The ethics and utility (or lack thereof) of AI is an important discussion in it’s own right. In terms of Steam though, I really don’t think it’s relevant. Players want the disclosures, that’s it, that’s all that should really matter. Am I missing some nuance here?
The nuance is that Tim doesn’t give a shit what players want, him and his cronies don’t want it because it’s harder to convince someone to play AI slop when they know it’s AI slop before they even try it 😂
It might make players demand lower prices if some cheap AI slop is used in the game. That’s the thing publishers want to avoid. They want to sell cheap slop for full price and pocket the difference. That’s what it’s about in the end.
I haven’t really seen demands for lower prices on AI slop, but I’ve seen a lot of outright refusal to buy at any price, and returns when the disclosure came later.
I don’t think the epic guy is making an argument for slop, he’s just saying that gen ai is at the point where avoiding using it is as much of a choice as deciding to. Generating the basis for digital art using something like flux then converting that into a 3d asset, with or without help from other AIs, would count, but could be made to look just as nice as something that didn’t use those tools, but took significantly longer. I understand that argument. What it fails to understand is that for the foreseeable future that is not how this tech is going to be used. It will be used by relative amateurs who push out garbage as quickly as possible. Maybe in five years there’s an argument to be made here, but even then I doubt it. People just won’t care about good utilization of AI because they’ll never even notice it. They’ll still hate the slop but that will inevitably become less sloppy. They’ll be able to tell the difference just based on the quality of the other aspects of the game.
They want it? I don’t know, the review score of Black Ops 7 begs to differ.
Personally I’ll give money to a hard working indie dev that may use AI to help in their work spiradically over a big company shoving AI in everything to replace workers.
I posted this in another comment but I think the nuance is really in what did they use the AI for. Are they using Claude code for the programming but did the entire artwork by hand? How many really care about that?
Compared to someone who tried to one shot a slop game with full AI assets and is just trying to make a quick buck.
The ethics and utility (or lack thereof) of AI is an important discussion in it’s own right. In terms of Steam though, I really don’t think it’s relevant. Players want the disclosures, that’s it, that’s all that should really matter. Am I missing some nuance here?
The nuance is that Tim doesn’t give a shit what players want, him and his cronies don’t want it because it’s harder to convince someone to play AI slop when they know it’s AI slop before they even try it 😂
It might make players demand lower prices if some cheap AI slop is used in the game. That’s the thing publishers want to avoid. They want to sell cheap slop for full price and pocket the difference. That’s what it’s about in the end.
I haven’t really seen demands for lower prices on AI slop, but I’ve seen a lot of outright refusal to buy at any price, and returns when the disclosure came later.
I don’t think the epic guy is making an argument for slop, he’s just saying that gen ai is at the point where avoiding using it is as much of a choice as deciding to. Generating the basis for digital art using something like flux then converting that into a 3d asset, with or without help from other AIs, would count, but could be made to look just as nice as something that didn’t use those tools, but took significantly longer. I understand that argument. What it fails to understand is that for the foreseeable future that is not how this tech is going to be used. It will be used by relative amateurs who push out garbage as quickly as possible. Maybe in five years there’s an argument to be made here, but even then I doubt it. People just won’t care about good utilization of AI because they’ll never even notice it. They’ll still hate the slop but that will inevitably become less sloppy. They’ll be able to tell the difference just based on the quality of the other aspects of the game.
They want it? I don’t know, the review score of Black Ops 7 begs to differ.
Personally I’ll give money to a hard working indie dev that may use AI to help in their work spiradically over a big company shoving AI in everything to replace workers.
Perhaps they meant players want AI disclosures.
Oh yes that is what I meant. Edited for clarity.
Thanks, I thought it meant people want AI slop garbage 🤣
I posted this in another comment but I think the nuance is really in what did they use the AI for. Are they using Claude code for the programming but did the entire artwork by hand? How many really care about that?
Compared to someone who tried to one shot a slop game with full AI assets and is just trying to make a quick buck.
Disclose the exact uses and let customers decide