Waiting for the “Whoops, we ‘forgot’ to remove it”.
Some people just dont want my money. [Steps out into the airlock]
Owlcat is using generative AI for The Expanse Osiris Reborn, but the final game will be "100% human made"
Submitted 22 hours ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-expanse-osiris-reborn/generative-ai
Comments
harcesz@szmer.info 3 hours ago
brsrklf@jlai.lu 21 hours ago
If your placeholder doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb, it’s a bad placeholder. There is literally no workflow in which temporary assets shat by AI would be useful.
They just want to normalize AI use until people don’t care anymore. And with the waste of resources this shit represents, I just hope this never happens.
moakley@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You don’t see the use in an artist viewing an approximation of the finished product in order to see what can be improved?
Do you suppose all conductors just write symphonies in their heads and never have to hear them out loud before deciding they’re done? Would it be useful to replace the tuba with a placeholder of a duck quacking, or do you think they might want it to sound like a tuba even though it’s not the final product?
brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 hour ago
Even a cheap toy synthetizer can make something close enough to a tuba sound to get an idea of what it sounds like. Need something better? people make sound fonts for that.
But maybe it’s better to use generative AI to potentially have something close to the real thing, just so you can have huge datacenters consuming absurd amounts of power and water too.
Specter@piefed.social 7 hours ago
(X) Doubt
Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
And just like that I added it to my ignored list on Steam
kazerniel@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Same. Steam is so inundated with AI slop that I’m now following like a dozen different curators that flag AI usage, for the cases when the developers “forget” to fill out their AI disclosure field D: (which I’ve restyled to be red and on the top of the page)
Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
I only know of AI Check which had to make a second account cause they already hit the limit with how many games they were marking as containing AI.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 hours ago
I think using AI for storyboarding is okay. They are already pretty shitty, quick af sketches used to figure out how to arrange the action and get animators on the same page. Now that can be done just a little quicker.
However, using them as placeholders that could end up in the final thing even accidentally, is dumb. A placeholder doesn’t even need to be representative visually of what it’s holding a place for. Textures could be text that says “texture of wood 1” and words can be normal ass Ipsum Lorem.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Storyboarding is practically blocking for anination though. It’s creative direction. I wouldn’t let AI do that.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 hours ago
Not the process, just the images used on one.
MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Yeah that’s the thing placeholder textures bed to be obviously placeholder so they don’t get forgotten about. Using ai for something that’s approximate to what it should be is stupid in that regards. You’re just making your job harder at the end of the day.
The only time I can think of it being worthwhile is if your need to show off progress with a vertical slice, for an investment round or whatever, but you don’t have all of the required textures sorted yet. But these changes should be fine on a separate branch so they’re not a part of the main development of the game so the above can’t happen .
moakley@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I disagree. Artistically it can be nice to get an approximation of what something looks like so you can see it in context and decide if you want to change it.
Like what if you think something should have a one texture but then when you actually play the game you realize it doesn’t feel quite right and want to tweak it?
I don’t know much about how big games are developed, but I’ve made things before, and sometimes seeing an approximation of the finished product is necessary to see how it can be improved.
fox2263@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I’m indifferent about AI in games. Where necessary I don’t see a problem but only where absolutely necessary.
Take for instance the new Star Trek voyager game. It notoriously has barely any voice acting due to budget. Which is fine, paying for actors time etc is costly. But what about perhaps a contract for a few choice words that they can train on and use to make as much content as required. That could be a lot cheaper.
Also the fact Mabel Barrett recorded a search of her voice specifically for this before dying and yet no one has used her for the computer since 😭
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I’d rather games get a better budget and hire people than use the suicide inducing, water hoarding, electricity sucking, art stealing, job destroying, loud noise making, community destroying, glue on pizza ass scam that is AI.
AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
Gonna preface this by saying I’m obviously a huge Expanse fan so my opinion is definitely biased. My username is a character from The Expanse and I consider it both my favorite TV show and book series ever. Wanted to make that clear up front.
That being said, if the game is good and they eventually replace the slop assets with proper assets, then what does it matter? As much as I like Lemmy, the hardline stances the community tends to take pisses me off at times. “Oh you’re not a full blown communist and haven’t read Marx? You’re no better than a nazi you filthy shitlib”
Or regarding “AI” (hate that they called it that, it’s basically just a smarter auto correct thats existed in smartphone keyboards for years now) anyone that doesn’t automatically and passionately hate AI or any of its uses is automatically demonized as a supporter of big tech. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate 90% of what “AI” does and is used for, especially how corpos are using it as an excuse to lay off real people and how dumbasses are relying on it as pure truth when it constantly hallucinates bullshit. I don’t support “AI” and I can’t wait for the bubble to burst.
