Welp, it’s officially a hype bubble like cryptocurrency/NFTs.
Square Enix’s president says it will be ‘aggressive in applying’ AI
Submitted 1 year ago by helloharu@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Aurix@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Which is also what the last CEO of Square Enix rode on. This is either investor appeasement or indeed improvement of quality with these tools or, and far more likely both buzzwords and producing crap to cut costs.
the_q@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unfortunately AI’s impact is real. This isn’t a hype thing; this is a people losing their jobs thing
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
I mean, it is and it isn’t. On one hand, yes people will probably lose their jobs with these tools supposed to filled the gaps.
But that doesn’t mean the AI tools are actually anywhere near as competent as a human, and it will result in water down anodyne and to be more blunt just boring art and writing.
Corporate will use the tools because they’re “good enough,” but we all know they’re really not good enough. They’re just one more way to cut costs at the expense of user experience and employee workload (the employees that are left being expected to do more work).
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
For every job that AI kills, you need at least 2 techs to train the AI. This isn’t meant to say “go get a job as an AI tech if you’re worried about job security” it’s more of a “businesses will see the obvious lack of ROI and vision and refuse to implement it”.
loobkoob@kbin.social 1 year ago
It absolutely is. Although, putting aside the obvious ethical debates, I will say that least AI has some practical uses. Crypto-currency and NFTs felt a lot like a solution looking for a problem, and while that can be true of some implementations of AI, there are a lot of valid uses for it.
But yeah, companies rushing to use AI like this, and making statements like this, just screams that they're trying to persuade investors they're "ahead of the curve", and is absolutely indicative of a hype bubble. If it wasn't a hype bubble, they'd either be quietly exploring it externally and not putting out statements like this, or they're be putting out statements excitedly talking specifics about their novel and clever implementations of AI.
darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I know the Square from my childhood is long dead, but it would be nice if they could stop desecrating it’s corpse.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
The 5 downvotes are from crypto holders or Sam Bankman-Fried’s alt accounts.
Carighan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I wish they’d aggressively apply it to replacing middle-top management. The jobs that don’t add anything except a lot of money being siphoned off, anyways.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I welcome our robot middle-lords.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.world 1 year ago
AI is such an annoying buzzword at this point. “oh have you heard of AI? We need AI!” Say every industry, and probably even the dairy industry.
Railcar8095@lemm.ee 1 year ago
We have had costumers REQUIRING that we have AI in our projects in order to sign… With no additional explanation. Sure, here you have a irrelevant kmeans clustering of your SKUs, 100K please.
In all fairness, those customers that knew what they were taking about were great. We did really cool stuff, they just need to understand what they want to answer and be able to provide the data.
mcc@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
But why not?
Skates@feddit.nl 1 year ago
The ‘why not’ is not from the perspective of the industry - it’s from the perspective of the customer. Can you automate several tasks by using AI during game development? Sure. Will it translate into a better price or a better experience for the end-user? Let’s see.
Let’s say you give AI the unimportant tasks. You manage to reduce a lot of waste and maybe optimize your workflows. You improve efficiency. Maybe you can make more games in a shorter time span. Will you be willing to sell the games for less than the standard $60? I find this unlikely. This impacts me as a consumer - why am I paying for your improved tools with my money?
Let’s say you give AI the big tasks - you make it write story, generate graphics or code. But AI’s current level doesn’t allow for originality, or even cohesive thought. You’ll be churning out garbage until your AI is actual intelligence. This again impacts me as a consumer - why am I sponsoring your experiments with my money?
So - sure, let the companies throw themselves at this. But I’m not investing my own cash in their research.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
No. Hence why it’s a buzzword. The CEOs don’t know how it works, just that it somehow reduces payroll. For AI to do what you want it to do, you have to train it on hundreds of thousands of relevant data points over many weeks/months/years. That takes manpower, and consequently, payroll.
Also, games are supposed to be art. An expression of the humans creating it. Automating the games industry would make any MBA grad jizz in their pants, but it’s antithetical to the survival of the medium and, consequently, the industry. You want nothing but freemium games meant to milk kids of their parents money? Nothing but shitty mobile games and live services from now on then.
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Yes, my boss came to me and said exactly this “we need AI in our product” and I asked “what do we want to do with AI?” I’m still waiting for a definitive answer, in the meantime I’m supposed to do the technical concept without even knowing what our goal is lol.
Phegan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just like companies aggressively used NFTs and we know how well that worked out.
Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
This is actually what I look forward to most in gaming in the next decade or two. The implementation of AI that can be assigned goals and motivations instead of scripted to every detail. Characters in games with whom we as players can have believable conversations that the devs didn’t have to think of beforehand. If they can integrate LLM type AI into games successfully, it’ll be a total game changer in terms of being able to accommodate player choice and freedom.
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is something I used to be excited for but I only have been losing interest the more I hear about AI. What are the chances this will lead to moving character arcs or profound messages? The way LLMs are today, the best we can hope for is Radiant Quests Plus. Not sure a game driven by AIs rambling semi-coherently forever will be more entertaining than something written by humans with a clear vision.
