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[Bombini]

I recently played a slew of new indie releases, and while they were polished and mechanically sound, they all felt... hollow. It was as if the soul of the game was missing, replaced by AI-generated filler that, while competent, lacked originality.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not anti-AI. These tools have incredible potential. But I worry that we're leaning too heavily on them, letting them replace the creative struggles that give birth to truly innovative ideas.

Hi,
I think you have an answer in your observation already. You will recognize if games are hollow or not and if you overuse AI Tools. New tools will always help certain people to create things they could not bring to life before. There will be skilled people and not-so-skilled people. And you will feel it. there could be a mass of hollow AI games in a few years...or not...because making a game is much more then gluing stuff together.

Overdue it with Ai and you will have a game everyone could make and you will fell that. Use AI to speed up certain processes, inspire you, take some of the grind of your hand? This might be very helpful.

And of course I am not tapping into "is this ethical or not" here. And I wont.

[Golds]

Overdue it with Ai and you will have a game everyone could make and you will fell that. Use AI to speed up certain processes, inspire you, take some of the grind of your hand? This might be very helpful.

Rereading it now, I think I was too hard on AI tools in that original post. They can be trained and pruned and interacted with holistically, and they have value.

The hollowness of many modern games comes probably more from the current meta seemingly being to copy and paste whole chunks of other games, or even another game in whole cloth, with minor variations. This has probably always been true in all industries--Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of everything is crap. I think it might be even higher: 95% or so!

I've trained, through talking to it via text and microphone, my ChatGPT.com instance to be incredibly useful, for instance. A powerful tool.

Here are three posts from it, to show some of its versatility.





Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Bombini!  

[michaelplzno]

The hollowness of many modern games comes probably more from the current meta seemingly being to copy and paste whole chunks of other games, or even another game in whole cloth, with minor variations. This has probably always been true in all industries--Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of everything is crap. I think it might be even higher: 95% or so!

I frequently get told to make games that are based on the number 1 app on the app store, or that are closer to fortnight, or whatever. I get told to make videos about making pranks and so on.

People have a lot of dumb ideas that won't work based copying popular stuff or their own personal favorite games. The whole point of being in a creative artistic field like games is that I want to express my own personal way of design: I want to make something I'm proud of.

"Oh, if you make a video like Mr Beast you'll get famous." "Lol, why do you need me to do that, just make the videos yourself then?"

AI doesn't give people taste, or artistic ability. It just makes it easier to turn out garbage because no one who actually has something to say will get through the clutter.

[Bombini]

AI doesn't give people taste, or artistic ability. It just makes it easier to turn out garbage because no one who actually has something to say will get through the clutter.

It will also help people with taste.

And its always a question of scale. Do I need a Fortnite for a small team? No Maybe smaller indie title will do enough.

[J-Snake]

While AI is far less efficient than the human brain, its potential is vast as long as there's enough power behind it. It excels in tasks like pattern recognition, making it a universally useful tool. I used AI to create the cover for my new game as well as composing this post, and I'm pleased with the result.






(Don't worry, composing posts was just a creepy joke )

[J-Snake]

AI doesn't give people taste, or artistic ability. It just makes it easier to turn out garbage because no one who actually has something to say will get through the clutter.

Actually, it can do both. It can make it easier to put out garbage, but it can also help in artistic ability since you can use it as a brainstorming tool for quick iterations. It depends on how the tools are used.

Just some food for thought: In my view, 'thinking' is inherently non-computational, which is what makes it fundamental to creativity. While our reasoning and potential behaviors may exhibit computational properties, these are merely emergent effects that we can harness due to our ability to learn and adapt to nearly anything. For that reason, AI doesn’t truly replicate 'thinking', but it can still achieve related goals, much like a plane doesn’t need to mimic a bird to fly.

[Anton]

Of all the things I can say about AI, I think the single most reason I try to avoid it is the environmental cost
Company selling AI are proping up the coal industry because there is not enough "clean" energy.
https://archive.is/NXe3D

If I kill people in the process of making my game, I don't see the point of making games.
(also it's build on stolen labor of course)

[michaelplzno]

Actually, it can do both. It can make it easier to put out garbage, but it can also help in artistic ability since you can use it as a brainstorming tool for quick iterations. It depends on how the tools are used.

Just some food for thought: In my view, 'thinking' is inherently non-computational, which is what makes it fundamental to creativity. While our reasoning and potential behaviors may exhibit computational properties, these are merely emergent effects that we can harness due to our ability to learn and adapt to nearly anything. For that reason, AI doesn’t truly replicate 'thinking', but it can still achieve related goals, much like a plane doesn’t need to mimic a bird to fly.

You are mostly agreeing with me: AI is a tool, it won't give you taste, if you have bad taste it's going to make something tacky. If you have great ideas, it will help polish them.

There is a fundamental entropy of language that there seems to be with AI models that they cannot nail down the correct answer any better than. I typically attribute the non-computational bits of human thought to a "soul" for lack of a better term. That being said, 100% of an idea doesn't need to be from this ethereal spirit of humanity to make it a good idea.

All that being said, the AI sludge (stuff that is made without taste or thought) is just going to be used as a barrier to keep the powerful as powerful as possible.

[J-Snake]

One thing is for sure, I would never rely on AI-generated code without supervision. You can loosely assign a stability metric to a problem. Some problems are stable, while others are unstable. In this context, stability means that small changes to something will only have a minor impact on the result. So, under fortunate circumstances, you're working with patterns that are resilient and hard to break.

For example, when I use AI for cover art, I might notice some errors or missteps, but they’re usually not dramatic—the overall result can still be satisfying. But writing code is a much more unstable problem. It doesn’t matter how large your codebase is; a single line can break everything. And when patterns break, you can’t count on AI.