There’s almost zero nuance here, it’s 90% “you’re with us or you’re against us” with no room for anything in between.
If the game is good and they replace the slop assets with real assets when it’s released next year then who fucking cares that they used AI, what matters is whether the game is good or not and whether the devs are treated and paid well. Expedition 33 used AI in earlier iterations and it all got replaced with real assets eventually but that didn’t stop Lemmy from shitting on one of the best games to come out within the last decade once that became public.
You wanna make this place a more mainstream alternative to big tech controlling everything? Get off your high horse and accept that there’s nuance to everything, it’s not just black and white. Otherwise this place will continue to scare off new users faster than it can gain them. I consider myself to be a progressive, I’m Canadian and I’ve only voted NDP since I was able to vote and I’m now 32. I also really respect AOC, Mamdani, and Sanders in the states, so I’m already close enough to the target demographic of Lemmy if you exclude the tankie trifecta (ml, hexbear, and grad) and even I get sick of the circlejerk here at times.
Judge something when you can actually have a proper opportunity to do so rather than getting preemptively pissed off because they had the audacity to use something you don’t like.
If the game comes out and still has slop in it and/or just sucks in general, then yeah, shit on it all you want, and I’ll be first in line to join the club cause I absolutely love The Expanse and I’ll be immensely disappointed if it turns out bad.
Again, in the interest of honesty and transparency, I usually prefer to just throw my opinions out there and not read or respond to replies when it’s something that I know is gonna be controversial so I won’t be replying to anyone that replies to this comment. I really hate arguing with random people on the internet so I just ignore replies for the most part.
moakley@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You’re right. It’s the same god damn mindless circle jerks you get in every online forum. This is why bots are undetectable, because they fit right in by commenting without actually thinking.
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
It’s my favorite book too. I’m conflicted. AI isn’t going back in the box.
At the same time, it’s kinda like the way Belters are treated, barely getting their needs met in favor of corporate profits. AI is doing the same thing to a lot of people looking for work and is built off stolen labor.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
So what you’re saying is we should drop rocks on the data centers, right?
Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
Ok, but what if I don’t want new people and like how small it is filled with like-minded individuals?
AnchoriteMagus@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Well, fuck. At least we got Rogue Trader and the Pathfinder games before enshittification began.
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
Open up paint and doodle it for Christ’s sake, these guys “forget” to go back and change it I’ve noticed, so just don’t use it, boom, problem solved.
I_Jedi@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
Guarantee they still have a chip on their shoulder about their art teacher telling them to stop using stick figures back in the day.
Egonallanon@feddit.uk 21 hours ago
My question is if everything is going to be human made in the end why bother using at all? You won’t even get any of the much vaunted time savings at that point.
kazerniel@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Every other commenter under this seems to forget that stock assets exist and worked fine for decades without involving AI slop.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Stock assets (at least if you need more than the absolutely basics) cost quite a bit. Programmer art can work, but if you want something close to the tone of the finished product, still takes time and thus money. Slop is quick and free.
Frankly, given the fact that placeholder assets are literally meant to be utilitarian, disposable, “just good enough” work, it’s actually not a terrible use case. Placeholders are meant to be slop either way, so not much is lost by automating it, so long as it is actually removed after.
FishFace@piefed.social 21 hours ago
It is conceivable (though I certainly understand skepticism) that they use it for concept and placeholder art, proofs of concept and the like.
As always, the question should be whether the final product is any good.
MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 19 hours ago
The question should be whether the final product is worth what was sacrificed to make it. That line is different for everyone, but it’s important to keep that in mind. Plenty of companies I boycott make acceptable products but are supporting a genocide.
I don’t think generative AI use is worth it however it’s employed and regardless of the quality of the final product. If enough people agree maybe they’ll stop using it.
rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social 21 hours ago
For instance. You can try things out without first creating them by hand. Then you pick and choose and make the final version by hand.
oicasado@lemmy.eco.br 22 hours ago
100% LOL
mrfriki@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I don’t care if it is the fucking Half Life 3 in the flesh. If a game uses some short of AI I will never buy it.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
I really don’t care what they use to make a game. I care that it isn’t shit. There’s plenty of good and bad uses of generative AI.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
So is every other major game company. This company just is open about it.
Only someone living under a rock can convince themselves developers arent using AI for all sorts of shit.
People are deeply unaware of the fact AI autocomplete for code has been baked I to almost every major editor for almost 2 years now, and its enabled by default, opt out.
