Well… Who’s ready for an endless stream of low quality AI asset flips?
We’ve already seen what AI-generated books have done to platforms like Amazon. I suspect that this will eventually be the end of “open” uncurated digital storefronts, since AI will eventually allow for crappy content to be produced at a faster rate than it can be consumed and it’ll become impossible to discover anything worthwhile.
There are also good stuff done with AI, for example there is this game called Suck Up where you are a vampire and you go door to door trying to get people to let you in. People you are trying to convince are basically chatbots and it works a lot better than you’d expect
I am not sure whether AI will make the creation of asset flips much easier though, given that store bought assets are already being dropped into a ‘game’ already.
There are only a finite number of easily purchasable game dev assets out there, but in theory there is a nearly infinite of assets that can be generated by AI.
Mark my words, soon we’re gonna be inundated with lot of really shitty, mostly AI-generated games by con artists trying to make a quick buck.
AI struggles to make a complete, composite product. This is the limit on game creation as it is anyway, not number of assets available to steal/download/buy. There are thousands of options for near-complete games out there that can be easily customized further with the millions of art assets out there as it is.
Even then, Steam isn’t completely without moderation. It’s been possible to automate the creation of asset flips for a while (and we’ve seen it done plenty of mobile), but Steam makes some effort to remove the lowest quality games and make it ineffective to publish low-quality shovelware. AI is still quite a ways off from being even remotely faster or more effective than just buying a template and filling in the resources with cheap or free assets.
Why take already created assets if you can generate everything the way you want it? I found lumalabs.ai yesterday wich makes text to 3D. Right now it could be a good base for someone to generate an idea of the final product and then have a 3D artist re-do them in more details for the final project or just clean them up a bit.
AI is okay to use if you make it do the chores, not in creative part. Otherwise it would be an insult to people who create original content.
As if anyone trying to make a quick buck cares if they are insulting anyone?
It’s cool that we might see titles like “Suck Up” on Steam.
I don’t see people talking about AI in games enough. It is indeed a tool but it’s one that I’m very excited about.
So long as the people who record lines are adequately compensated and the tool is used correctly, I’m very excited about its use. It allows games to feel more unique and random without a huge tax on developers.
It’s possible that instead of generic quests in the form of radiant garbage quests, we can get generated quests and storylines in open world games.
What do the artists do? Well, their writing is still imperative to what the AI says. Rather than writing line by line dialog for NPCs, they can focus so much more on world building and characterization of NPCs.
However, I expect this use to be rare and far out. In the meantime, we’re about to see a mountain of garbage. Lots of indie games are going to use this to great effect though I would bet.
If anyone is interested Corridor Digital has been doing experiments with AI and games, and has documented it on their YouTube channel Corridor Crew. It’s definitely worth checking out if it interests anyone.