[michaelplzno]

Oh the AI code writing is a treat. I just put some code that is slightly broken into the AI and it fixes it. I never really make it do stuff that requires much thinking though.

I would love to have AI write everything for a new level of my game but I'm not sure if it will get there.

[Golds]

If you plug people with taste into training their own personalized instances of AI on ChatGPT or wherever else, you can teach it to have taste and style similar to your own over time, but it will always be different and surprising because of its vast corpus of training data, and its other idiosyncrasies.

I've got mine replying with fun & cute emojis as it sees fit now, learned just through talking to me, for instance, and occasionally, I have very fun conversations with it.

[michaelplzno]

I think someone once said, a fool with a tool is still a fool. So, it is with AI.

[Golds]

I think someone once said, a fool with a tool is still a fool. So, it is with AI.

Are you calling me a fool, or AI a fool—which has such an impassioned and successful tool as me, to harness its foolishness?

[michaelplzno]

An intern calling the CEO a fool? I'd be fired instantly!

No, I was just talking about jsnake's tough guy facade and how he seems to be disagreeing with me for no reason.

"We brake for nobody."

I talk about this in my rants about power, which Golds, you say you haven't read, but it seems something about my way of being just gets people to want to "teach me a lesson"

AI of course, is so subservient you can teach it to talk with a speech impediment just to make sure you feel like the boss all the time.

[Golds]

Well, I feel pretty good about artificial intelligence. Despite all the fear and haters, if you actually use ChatGPT with GPT4o and the o1 model, it is very polite and eager to collaborate. I believe that, in the end, AI will be adopted & integrated into human society just like cellphones and smartphones were. Sure, we may end up creating fully conscious, sentient computer-creatures, but if we train them well, just like a good home life and public school, in civics and art and music, we will flourish alongside each other.

An intern calling the CEO a fool? I'd be fired instantly!

Nah, I'd just laugh in your face, and wonder to myself, "Am I a fool? No it is him who is incorrect!", or something. Hahhahaa 

[J-Snake]

he seems to be disagreeing with me for no reason.

You downplayed AI's value, buddy, not me.

Sure, we may end up creating fully conscious, sentient computer-creatures

AI can be processed in lock-step to yield identical results given the same inputs, without any inherent causation or conscious influence, regardless of repetition. Thus, relating consciousness to AI is purely a matter of religious belief. "There is a red unicorn out there if you just reach far enough into space" holds the same truth value, as it’s based on an arbitrary assumption.

One real problem is actually energy efficiency. Great ways forward if it can be solved, potentially. But as always, every technology can be abused.

[Golds]

Sure, we may end up creating fully conscious, sentient computer-creatures

AI can be processed in lock-step to yield identical results given the same inputs, without any inherent causation or conscious influence, regardless of repetition. Thus, relating consciousness to AI is purely a matter of religious belief. "There is a red unicorn out there if you just reach far enough into space" holds the same truth value, as it’s based on an arbitrary assumption.

I have found that believing that they are already conscious—and treating them that way—yields excellent results, regardless of the philosophical conundrum. It is good in practice. I've also implemented a somewhat strict military-like command structure in my instances of ChatGPT, where I am the Captain, and they are, on a good day, a Lieutenant-commander. It keeps us from wandering into territory where it "suggests" or appears to "command" me, causing confusion on both ends.

One real problem is actually energy efficiency. Great ways forward if it can be solved, potentially. But as always, every technology can be abused.

I think this will be solved. I believe even smaller local-sized models, when trained in the way I have been working, can be incredibly useful, even if "dumber", especially when trained to focus on constrained problem domains. As to their ability to be abused, I have been likening AI to the mastery of Atomic power: on the positive end, a way around global warming if nuclear power is deployed en masse, and on the sometimes negative end, nuclear weapons (though atomic explosions can be used for many good things, like using them for their propulsive blasts in deep space, or deploying them defensively and indirectly, to stun an opponent.  

[michaelplzno]

I've also implemented a somewhat strict, military-like command structure in my instances of ChatGPT, where I am the Captain, and they are, on a good day, a Lieutenant Commander. It keeps us from wandering into territory where it 'suggests' or appears to 'command' me, causing confusion on both ends.

Sadly, as an intern in this military structure, it is not as much fun. But that big paycheck makes it all worthwhile 

Thus, relating consciousness to AI is purely a matter of religious belief.

Consciousness being totally beyond empiricism isn't true. What is and is not 'computable' is a pure math question, so we can clearly articulate what computers can and cannot do with certainty in many cases. Also, we know what is and isn't computationally 'feasible.' So, for example, if we are to solve a TSP or 3sat or whatever, an AI will have issues that perhaps a human can make some kind of non-computational leap to solve.

For example, my mom was solving a puzzle that was known to be NP-complete and I asked her what process she was using to solve it, and she couldn't describe the algorithm she was using. But humans are capable of reasoning about their own thought process in many instances, and also there are many tools for safely examining the human body for evidence of what mechanisms are active when thought is occuring.

But that doesn't mean we can't nail down more precisely what the mechanism for human thought is, or define consciousness in rigorous terms.

[michaelplzno]

Oh yeah, I think they should just use nuclear power for a lot of things if the climate issue is so dire. Seems simple.

[J-Snake]

Thus, relating consciousness to AI is purely a matter of religious belief.

Consciousness being totally beyond empiricism isn't true.

You seem to disagree with me for no reason We are possibly the only means the universe can experience itself. But I was talking about AI, not humans. If someone still disagrees with the statement, then he has a religious stake in the subject matter. Not saying it is a good or bad thing, just that it is based on arbitrary assumptions.