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Why I will never use AI, EVEN IF it works.

A topic by Garmpeeld created 29 days ago Views: 288 Replies: 12
Viewing posts 1 to 8
(+4)

This is something that just occurred to me as to why AI in games just ruins the whole thing in my opinion. There’s a lot of discussion about AI assets looking bad, or badly optimized, code having mistakes, AI music sounding generic. But for me, that’s not the real reason I don’t want to use it at all. Even if there were no ‘mistakes’, one of the things I love about itch is getting to share and play works that are made by other people. When someone plays my game I want them to know that every texture came from someone, maybe even their specific house or city, maybe they painted the details. Someone made the music, they put some kind of thought into every note. All of it was put together in a certain way by another person.

And that’s interesting. Even if the texture looks janky, even if the music is weird, or whatever else. I’d rather make a shitty game than use AI. Because I’d rather PLAY a shitty game that has a person behind it that has a life and a point of view. Just going through it knowing every small decision was made by someone at some point in the process. Maybe their skills are amazing, maybe they’re a beginner and still learning. The human creator IS THE POINT. There will be a day when AI can draw and model better than us, can write a better track than us, can make better games than us, and faster. I don’t really care. I don’t wanna play that. I want to play everyone else’s weird, flawed, beautiful human trash. And I hope people would rather play mine, too.

This is very true.

Service over product.

(+1)

I can tell you from experience: Nobody cares. 

Not about you or your post, I don't mean it like an attack, I mean that nobody really cares about the stuff they say they care about in regards to all of this.

Beyond gaming, people in general are never to be trusted with what they say when you can watch what they do.

Me, personally, I love hand-drawn stuff and having grown up through the onset of computer technology, I actually prefer the imperfections. But me as an individual, I am not the market and I am not a target audience.

If this were true--if people spent their money accordingly--then the AAA gaming industry would never have risen in the first place and it certainly wouldn't still be around today. Nor would Disney, or Paramount, or Apple Iphones. How many people abhor slavery but buy Apple products? Or abhor native population displacement but still buy Coca-Cola? It isn't even a secret, the horrors are well-documented for anyone to look up.

If you have come to this realization naturally, then good on you. Stick with it--but know it means a slow and painful journey that no one but you will actually care about. However, if any part of you feels like you are navigating a hostile environment--then my only advice is to ignore the people that rage at you and do whatever it is you do best.

The guy who stuck with his flip-phone when everyone else switched to smart phones was "edgy" back then. Today, they are nothing but a total annoyance and anyone who even tries to live like that boxes themselves out of almost all productive channels in society.

And to anyone who thinks you can just AI your way into a full game--I doubt they have actually tried. AI can produce images and those images may even look good... but are they useful? That's where the editing comes in. AI does not replace the work--it transforms it. You still have to put in work, or it comes out as "slop".

There is no "free lunch".

(+3)

Eh, I think I have a lot of people on my side. Do big companies care? No. Does the majority of the public even care? I don’t know. But you don’t make games, or art for everyone. You make it for the audience. So I will just find the audience that cares about humans, if there is one.

Legit, dude. I can respect that 100%.

(+1)
The human creator IS THE POINT

Well said. And true for some people. You would not want to see photographs in an oil painting gallery either. Or eat microwaved food at a fancy restaurant.

But that's not enough. I do not care for a game, only because a human made it. I want to play a fun game. That is my incentive. I want to be entertained by a game.

If a shoestring budget single dev with not talent for drawing can do that with ai, I have no issues with that. I have bigger issues with all the uninspired human made stock asset rpg maker games. Or renpy slideshows without gameplay. And I have issues with people that have a budget, but spend it on ai assets.

I’d rather make a shitty game than use AI. Because I’d rather PLAY a shitty game that has a person behind it that has a life and a point of view

That person would have probably made a bad game even with help of ai. AI is an enabler. Just like free easy to use game engines.

I would rather play a non bad game made with help of ai enabler, than waste my time on a bad game.

--

What's your opinion about free or stock assets?

Your argument against ai is good. I agree partially. But since you put emphasis on the individual art, I am curious how you view usage of premade assets. If a dev tinkers with ai, the output is at least influenced by the dev. More than stock assets at least. That's basically the reason why I make an exception for hobby devs.

I think that the stock assets are a separate issue. Like I’m not saying that just because a game was made by human, that makes it automatically good. It doesn’t. There are ways you can fail all on your own, and one of those is overuse of stock assets, basically just slapping together stuff from the Unity store, or anywhere. I’ve found plenty of games on here where I’m like, wow this is slop. It’s all about how you put it together, though! There’s nothing wrong with using other people’s assets, as a rule. I mean most people do, to some extent. An uninspired game is just that, uninspired.

I view games as works of art, especially in the small indie space like itch.io. So I just evaluate it on its own terms. And that’s where I think we differ is I do get entertainment even from objectively pretty bad games. AI is capable of making things that are technically more ‘good’, but I have no interest in them because the human element has been erased. Even if the game is quite bad, I like to think about the person behind it, and how it came to be that way.

I do think you might have a point that, theoretically, an indie game that was made with a lot of AI assets that someone tinkered with to be what they want, could be better than a straight asset flip that looks like nothing new. But I can’t really think of a game that heavily uses AI that was actually good or inspired, either. Like if you can point me to one that is fun, and also artistically better than an asset flip, i’d perhaps reconsider.

(1 edit)

I just released a demo for my game Mega Mouse. The story of the game is infiltrating and blowing up data centers in space. And no AI was used in it's development.
https://omegamouse.itch.io/mega-mouse

 I’ve found plenty of games on here where I’m like, wow this is slop. 

Yes!

AI games only have a correlation with slop and not a causative connection. Games are still made by humans. Even if they used ai. But for all the slop creators it is so much easier to create a bunch of slop, that most slop games you see, will now be made with ai and most ai games you will see will be of the sloppy kind.

There is this /games/top-rated/tag-ai-generated . Compared to /games/top-rated it is not much, but there are games that have fans, despite featuring ai usage.

But I bet they do not have fans because they used ai. People just ignore or tolerate it. It is unwise to use gen ai if it can be avoided, and doubly so, if there are alternatives. People do not seek functionality in a game. The human aspect is important.

Tu as raison si je crée des jeux c est pour le plaisir merci de me le rappeler et de rappeler nos confrères développeur de jeux 

(+1)

imo if you are not using Ai for gamedev you are missing out!

but good luck to you!

(+1)

I see the same pattern that politics has always followed: two opposing sides and people feeling forced to choose one. Only a few people use both hemispheres of their brain. Those who do end up being hated by both sides, but they’re the ones who see beyond the divide.

In this case, I chose to learn about both sides of content production, and each has served me well in its own way.