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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.
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.
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.
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.
Sure, there are risks both ways but one can be mitigated more than the other. The piracy hammer has always come down on distributors with very rare exceptions. With proper precautions (VPN, usenet, foreign seedbox, etc…) nobody would ever know or care about the private individual self hosting a media server on a closet raspberry pie.
Legally you’re covered with Steam but you have very little actual control over your collection. The ideal is legal physical media that you can digitally copy and store but that’s basically impossible these days.
My apologies, 76% 😂
Do you have a goal where you’ll stop and catch up? More games are being released than ever, if you get every deal you see those numbers won’t meaningfully converge.
I’ve never had a Steam game removed from my account due to DRM. And should that ever happen, I have games on GOG that are DRM-free.
It’s not just DRM, the platforms have carte blanche to change the terms of your license at any time. For example, they could start charging per download, completely remove offline library access, remove/censor games, delete your account at any time, etc… Gaben pinky promising to release all games DRM free if Steam goes under isn’t the same as having them.
Inheriting a Steam library is already against TOS, if they start strictly enforcing that your collection dies with you. GoG is slightly better at the moment, but only if you download all games on purchase (the DRM policy could change at any time).
I don’t personally pirate, but it’s the only way to really ensure access and ownership of your library. The hassle factor was true, but there are a lot of new tools in the space that make managing a library painless (a quick search shows Playnite as the game library equivalent of Plex/Jellyfin).
And all of that is putting aside the fair-value argument for creators. They’re getting ~$0.40 from your purchase, not enough to sustain themselves unless they have a massive number of sales.
By all means, enjoy your library and deal hunting games, but your methods run counter to your stated goals.
Maybe it’s consumerism. If so, it’s certainly fettered.
Statements of the utterly deranged lol. You admit to buying stuff knowing there’s an 80% chance you never touch it. That’s indulgent no matter what budget you set.
I’m not one to shame steam libraries, mine is certainly lopsided in playtime, but if you’re in it for collecting and preserving hidden gems just pirate. You’ll no longer be locked in to Steam and if you like a game you can still buy it at full price and give the devs more than pennies.
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.
When a dev with game dev experience says something should be easy to fix, it’s under the assumption of a reasonable code 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.
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.
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?
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.