shoo
@shoo@lemmy.world
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 1 week ago:
Strange to not qualify the last one as theft. If it’s out putting code, it’s from the same kind of training set. If it’s out putting character responses, they’re from that same literary training data.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on 7,818 titles on Steam disclose generative AI usage, or 7% of Steam's total library of 114,126 games, up from ~1,000 titles in April 2024 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on Oatmeal 3 weeks ago:
What am I, some kind of fae creature?
- Comment on I'm not okay. 5 weeks ago:
Depends on if you have a healthy wild source that can seed itself in. My woodline is almost entirely invasives so it took more legwork to balance it out. I ended up mostly planting small trees/shrubs to shade out the weeds and letting Virginia Creeper spread (love that stuff).
Barring that it probably depends on yard size and local climate. Might be more economical to clear with a sod cutter or spot weed + replace.
Check for local native plant orgs, they can get you plants in bulk. They might also have specific advice, for example if you need to avoid seeding certain plants to protect a vulnerable local species.
- Comment on I'm not okay. 5 weeks ago:
While it’s better than keeping a barren monoculture lawn, keep in mind that letting things grow with no intervention will get you a lot of invasive species. If you want healthier habitat for your critters try to keep an eye on what’s growing and replace the bad stuff with native options.
- Comment on Are spiders turtlely enough for the Turtle Club? 5 weeks ago:
Fascinating is not the word I would use to describe that
- Comment on no way right 5 weeks ago:
- Comment on Severance’s Seth Milchick was originally envisioned as a minor character, but Tramell Tillman’s performance changed everything 1 month ago:
Tap for spoiler
Faulty is the wrong word, but in the sense that they didn’t really work to keep them locked in. There was no backup plan, nobody noticed when they just walked out. Speaking of Graeners security card: they know he’s dead and that his card is gone but they don’t revoke the card access or change the locks??? I’m pretty sure Mark tested it as well, do they not have access logs or did nobody noticed that a dead guy was opening doors? It’s true that the show implicitly leans into the hubris angle, but for me that just makes them feel like bumbling idiots instead of a dangerous cult. It was clear MDR was starting to act up and ask questions but they never appropriately elevated their response or security. Milchik got fucking bit and they mostly just shrugged it off… Not that bumbling corporate incompetence isn’t also entertaining, it just feels at odds with the dark, meticulous tones they try to set with management/the board.
- Comment on Severance’s Seth Milchick was originally envisioned as a minor character, but Tramell Tillman’s performance changed everything 1 month ago:
It’s an interesting premise and the first season was a fun watch. But once you start getting deeper into the mystery box, important threads get hollow.
S2 spoiler
Lots of threads are just dead ending at “it’s a quirky cult”. When the evil shadowy organization aren’t taking rational steps toward a concrete goal you can’t make any reasonable deductions. For example, the entire elaborate goat department serves no purpose beyond sacrifice? Sounds like the real purpose was the writers wanting some unsettling discovery and didn’t know how to fit it in.
And disbelief gets more stretched when you think about the daily operation of the departments.
S1 spoiler
MDR is a critical department but you can’t afford more than 1 security officer on the floor? You have all these security cameras but nobody watching them? The security chief is murdered and you just don’t replace him and continue with your normal operations? You don’t even have night guards to watch the severance control panels? You demonstrably have the tech to hire any number of goons and sever them. Maybe instead of faulty security doors just have like 2 guys guarding important hallways.
- Comment on Can deliberate noise harassment still be a crime if it's done every day from 7:30 AM till 10:30-11:30 PM? 1 month ago:
Counterpoint, I know lots of people that have also do/have done lots of those things who also aren’t complete psychopaths
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 2 months ago:
That’s kind of a funny example because, on a quick skim, nothing he did was exceptionally clever or unusual (other than workarounds for not having source code). R* basically paid him 10k for some basic profiling that they never bothered to do.
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 2 months ago:
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.
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 2 months ago:
When a dev with game dev experience says something should be easy to fix, it’s under the assumption of a reasonable cobe 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.
- Comment on Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months' 2 months ago:
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.
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible 2 months ago:
while harder difficulties turn enemies into sponges that absolutely destroy you in 1 or 2 hits.
Sounds like a normal dark souls experience to me, I see no issue
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible 2 months ago:
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?
- Comment on Einstein-Landauer culinary units 2 months ago:
I know it’s 1/48 cup but that’s a stupid fraction and doesn’t follow any logic, one of the main reasons it should be thrown out
- Comment on Einstein-Landauer culinary units 2 months ago:
Well, it could be sarcasm but:
- It doesn’t make sense, what is the witty commentary?
- Their post history is abrasive and aggressive about silly stuff like this
- Comment on Einstein-Landauer culinary units 2 months ago:
There’s nothing inherently more natural about cooking in the metric system, people just prefer base 10 these days. People balk at 4 quarts to an arbitrary gallon but love 1 liter being the arbitrary cubic volume of 10 ten-millionths of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole passing through Paris [but not quite].
Cooking by volume was natural before everyone had accurate kitchen scales. You didn’t have a digital tare button in the 1800s but you did have a bunch of containers in common sizes.
what happen when you need 3/4 of a cup ? Or 1.5 cup ?
Generally you have 4 sizes: 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4. You just use a combination of 2 sizes (1+1/2) or multiples of your smallest size (3x1/4).
You usually don’t need high precision for cooking, common ratios are good approximations (1:1, 1:2, 1:8, etc…). Baking is a different beast and I don’t know how people did it before weight.
Also, fuck tablespoons and teaspoons. They should just be replaced with 1/16 cup and 1/32 cup.
- Comment on Einstein-Landauer culinary units 2 months ago:
Since I’ve seen you trolling in multiple threads and know you get a kick out of it, I’ll bite:
What in the world is wrong with this humor and why does it have anything to do with modern males?
- Comment on Going back in time to see how the fishes and loaves trick was done 2 months ago:
Pretty fucked up for you to assume that random white guy is Jesus. This could just be Marty and Doc eating street fish and day drinking with a local
- Comment on The Source 2 months ago:
Fuck, which one of you idiots launched with the log level at debug…
- Comment on It's a fun new game 3 months ago:
- Comment on They cannot stop you. 3 months ago:
