shoo
@shoo@lemmy.world
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 5 days ago:
You: “I don’t think the small team argument holds any water, [lists examples of popular minimalist indie games, argues for cutting scope and following their style]”
Me: “My project, at the modest scale I designed with my resource restrictions, was only possible by using Gen Ai to speed development of some assets”
You: “No you’re wrong, that’s not what I said, you’re a shill, gaslighting, strawman, narrative framing, etc…”
If you’re not defending your argument at all, I’m going to interpret your position as not worth defending.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 5 days ago:
Right, so everything you said is hot air. If you’re not going to bother defending your position and applying it to a simple non-hypothetical situation then I guess you concede that it’s bunk. Clearly you’re interested enough to repeatedly assert that you’re right, but just saying “gaslighting” and “strawman” isn’t convincing anyone.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 5 days ago:
It’s not a tool? If I plug it into Blender and get a skeleton of an asset I wouldn’t otherwise be able to make with my resource constraints, that’s not a useful part of the process? Just because it has tradeoffs doesn’t mean it has no applications.
I understand people who argue against it on ethical grounds, but I’ll never understand arguing it always makes everything 100% worse. Telling people “just spend X hours learning to make it” or “just pay someone on fivver” or “restructure your project so you don’t need it” just to protect the sanctity of the artform is thinly veiled elitism.
I’ve personally used Gen AI in projects and found some useful applications. My own personal experience is corporate propoganda? Or am I just a filthy plebeian because I couldn’t dedicate multiple days to learning other tools?
If I followed your advice those projects wouldn’t have been finished. You can scroll up and read your own comments, I was on a shoestring budget and wasn’t willing to cut into other responsibilities or shrink the project into a toy. Or is this just “framing” as you say, when really I shouldn’t have pursued my art at all because I wasn’t willing to risk my paycheck?
These are genuine questions, what should I have done? Why would it have been better to do it another way? I don’t want to make a strawman, I want to know how your pontificating results in anything useful outside of an internet discussion.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 6 days ago:
Strange to not qualify the last one as theft. If it’s out putting code, it’s from the same kind of training set. If it’s out putting character responses, they’re from that same literary training data.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 6 days ago:
I’m not perverting any argument, you’re just arguing something completely orthogonal to the point people above are making. We all understand creativity and that having more control and agency in a project is a good thing.
My argument isn’t framing, it’s reality. Time is a resource and the creative process is irrelevant when you’ve got bills to pay. The vast majority of people don’t have the luxury to maintain a passion project, much less the chance to recoup a portion of what they poured into it.
Yes, in a vacuum with no regard for money or other responsibilities, the creative output is better for working through those problems. There are examples of this: Transport Tycoon, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, etc… Usually games made in spare time over years by someone with a well paying tech job or game dev experience.
These indie games having success is very much the exception. The growth of the indie scene came from the wide availability of dev tooling and distribution platforms. Cutting out those hurdles massively expanded the pool of people who could now make games, thus we get more gems.
Not everyone needs to use Unreal Engine or Steam, but having them as an option is the only way that many games get made. That doesn’t have any correlation to quality, they can be masterpieces or shovel ware. Gen Ai is the same, it just lowers another barrier of entry.
The choice isn’t “Gen Ai or flop”. The choice is in how you allocate your limited resources to make your project. It could add no value to a small project or be the key to unlocking a larger project. If your goal is to make some money from your efforts, it can be great at adding that veneer of polish that gets eyes on your game. I’m not one to judge someone for that just because lazy people can also do lazy things with it.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 6 days ago:
You’re certainly free to lovingly craft every byte of a game but that doesn’t automatically make it a better product. You’re describing a creative outlet, not something that needs to appeal to some random customer in the 10s they skim your store page.
