On the art part at least, there's an analogy to Unity. No one liked low effort asset-flip games, and they gave Unity a bad name because they all showed the logo on startup due to using the cheapest license. But no one noticed or complained when good games were made with Unity, or even when they selectively used off the shelf assets. Similarly, we're going to go through a period where every terrible game is going to be full of assets with the stable-diffusion slop look, but no one will notice the AI-generated textures in good games that have actual standards for art.
On the other hand, I think I'd personally vote "somewhat negative" on quests and dialogue. Many games have too much pointless filler dialogue and unmemorable sidequests. Maybe if you don't care enough to actually write it, it shouldn't be there at all.
>no one will notice the AI-generated textures in good games that have actual standards for art.
I don't know. Clair Obscur is about as good as it gets and gamers notice. or at least, other devs who are also gamers notice it.
The community was always a much more "hyperactive" scene, and it doesn't seem like AI is an exception. Thing that may blow over in other industries will be eviscerated here, especially in a time where there's more cynicism than ever among the gaming community and the AAA industry.
Gamers are overwhelmingly negative of using Gen AI to replace what artists and designers would normally do. It feels artificial. What they could try doing instead is to use Gen AI for dynamic content generation during gameplay, like how Minecraft generates chunks. But more deliberate and intelligent rather than purely an algorithm. Gen AI is good for replacing not what humans would normally do, but what algorithms would normally handle but aren't great at.
I've always though the current AI technology we have would be perfect for generating new planets or fauna in a game like No Mans Sky. I feel most players wouldn't have a problem with it being used that way.
No Man's Sky already works without gen AI to do this incredibly well. I don't see what value gen AI adds when the current system allows for better tuning of parameters for generation and a gen AI model is more of a black box.
When it's built into the game engine and is used as part of the game loop, responding to user input in some way, and evolving as the game unfolds. (As opposed to just using AI as a tool in the game creation process.)
I'm somewhat of an AI-hater - maybe a bit more lukewarm about it than others - but I thought gaming (RPGs specifically) was a perfect use case for AI just because of dynamic dialogue.
There’s a section “The Specific Use of Gen AI Matters” in the article. Arc Raiders uses GenAI to voice npc characters. I wish it didn’t, but this is not something that’d affect gameplay much.
That’s a little harder to disentangle for a work of art. There is only one and if you want to experience it, you have to take the good with the bad. Plenty of people may hate a particular actor, but will still watch a film featuring them.
Owing to network effects, games can be extra sticky because you want to consume the same media as your friends.
I would prefer a mushy human was responsible for the art I consume, but I am probably not going to boycott a game because it uses AI for some assets.
Doesn’t seem like they surveyed whether use of AI would actually affect purchasing or playing decisions. I think your implication is correct that it mostly won’t.
ARC Raiders uses AI for generated voice or TTS; it's hardly in the same field as generative AI which is mass scraped from the internet and churned out of a matrix math black box. They paid voice actors for the training and likeness, and the AI is used for future flexibility, and the VAs know this and its part of the contract they sign
They also use AI for the robotic kinematics which looks absolutely fantastic. When you blow up robots they zoom around and correct themselves exactly how you would imagine an evil robot to behave
I think AI has the potential to shrink dev teams back down to what they were the the 90s, which would be great for coherency and experimentation. Once you get a big enough org going there seems to be too much design by committee all over the place.
AAA is never going back to 10 people in a garage making Sim City. Nor funding a team that does this. The market, tech, and expectations of a game are too drastic for that to be the norm ever again.
As for the indie scene, AI isn't going to solve the problems on why they don't sell well. It's not assets nor tech that holds the scene back at the moment.
Just a very, very small, VERY vocal minority. 99,9999% of gamers (I was considering putting in a seven't 9, but decided to err on the safe side) just judge the end result and could not give a rat's ass about how it was created.
No. I'd say they are polling mostly completely uninformed people on the interwebs that haven't given this more than 3 seconds of thought before they clicked an option and have almost 0% expertise in actually detecting AI assisted work when it is done well, but since there is 0 cost proposed just prefered 'human' over 'machine'. Basically the equivalent of the beauty contestant's "peace on earth".
Readit News
On the other hand, I think I'd personally vote "somewhat negative" on quests and dialogue. Many games have too much pointless filler dialogue and unmemorable sidequests. Maybe if you don't care enough to actually write it, it shouldn't be there at all.
I don't know. Clair Obscur is about as good as it gets and gamers notice. or at least, other devs who are also gamers notice it.
The community was always a much more "hyperactive" scene, and it doesn't seem like AI is an exception. Thing that may blow over in other industries will be eviscerated here, especially in a time where there's more cynicism than ever among the gaming community and the AAA industry.
sadly, the 9000 layoffs in NA this year seems to show what they really want to do with AI.
So the true opposition is to poor quality content, not GenAI.
Unfortunately for artists, actors, etc. GenAI right now is the worst it's ever going to be, and it was much worse just a year ago.
Owing to network effects, games can be extra sticky because you want to consume the same media as your friends.
I would prefer a mushy human was responsible for the art I consume, but I am probably not going to boycott a game because it uses AI for some assets.
ARC Raiders uses AI for generated voice or TTS; it's hardly in the same field as generative AI which is mass scraped from the internet and churned out of a matrix math black box. They paid voice actors for the training and likeness, and the AI is used for future flexibility, and the VAs know this and its part of the contract they sign
They also use AI for the robotic kinematics which looks absolutely fantastic. When you blow up robots they zoom around and correct themselves exactly how you would imagine an evil robot to behave
As for the indie scene, AI isn't going to solve the problems on why they don't sell well. It's not assets nor tech that holds the scene back at the moment.
I'm one of those gamers. I'm pretty sure we can find more than 8259 others.
But AI has completely legit non-slop use in games: texture gen, 3D model gen, Suno for audio, programming,...