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points by Silamoth 1 day ago | 0 comments
Wow, we really do live in the worst timeline. At least a lot of gamers are rallying against generative “AI” slop assets, and indie devs are largely against generative “AI” in general. But yikes, this is just unfortunate.

I don’t want the games industry to be polluted with slop that has no soul. But also, I want opportunities for people to learn or just exist in game development via smaller projects. There is some market for web games, casual games, and generally small games. These markets can be great for indie devs and beginners. But if we lose that market to the slop machine, real people will lose a lot of these opportunities.

[–] simonw 1 day ago
How about real people who want to build a game without first having to learn coding, audio design, visual design, and gameplay design?
[–] Silamoth 1 day ago
What about them? No, really, I’m not trying to be snarky, but what about them? Lots of people want to do lots of things. Plenty of them don’t want to put in the work. So what?

For the record, I was one of those people who wanted to make games. That led me to learn programming and eventually led to a career as a programmer. Lots of others with similar stories. But if you’d given a younger me an LLM, I may never would have developed those skills.

That’s one of my concerns. I have others, like effects on the job market, the general unfairness of all our data being used to train models we’re now expected to pay for, negative effects on the environment, and the way in which LLMs promote inequality and can potentially crush small businesses. How do these concerns weigh against someone who wants to make a video game but doesn’t want to learn how to make video games?

[–] simonw 1 day ago
As a technologist, I see my life's work as building technology that helps people do things that they were previously unable to do.
[–] Silamoth 1 day ago
Okay, sure - maybe. But how does that weigh against any of the other concerns? So we consume large amounts of energy, build lots of new data, emit more pollution, concentrate even more wealth and power in the hands of a few companies, and ruin the job market. Is that really worth it so some people interested in games (but not interested enough to actually learn!) can “make” games by prompting an LLM?

That’s the piece that’s missing from this and other analyses. At least in other cases it makes a little sense in automating work. But game development is a creative endeavor, and the health of our planet and the lives of real people are at stake. Can’t you at least weigh the downsides against the benefits?

This feels like Jurassic Park: “Your scientists spent so much time asking if they could, they didn’t stop to ask if they should.” LLM supporters act like LLMs are inevitable and talk about the benefits, even when they’re relatively minimal. But serious discussion of the risks and downsides is missing. And it has been missing for years now.

[–] simonw 1 day ago
If all we got out of LLMs was that non-game-developers could now build games then no, the negatives would not be worthwhile.

I'm currently of the opinion that all of the other positives outweigh the negatives. Furthermore, I think we can help push the balance to the positive by ensuring as many people can use this technology in as positive a way as possible.

[–] vuurmot 1 day ago
Hopefully you can build something that lets young people buy a house
[–] developerDan 1 day ago
People already had avenues for that: visual scripting, pre-made assets, plugins that provide pre-built systems like inventory, etc.

But just like people who try to write a book without writing skills or paint a mural without ever having picked up a brush, it’s going to be an uphill battle and will likely fail. So to that end I ask: what’s the point? Why are the AI pilled so passionate about the increase in spam and slop and harbor so much disdain for skill, expertise, and dare I say, discipline?

[–] simonw 1 day ago
I care because I like being able to make things, and I like enabling other people to make things.

I don't particularly mind if those things aren't very good. I want people to be able to build things, share them with friends, and have fun doing so.

I'm just not convinced that someone building a crap (or not so crap thanks to Opus 5.5) game hurts anyone else. Just like if you write a bad blog post I don't think it's harmful.

What's harmful is spamming other people with your unwanted crap. So don't ship bad games to Steam, don't setup reply bots on Twitter, don't spam Reddit with slop.

[–] eli_gottlieb 1 day ago
Ok but then what are you actually contributing?
[–] vconnor 1 day ago
My God, imagine having to learn stuff. Imagine having to care, having a burning passion inside, a message that you need to share with the world in any medium.

We can do away with all that. No need to strive to be a complete person, no need to grow, to challenge yourself.

All you need to do is snap your fingers. What do you mean you still feel hollow inside? You should have asked the machine to also give you a dose of Accomplishment for the task you didn’t put any effort in.

[–] vinyl7 1 day ago
Oh no the horror of having to learn a skill needed to accomplish what you want!

I wonder if I can ask AI to make me a millionaire so I don't have to put in the effort to do it myself.

[–] s1artibartfast 1 day ago
Are you saying you wouldn't take the million?

I dont need to milk a cow to enjoy cheese, or build a house to enjoy having one.

Some people enjoy and romanticize the process, and that's okay. Others aren't interested.

[–] xyzsparetimexyz 1 day ago
God you people really can't do _anything_ except prompt huh?
[–] tourmalinetaco 1 day ago
It already is polluted with soulless slop, and has been for around the last decade. Even Nintendo is nothing but a slop mill. Indie is the last bastion, and I personally am happy that more people will be able to develop games and bring interesting ideas to the forefront, not to mention modding and reverse engineered will make games even more customizable.
[–] turpentine 1 day ago
People who know less and have less experience doing things they don't understand are not likely to be associated with quality output.
[–] tourmalinetaco 1 day ago
Sure, however the average game is not associated with quality output. The average game dev is not associated with quality output. Even high budget professional games like GTA VI are slop and probably have codebases that make the devs cry because of outsourcing and rushed production.

Games are not some holy monolith LLMs are encroaching on, and your favorites are not harmed because some random guy has an idea and an LLM can patch it together, even if he puts it on Steam. Even if there will be more games on Steam now of low quality, they will be easy to filter and the good games will rise to the top as it always does.

Besides, some of the most beloved games are inefficient, low quality dumpster fires by any professional programming standard. Just look at Bethesda games, or Roblox in the youth department.

The quality ship sailed when the consoles became locked down PCs and speeds were high enough that uncompressed assets could be streamed directly to the rendering pipeline and the devs could just yell “POOR” if your PC didn’t run it. It’s been dead so long we don’t even know where the bones are anymore because we didn’t put a grave marker.