Regardless of how important it is to your creative vision, there are some boxes you need to check. Visual texture on an otherwise forgettable wall is that exact case. If you need some background wall art your options are:
- Spend X units of time putting something together. Most likely a poor use of time unless you’re already proficient
- Fundamentally simplify your art style to keep X manageable (your game ends up in the pixel art bin, sales plummet)
- Sacrifice other parts of development to free up X time (content, mechanics and other features suffer)
- Pay somebody else (literally never in the budget for an indie game)
- Gen AI gives something passable in a few minutes
Or everyone could take your advice: if you don’t have the time or money to approach your dream game, don’t even try! In my opinion, more people making their art is a good thing, even if it doesn’t pass everyone’s purity test.
If you’re (rightly) worried about the livelihood of the displaced background artist that’s fine, but complain about the economic system and not the tool.
- Comment on Ancient food are absurdly complicated. 1 week ago:
To be fair, wells and aquaducts are fairly clean ways to get water (read: animals haven’t shit or died in it yet). Rivers and other surface water were as bad as today, if not worse because it was a de facto village sewage system. Water quality issues were also mitigated by a diet very heavy in stews and soups, so less extra hydration was needed.
- Comment on Oatmeal 2 weeks ago:
What am I, some kind of fae creature?
- Comment on [Opinion] Why Are Americans Letting Israel Starve Us to Death in Gaza? 4 weeks ago:
The UN has always been a veto exercise, nothing useful happens there so why would you expect it? It’s as performative as the US Congress with even fewer results. One side gets to tell their constituents “I voted for a good thing” and the other gets to say they defended their national interests on the global stage.
What would happen if this did pass, Israel just blushes and let’s them through? What’s to stop them from doing this in an agreement separate to the UN? Is Isreal really going to go to war with dozens of countries to stop some aid going through? Is the US going to sink their ships? No shot.
All of these countries are just as fine with the status quo as the USA. They just get to pretend there’s a valid reason for their inaction.
The entire global stage is at fault here, but the buck magically stops at Daddy USA no matter who’s in charge.
- Comment on I'm not okay. 4 weeks ago:
Depends on if you have a healthy wild source that can seed itself in. My woodline is almost entirely invasives so it took more legwork to balance it out. I ended up mostly planting small trees/shrubs to shade out the weeds and letting Virginia Creeper spread (love that stuff).
Barring that it probably depends on yard size and local climate. Might be more economical to clear with a sod cutter or spot weed + replace.
Check for local native plant orgs, they can get you plants in bulk. They might also have specific advice, for example if you need to avoid seeding certain plants to protect a vulnerable local species.
- Comment on I'm not okay. 4 weeks ago:
While it’s better than keeping a barren monoculture lawn, keep in mind that letting things grow with no intervention will get you a lot of invasive species. If you want healthier habitat for your critters try to keep an eye on what’s growing and replace the bad stuff with native options.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship explodes on test stand 4 weeks ago:
I understand from your comment that you’ve read too many sci-fi books to understand what a massive resource sink that would be with negligible benefit. It’s pretty basic physics.
We’ve already got cheap transportation, look how that’s turning out for the planet. But I’m sure burning God knows how much energy to launch more junk into space will save the world.
We’re already approaching a critical mass of private equity space trash in orbit, what’s a few more lowest-bidder megastructures? At least the ultra rich will get their life rafts while we burn.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship explodes on test stand 4 weeks ago:
Because the world has actual things in it like people, wildlife, culture and history. Space has none of those things. Unless you’re there working as a scientist to study things that can’t be studied on earth, it’s pointless.
As of now it’s a glorified roller coaster. At its best private space travel could be Disneyland in space. At worst it’s just rich people paying to be carried up mount everest for clout but with exponentially more resources wasted.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship explodes on test stand 4 weeks ago:
… And we need 25k space tickets why? For a cool selfie?
- Comment on Are spiders turtlely enough for the Turtle Club? 4 weeks ago:
Fascinating is not the word I would use to describe that
- Comment on no way right 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on Your household smart products must respect your privacy – including your air fryer 5 weeks ago:
Someone please make a Bluetooth equivalent for smart devices. My thermostat doesn’t need internet access but standardized wireless control is still a good feature
- Comment on Can deliberate noise harassment still be a crime if it's done every day from 7:30 AM till 10:30-11:30 PM? 1 month ago:
Counterpoint, I know lots of people that have also do/have done lots of those things who also aren’t complete psychopaths
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 1 month ago:
That’s kind of a funny example because, on a quick skim, nothing he did was exceptionally clever or unusual (other than workarounds for not having source code). R* basically paid him 10k for some basic profiling that they never bothered to do.