Renacles@lemmy.world 1 year ago
AI used to not even be able to do that a year or so ago, give it time and it’ll get there.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Characters in games with whom we as players can have believable conversations that the devs didn’t have to think of beforehand.
Correction: characters in games will have soulless cookie cutter paint by numbers responses that sound hollow and lifeless. AI doesn’t generate, it only remixes.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 1 year ago
I wonder if they’ll spend as much time defining what a LLM shouldn’t be talking about/doing as they would defining what a non-LLM should be talking about/doing.
Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
i dont quite think that that is what they meant here.
the articde was talking about productivity a lot,
and the current ai hype is centered arround generative ai.i think what they where talking about here,
is using ai to speed up stuff like moddeding and terrain generation.stuff similar to the second half of this presentation
regbin_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This smells like investor-baiting. Studios don’t really need to announce that they’re going “aggressive” in using a certain tool.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Cool. I’ll continue to aggressively avoid Square Enix games like I have since 2017.
thorbot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve had zero interest in anything Square Enix makes except the new Super Mario RPG, because otherwise it’s all weird ass weeb shit with the most convoluted storylines that need an undergraduate degree in the lore to understand it. I doubt AI will make that less of a problem.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
and don’t forget overpriced to hell.
stephfinitely@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Honestly for open world RPGs I can see AI used for making the world feel more alive and creating side quests on the fly. But it really needs to be done right.
Phegan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s still not really AI, it’s just procedural generation wrapped in a new buzz word.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Side quests on the fly? That already exists. Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 had radiant AI quests. I would much rather have a game that was hand made by humans where the quests that exist are the quests that were designed. Or, in the case of radiant AI, heavily guardrailed randomness.
Zahille7@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The only radiant quests I can think of in Oblivion were after you had finished the Dark Brotherhood or Arena quest lines. I don’t remember any other random quests from that one.
harmsy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
inb4 the AI starts pulling its hair out because a middle school girl with no gaming experience dummies her way into being the most powerful player in the game.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Didnt he also say square was going to aggressively get into NFTs until the overwhelming negative response cockslapped the fuck out of him?
I swear, Its getting to the point where I miss SquareSoft and Enix as individual companies, and the SNES as an era for RPGs.
Tronn4@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I rwas this as them saying they’ll be cutting jobs left and right using an AI based solution to keep more profits for the top instead of making game characters smarter
mcc@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Where did you get the sense SE is like that? Or their new CEO operates that way?
dumpsterlid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hmm do y’all still believe the video game industry needed to make cuts and fire workers to the degree they did this year because of overshooting growth with covid? Yes I am sure it is part of it but why is nobody talking about the AI elephant in the room. The video game industry is in the midst of trying to strong arm workers into accepting a fundamental reduction in their quality of life because they can use the threat of replacing workers with AI. It doesn’t matter if it actually works to replace workers with AI, it only matters that it appears fairly plausible for it to pay off for massive companies trying to extract every bit of profit from video games they can.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 year ago
“In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity”
Translation: We are gonna fire so many expensive developers, designers and artists!
HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ha ha ha this dumb chord.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
Just when I thought their games couldn’t be any worse
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“We are going so hard into the AI synergies. It is going to blow away your quarterly projections about our growth centers and user engagements.” Continued rambling about things for another 20 minutes.
End result will be NPC’s with sometimes better conversation tree’s and micro transactions that are randomized based on the whims of same vague bot no one can articulate the functional details of.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’d say the end result will be a broken mess delivered behind schedule by a team of juniors.
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s worth remembering that this guy says anything that’s in the current trend because just saying those things helps share prices. Then nothing comes of it.
FF16 wasn’t stuffed full of nfts or crypto or even microtransactions even though the president makes comments about this stuff.
These words aren’t for you, it’s for the market.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
So will every single tech Director-VP-CxO; then in 5 years everyone will say “AI” in the same tone of voice they say “Blockchain”
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If AI can’t find its market (which for all the hype it hasn’t thus far), then yes. Alternatively AI finds its market and it just becomes a norm that’s expected so no one will mention it at all
pennomi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I doubt it. AI is actually useful for games. I’d love a Skyrim where there were infinite unique npcs who don’t repeat dialog on a loop.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Guy’s gotta stay in $2000 dress shirts somehow.
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They did try that Symbiogenesis NFT bulshit. Now I’m not even sure if anything came out of it. Apparently it was supposed to be released this December but I didn’t hear a single thing about it.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Did they try it? There was 1 trailer and the backlash from the internet was so severe the project got completely buried.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
It’s all just SEO farming. Square Enix isn’t setting the world on fire with 14 and 16, and there was exactly zero hype for OT2 and Various Daylife (worst game title ever), so they need to always say hypemachine phrases just in case anyone searching for AI or NFTs is also hungry for a milquetoast JRPG.