Submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.techspot.com/news/101438-wizards-coast-denies-confirms-magic-gathering-promo-art.html
Wizards of the Coast denies, then confirms, that Magic: The Gathering promo art features AI elements | When will companies learn?::undefined
Fuck it. Not buying MTG stuff again. Only a matter of time until cards are wholesale AI generated at which point you could just generate the card your damn self.
That sounds pretty cool too.
MTG cards can already get pretty wild, to the point that some card combinations almost rewrite the rules of the game.
I hate to think what sort of mad abilities LLM hallucinations would create.
I think all of the card games with random pulls are a bit of a ripoff.
The RPG crowd is the lead in pirating or flat out making their own rules and barely spending money. They just need rules and dice. You need a small group, and there really aren’t tournaments so you can play it however you want.
Table top war gaming in the middle is being filled with indy 3d printed miniatures and home made rules that can take over local scenes pretty easily. 40k still dominates the space, only because most people act like its the only game (it is by far the most common already) and you can buy the minis from most any hobby store. The tournaments are huge, and sometimes the biggest tournaments even dictate the rules just as much as the game seller and most people want to play “tournament legal” armies only.
MTG and other card games are the only thing keeping most hobby stores alive and prints money. it is entirely on for whatever reason, people just want to buy another booster. It is as bad as gambling if not worse, you don’t even know what you are buying. It should be even easier to pirate and print your own resources to play card games but somehow it is a huge money maker because as always, people flock to the largest group of gamers in their space.
Indy RPG and Skirmish tabletop games make boat loads of money for small groups of people and it is easy for them to run circles around larger game manufacturers. Things like 40k and MTG where there is such a huge following of people who might not necessarily care and just want to go to massive tournaments it is much harder to challenge those established followings.
It is as bad as gambling if not worse, you don’t even know what you are buying.
To be fair, booster packs are designed primarily to be used to play in limited formats like draft or constructed. People buying boosters to try and pull expensive cards are doing themselves a disservice by not just buying or trading for the singles they want.
Yes, it makes to do this on purpose. If they convince their customer base, that handmade is better, they can keep down hobbyists and indie devs. With an image as a “premium brand” one can also charge higher prices, though that may be beside the point in that business.
Right? And it’s so easy to say from the start “Yeah, one of the Artist used some AI on some background items.” And just own up to it. AI is at the level of ‘Everyone is doing it’. All you have to do is make some vague promises of “We’ll try and do better and catching poorly done AI in the future” and everyone would just shrug and nod.
It’s the unforced error of lying about it that’s the bad part.
i can excuse hiring mercenaries to rough a guy up for leaking cards, but using AI art is a step too far!
They sent the actual Pinkertons!
Just a quick look at the gauge should be enough.
It was, there was a ton of outcry because of their denial of such blatant AI art. One prominent MTG artist even ended their partnership with Wizards over the lie, which I think is ultimately what caused them to come out and admit it.
They also made a promise not to use AI art like two weeks ago, so now a lot of other artists are unsure if they want to continue their partnership with Wizards after being lied to. Make no mistake, if the artists weren’t willing to put their careers on the line to force this apology, Wizards would have just lied and moved on.
Wizards/Hasbro hires contractors to produce art for their game. They make virtually none of it in house. It’s most likely they neither know nor care who or what produces art for MTG. Besides, they produce so much content in a year, some of it has to be AI/ML generated, so this incredibly unsurprising. At this point, MTG is starting to enshittify by dumping out product as quickly as possible. Their quality control and playtesting has gone out the window. Most of their recent sets are pretty poorly received in the limited magic space. I don’t personally care about the use of AI art, but I can say that for money making enterprises, they’ll eventually have more and more art produced via ML over time, and eventually they’ll use ML to design sets in some capacity, as well. Right now, people are upset over it or annoyed by it on some quasi-ethical grounds of “stealing from artists by not compensating them for the work they produced being used to train the models.” But it’s going to eventually become the norm, purely on the basis that they aren’t going to lose any money from using ML to produce art and they’re going to save money by doing it.
What’s up with MTGs being cunts?
Capitalism
That doesn’t explain Leatherface.
This is like the third time they’ve been caught doing it too.
Yea, I’m sure your personal dislike of AI is absolutely going to impact a companies desire for a worker that doesn’t take breaks, require holidays, food, water or sick leave.
harsh3466@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I had to step away from Magic and Wizards after the Pinkerton incident, and everything they’ve been doing since just affirms how shitty a company they are.
I didn’t bud light the cards I already own, and I still occasionally play with friends, but I haven’t spent a dime on MtG since, and I may never again.
In the grand scheme of things it means shit. Capitalism gonna capitalism, and ultimately, nearly all capitalist companies are shit. I couldn’t function in this society if I stopped using or spending money with every reprehensible company.
But with Wizards, I felt, “you know what, I just can’t do this anymore.”
samus12345@lemmy.world 10 months ago
“No ethical consumption under capitalism.”
But you can at least do what you can to lessen it.
harsh3466@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Absolutely agree. I do what I can to reduce my own consumption.
It’s not a huge thing, but I ride my bike to work as much as possible, try to repair and reuse, thrift shop where I can, and make choices like not giving WotC money.
mossy_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
WotC going nose-blind got me to switch from D&D to Pathfinder. Not sure there’s an equivalent for trading card games, unless yugioh became more comprehensible in the last fifteen years
sebinspace@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Pokémon.
They were the original creators of the Pokemon TCG, and when TPC decided they’d start printing the cards without the involvement of WOtC, they responded with some “scorched earth” nonsense. These guys have needed to touch grass for years.
That being said, I’m surprised there’s no open source TCG.
harsh3466@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m not a ttrpg player, but I followed the OGL nonsense, and that put a pretty bad taste in my mouth. And then they just kept being assholes.
Right now, I don’t need to dump hundreds of dollars into a new different tcg. As it is I’m happy playing with my friends using the cards that I already have.
Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
Same here, haven’t bought anything since the DnD set, and to be honest I only play commander and play less and less and basically only use one single political deck
harsh3466@lemmy.world 10 months ago
All we tend to play is commander as well, and my wife and I have a good variety of decks to keep it fun/interesting when we do play, which honestly isn’t very often anymore.
We used to play weekly. Last year we played maybe half a dozen times.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 10 months ago
My parents gave me all of their hella old cards. I don’t think I’ve ever bought cards since I was given so many.
Meanwhile two of my friends can’t afford basic shit because they splurge on cards.
harsh3466@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That’s awesome. I used to have a good collection of hella old cards (I started playing when the game launched), sold them and got out of the game for a good decade or so, then got back in.
I won’t sell my cards this time around. I’ll hold on to them for the times we do play.