There are 3 types of game devs now:
- Those who admit publicly to using AI
- Those who have naive PR who truly dont know AI is being used a bunch
- Outright liars who lie about not using AI
dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 21 hours ago
- Indie developers who genuinely don’t use it.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Very few indie developers arent using it. The vast majority of casual devs have literally no idea the “code suggestions” they get from VSCode and other IDEs are AI generated, they often just assume its part of the LSP being fancy because itll only suggest a tiny bit of inline code.
Source: I do a lot of technical interviews at my company I work at, and I interview a lot of senior and junior devs all across the board.
Almost everyone has this feature enabled still (it ships pre-enabled and is opt out) and an incredibly high percent of devs are surprised when I tell them they have to disable that for the test, because it’s AI assistance. They are often like “wait THATS AI?!?!?” and are genuinely shocked to learn this.
This % is very high for both juniors and seniors alike, its never really explicitly even made clear to you that its a feature you can disable, nor that its AI, its just there already working when you first install VSCode.
And basically everyone uses VSCode for most programming, theres other IDEs but VSCode heavily dominates as what pretty much everyone uses for every language except the small handful of ones that have their own bespoke IDEs for their use case.
But the VAST majority of game dev is C# and Lua now and a bit of python, and all of those are first class VS/VSCode languages as the IDE everyone and everything will recommend when you look up getting into it.
So yeah, no, Id estimate about 95% of game dev at this point, both amateur and professional, is using VSCode and has the AI “intellicode” feature enabled still, totally unaware they are injecting a shit tonne of AI generated code into their games.
The devs dont know it, the managers dont know it, the PR time doesnt know it, the CEO doesnt know it, no one is even aware this is a thing at most places lol. Everyone is just like “wow <language>'s VSCode plugin just has such excellent quality autocomplete and quick fix suggestions, I love it!”
Not even joking, this is how most devs are atm, they have no fuckin clue haha
ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Generated code is no different than generated imagery. They were both trained off stolen content and are both in a legally grey area. Both are equally immoral.
But just go with your Everybody else is doing it argument
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Its not “everyone else is doing it” as an argument
Its reality that a massive fuck tonne of devs are using it totally unaware its AI generated
Its just a built in, enabled by default, opt out, feature in all the mainstream IDEs now and for the most popular ones, it doesnt even tell you upfront its AI
So a huge amount of devs are 100% unaware of the fact that a huge % of their code that they just tab auto-completed with was AI generated code. Everytime they hit the tab button to accept an inline suggestion, that was AI.
They just dont even know this, they use it totally unaware.
See my other comment here for further info on what I mean, so I dont have to repeat myself.
Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 19 hours ago
You can’t steal something you copied, because nothing has been taken, and the concept of owning ideas is ridiculous anyway. Not to mention morality is subjective.
Pirate everything, because everything is yours as much as it is the original creators.
oopsgodisdeadmybad@lemmy.zip 20 hours ago
On to the shit list they go.
houndeyes@toast.ooo 22 hours ago
Welwalas.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 21 hours ago
Well… you see… 25% of the game is 100% human made!
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Upside, so if these guys use AI to create assets or code, none of that can be copyrighted currently under the law. Therefore if it’s not copyrightable then pirating the game and using those assets in other games is perfectly fine.
MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 19 hours ago
This would never hold up in court, in part due to regulatory capture, but I think this is the only thing that would stop them.
Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 19 hours ago
Pirating the game and using those assets was always fine, no matter the circumstances, company, artist, or developer. Copyright and intellectual property is an illusion the capitalist class uses to exclude the poor from ideas they feel they can profit from.
stankmut@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
The game containing public domain images wouldn’t make the entire game public domain. Someone with a copy of the game could distribute those particular assets though. Maybe. It depends on how much human effort was involved; an AI image can become copyrightable if enough effort was done to transform it after it was generated.
Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 19 hours ago
Doesn’t really matter to me, because I was going to pirate it the same as I do any game, AAA or indie.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
If we conveniently forget about how unethical it is, Slay the Spire shows that no game needs generative AI for “placeholder” content and Expedition 33 shows that it can and will slip through the cracks. Don’t. Fucking. Use. It.
Nalivai@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yep. I saw one slop picture from the new game that I was actually excited to buy, and even though it was “oh, we only used it as a placeholder and just forgot to remove after tehehe”, I immediately lost all the interest, and will not buy it now. Later I learned that the quests there are nonsensical and a bit disjointed, and the story is stupid, and I can tell you, I’m not surprised at all.
LLM is like that black goo, everything it touches gets corrupted forever.