so that players can identify with them, like them and not want to lose them.
So I would like to have character cards with portraits and as much as possible unique character voices, and given that the game’s visuals are toward the realistic side, the portraits would be in a realistic style.
This means around 100+ realistic portraits and distinct voices.
As a one man team I can’t actually do this without AI - not enough funds for hiring 100 voice actors, not enough skill to do that kind of design or funds to hire somebody who will do 100 realistic distinct portraits.
So either I seriously trim down that feature (say, their speech is text only, and they have no portraits at all) or I use AI image generation and voice generation.
It’s simply not possible to do certain features at a certain level if you’re a small indie - unlike a big games company, I neither have the skill to do it myself (or in the case of the multiple voices, physically can’t), the employees to do it for me or the funds to pay for freelancers to do it, given how much work that involves.
I’ll probably try multiple options and see which works best. Maybe I’ll use AI for it, maybe I’ll cut down that feature to the point that all you have is an name and written text (essentially making the whole idea of players liking some characters nonviable), maybe I’ll find some middle way that avoids AI.
That said, I support disclosing that AI was used in making the game, ideally if it lets me list where an how it was used.
As a customer, I feel I should be able to make and informed decision when buying something, so it’s only fair that the same applies to my potential customers. As I see it, it should be up to gamers to decide if and how much they care about AI having been used in making a game.
You can’t? It’s impossible? I can think of three ways, off the dome, you could do this without AI.
1- stock photo images and vocaloid voices, using an audio overlay so it sounds like it’s just a weird interference.
2- literally use friends, family, and their friends and family for the project. Random people from the Internet who would have fun with it. Anyone who needs to pad their portfolio for acting, headshots, and voicework. Network your solution.
3- do a patrion or go fund me or whatever and one of the tiers, or the lowest tier, is that you get to be in the game.
Hell, for bonus ideas that are things you thought of already, just draw em and do so the voices and it’ll be crappy but that’s fun, actually bite the bullet and pay people, or like you said, do without.
Using AI is giving up. All those games where part of the appeal was the effort they put into it would be nothingburgers if they used AI. Cuphead took off because it was all hand animated, and if they used regular computer animation people wouldn’t have cared half as much, and now it’s got it’s own cartoon and people are still buying merch for it.
So yeah, if you wanna cut corners and use AI, go right ahead, but people will know you decided to waste a huge amount of energy and water to make a lower end product.
Or… you could always figure something else out and let people see the effort you put into this project you care about, and let that effort be part of the selling point. We want games people put effort into, so please don’t water down your grand idea with slop.
vocaloid voices
“Dont use an LLM, instead use machine generated voices!” ???
So, use AI, it’ll be listed as such on steam and there’s nothing wrong with that. Its just stating the truth. Doesn’t mean your project is crap, just means you used it and the store says so.
Yes, that’s what I’m considering and that’s my point of view.
As I wrote at the end of my post, I totally agree with full disclosure as I think buyers are entitled to make an informed decision and many people feel that the use of AI in making a game is something that makes a difference in their purchasing decision.
I’m not so sure it’s devs wanting to hide that they’re using AI. I think is more of a mix of AI use having become an ideological subject for some people (for understandable reasons given the veritable shitshow of speculative investment, fraud and deceit around it, not to mention that many AI models - especially the corporate ones - are trained on other people’s work against the will of those people) and some are absolutist about it to the point of irrationality (that part is less understandable), and many if not most of those making and selling games not wanting to lose a single sale not matter what.
Whilst I hold the principle that buyers should know what they’re getting before they buy it (and I try to be fair on it rather than wanting it for myself alone, so that means that principle also applies to my potential customers and I’m willing to lose sales for that), mine is a one-person Indie, so the company is me and follows my principles. Some in the industry do not hold such principles or just work in or lead companies which they do not own, so instead they want what maximizes profit, and that’s getting the upsides on both sides - one one side using AI to reduce manpower costs AND on the other not losing the sales of customers who are against AI use like that, which would happen if they were informed about it.
In summary, the need to keep it secret is simply because that maximizes profits and the people in the gaming industry who think like that would rather swindle customers than lose profits.
all you have is an name and written text (essentially making the whole idea of players liking some characters nonviable)
People have favourite characters in books and text-only games all the time - don’t sell yourself short on your ability to write compelling characters before you’ve tried and failed
That’s not the point. People fall in love with poorly drawn characters, bad voice acting, and even some times poorly written stories. It’s all about how creative you are. You only rob yourself of the ability to improve or tell an honest story.
Stop the lies. People would not fall in love with every character having the same voice.
Despite all the “OK idea guy”, “you just want to exploit artists”, and “you’ll get so much more creative control if you do it all alone” being thrown at anyone looking for a team, it’s much easier to find people willing to cooperate with you than you think.
I’m gonna be that guy and say don’t use it then. The AI imigies are purely based on stolen art; you’d be profiting off stolen art. I don’t care how legal it is, it’s someone’s hard work being undermined just so your life can be easier. It’s just another way giant mega corps take power from the people. Instead of commissioning some artist or voice actor, you’re giving money to some giant mega corp that can lobby the government to place data centers that poison people’s water supply and increase people’s energy bills.
I’m sure there are stock images of actual people you could get access to, for a fee. That plus some image editing to get the style you want might be a way to avoid using AI for the portraits. I totally understand wanting to use AI for the voices though, that seems fair.
I don’t think there are that many futuristic portrait photos in a consistent visual style available as stock images, unless we’re talking about existing IPs (say, people in Star Wars outfits), which is something I obviously cannot use.
And that’s fair. No one is saying you can’t use it just that it should be listed.
Also, if I read something like your post on the description of a game, I wouldn’t hold it against it. LLMs as a tool to make working class people’s lives easier is great. I’m against it when greedy fucks use it to exclude workers from the process.
You could write the base game without AI, then add the extended AI resources as a DLC pack
That’s actually a very interesting way to tackle the whole thing and opens up an even broader scope than it seems at first sight.
The base game has simple text-only character “speech” with no portraits.
AI generated character portraits with AI-generated voices is a free DLC released alongside the game.
For my specific case there would be no gameplay differences in having or not the DLC installed, only a simpler or fancier version of character interaction.
Also given that some of that stuff is going to be a lot of voice recordings, it makes the base game much smaller.
Its give gamers a choice, which is as it should be IMHO, and it also gives me feedback on how many people would rather have a less fancy version without AI generated elements over having a fancier version with AI generated elements.
That said, I support disclosing that AI was used in making the game
Which was the whole point of the original post.
You don’t need 100 voice actors. A decent voice actor can do multiples voices. But it would still be expensive.
Do you really need 100 differents voices? Even AAA games with large budget probably have less voices, focusing on the most important characters.
I guess you’re not making a typical game and voice synthesis might make sense for your game. Hopefully you can specify somewhere you’re using AI for voice only, not for storyline nor other artwork, to reassure players.
I’m sad people seem to be giving flak for this. Regardless of your opinion on current AI tools, they definitely lower some barriers, which can result in more things getting made because of lower risk.
A good game will be good regardless of where an art asset came from, and some people really care about not buying AI utilizing games. Labeling only scares people peddling low effort crap.
If you’re looking for a way to not use ai for portrait art, one thing you can do is leverage combinations in your favor. Draw 10 noses, 10 mouths, 10 shirt collars, 10 hairstyles and so on. When you need a new character, paste together your pre-fab pieces at random , pallet swap the colors randomly and then touch up the details.
lemmy perfectly proving the point of why devs don’t want people to know what tools they use.
Look at town to city, their characters are like four voxels wide and have plenty of character. You can go the AI route but I think the art would always end up just looking like it’s AI, always just a little bit off. It all depends on the style of your game.
If you’re going the photo realistic route you can still do it without AI, just use something like metahumans or one of the many equivalents.
Tim sure is an odd dog. I just don’t get where this unearned confidence to shit talk comes from.
Money. Money is where it comes from.
"I am rich, therefore my opinion is valid and you should listen to me"
EXTREMELY LOUD 'INCORRECT' BUZZER
Yes but
pays the buzzer guy to play the “correct” sound effect
Is there an asset flip disclosure?
Nearly all games use assets, would be pointless.
Asset flips refers to low quality project that use all store-bought assets without providing any uniqueness whatsoever on gameplay.
Okay, so, complex projects having a small part you didn’t make doesn’t matter?
So pretty much every shop/job simulator?
It’s not seen often that Valve reacts to public comments.
Wonder how the developers who think it’s ok to use ai to copy music/ art, would feel about using ai to reverse engineer a game mechanic they worked on…?
Bold to assume that developers who use ai come up with any sort of original game mechanics.
Yes, and they’re the only ones who’s work can easily be replicated by said ai.
I expect devs to disclose when they use photoshop, IDEs with autocomplete, and store-bought assets as well. Starting to sound silly? That’s because it is
Because store bought assets are still quality assets not a human made. The only reason it sounds silly is because you went out of your way to make it silly.
Inb4 asset stores become >90% AI generated
Silly? No I would love that, imagine if all games listed all the tools used in its creation, it would be so informative!
BrikoX, this is unsponsored opinions, change the title.
I would bet that the steam client has at least 1 line of ai generated code in it.
Where’s their disclaimer?
Why would you disclose one line of AI code. It’s unidentifiable and meaningless. Like saying you don’t want code where auto complete was used and every character must be written by a human finger.
Kind of like using AI to place one single pixel in an image.
Because their forcing the clients to disclose any use of AI for any kind of content including, art, sound and code.
That would include 1 line.
Why would it? The client has been around for ages and hasn’t changed in all that time. So your getting mad about a hypothetical. Your weird.
The client is constantly getting updates. Maybe the visual store layout hasn’t changed to you, but hasn’t updated in years is comical.
gustofwind@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
But I thought ai users love ai why wouldn’t they want people to know? (:
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Maybe because of all the brigading/harassment campaigns? If it weren’t for that I’d think this is totally fine, since it’s good for people to be able to know more about what they’re buying.
Sconrad122@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People are literally murdered IRL for being LGBTQ+. I haven’t seen that be brought up as an argument against having a LGBTQ+ tag on Steam. I think AI users will be OK
gustofwind@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Surely ai users know how frequently the technology is used in bad faith and for nefarious purposes
I think having a problem with the backlash is not a valid reason to avoid disclosing ai use.
They should be mature and self aware and have a problem with the people and developers obviously misusing the technology so much instead
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Many people say AI sucks and they hate it? Must be an organized campaign and not just a widely held opinion!
atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I have recently found a really cool youtube video talking about a reason to not use AI and why some people hate it
Using AI is obviously not nearly deserving of harassment, but, unfortunately, some people on the internet dont know that
pimento64@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Skill issue, either don’t use AI or nut up and ignore the hate. If you have difficulty with either option then replace your computer with a vSmile.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Because AI is a grift for the most part. While you can obviously find the occasional person actually wanting the tech to be more expressive and controllable, most just want to flood the market with slop for their little sidehustle, they saw in a tutorial video.