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 1 month ago:
I agree, real code always has tradeoffs. But there’s a difference between a conceptually simple change taking 3 weeks longer than planned and 6 months. The reality is game code is almost always junk and devs have no incentive to do better.
Getting a feature functional and out for launch day is the priority because you don’t have any cash flow until then. This has been exacerbated with digital distribution encouraging a ship-now-fix-later mentality.
This means game devs don’t generally have experience with large scale, living codebases. Code quality and stability doesn’t bring in any money, customer retention is irrelevant unless you’re making an mmo.
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 1 month ago:
When a dev with game dev experience says something should be easy to fix, it’s under the assumption of a reasonable cobe base. Most games are built off of common engines and you can sometimes infer how things are likely organized if you track how bugs are introduced, how objects interact, how things are loaded, etc…
When something is a 1 day bugfix under ideal conditions, saying it will take 6 months is admitting one of:
- The codebase is fucked
- All resources are going to new features
- Something external is slowing it down (palworld lawsuit, company sale, C-suite politics, etc…)
- Your current dev team is sub par
Not that any of those is completely undefendable or pure malpractice, but saying it “can’t” be done or blaming complexity is often a cop out.
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 1 month ago:
Well for one they’re a consumer who paid for a functional game. Nobody expects drivers to break out power tools and mod their car right off the lot.
It’s even more embarrassing when modders do fix it. Some random guy with no source code access manages to fix an issue in 3 weeks that a whole team couldn’t fix in 3 years.
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible 1 month ago:
while harder difficulties turn enemies into sponges that absolutely destroy you in 1 or 2 hits.
Sounds like a normal dark souls experience to me, I see no issue
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible 1 month ago:
A. The game is actually art and the artist vision includes an option making it playable for more people
B. The game is a product that they want to sell to more people, adding difficulties sells more
I don’t see the issue either way. Why care what audience it’s conforming to, you’ll either enjoy the game or you won’t?
- Comment on It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System 1 month ago:
As for middle school, exactly what did you learn that you think is so useful for daily life?
Off the top of my head: basic biology so I’m not dumb enough to be antivax. History subjects that require more than elementary maturity so maybe we can avoid another Holocaust. Enough physics, ecology and chemistry that I can comprehend how climate change is happening. How basic statistics work so I’m not completely lost when someone throws around misleading data.
None of that is automatic from a 4th grade education and is crucial to be a functioning citizen. Learning to take unquestioned GPT answers is not a substitute for actually learning any of those.
You either went to a painfully bad pipeline of schools or were too dumb to recognize the important parts.
- Comment on It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System 1 month ago:
Good god, if you went through an entire education and don’t realize how fucked of a take that is I don’t know what to say. Go try again at a different school maybe?
- Comment on It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System 1 month ago:
The problem is offloading critical thinking to a blackbox of questionably motivated design. Did you use it to solve problems or did you use it to find a sufficient approximation of a solution? If you can’t deduce why the given solution works then it is literally unknowable if your problem is solved, you’re just putting faith in an algorithm.
There are also political reasons we’ll never get luxury gay space communism from it. General Ai is the wet dream of every authoritarian: an unverifiable, omnipresent, first line source of truth that will shift the narrative to whatever you need.
The brain is a muscle and critical thinking is trained through practice; not thinking will never be a shortcut for thinking.
- Comment on Going back in time to see how the fishes and loaves trick was done 2 months ago:
Pretty fucked up for you to assume that random white guy is Jesus. This could just be Marty and Doc eating street fish and day drinking with a local
- Comment on The Source 2 months ago:
Fuck, which one of you idiots launched with the log level at debug…
- Comment on It's a fun new game 2 months ago:
