A year ago, I poked around Steam to see how many game developers were disclosing usage of Generative AI . It was around 1,000, which seemed like a lot to me at the time. If memory serves, that was about 1.1% of the entire Steam library, which has since seen 20,000+ more titles appear. I've been fol
I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. I have a lot of leaned skills but programming and digital art aren’t on the list. Since I don’t have the money to pay someone to make a game for me or 4 years to learn the whole of the skills from scratch, generative AI is my only option. Plenty of people will look down on me for that but if they had a robot that would do all their welding and woodworking for them they’d tell me to get fucked for asking them to pay.
But you do have four years to learn the whole of the skills from scratch. Who’s forcing a deadline on you? What’s the point of engaging in a creative process if you’re offloading the creativity onto a machine? When you take the creativity out of the creative process, you’re left with just a process.
The point of a welding is to join two pieces of metal together. The quality of the work is quantifiable, and there is no artistic input. Unlike the creation of art, there is no value in the human input. Woodworking is a different story—I would pay more for a piece of art that was carved by a human than a chunk of wood that was cut by a robot, even if they were indistinguishable to me. The human input is what gives the art meaning. Unless all I’m buying is, like, a bedside table. That shares my welding take
So I’ve got a few points on this. The smallest is that welding is very much an art. Any dingus can stick two pieces of metal together. A consistent bead, a steady hand, it’s all on par with painting but no one considers that because it’s used practically instead of aesthetically.
That segways to my next point, art isn’t just the pictures. I don’t have 4 years to learn how to make the art because I’m not passionate about that. I love the mechanics of the game, my creativity is in balancing and abilities, loot tables and incremental growth rates. You wouldn’t say the people who decide the spray pattern of digital guns or the appropriate damage for level 12 don’t deserve to be in video games because they didn’t paint the skyboxes.
I love a story about a single guy making a game from scratch over twenty years as much as the next guy, but it’s unreasonable to say that everyone has to do it that way or it doesn’t count. Just as unreasonable as saying someone’s idea for a game doesn’t deserve to exist because they can’t pay a team to make it.
To be clear, I’m not defending the slop. There’s probably plenty of games on steam that are AI garbage to grab a quick buck. That’s fine to hate. But all the people out there that put their hear into the work and wrapped it in the wallpaper of AI, they deserve to be seen. We can’t all be good at everything and that doesn’t make what we do any less valid.
So join a team. I would say that the guy who makes the spray pattern doesn’t deserve to make his game if that was all he made. Literally nobody is suggesting that you should have to develop your game 100% by yourself, what I’m saying is that a) you could develop the art yourself, and b) if you don’t, you should work with someone who can. What you shouldn’t do is contribute to the industry that’s putting those people out of work.
And this is where the it comes full circle. To have a team I need to pay the team. To not have a team, I need to do every position provided by a team. Which means if you can’t do it or pay for it, you don’t deserve it and no matter how well thought out the idea may be it will never happen.
I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. I have a lot of leaned skills but programming and digital art aren’t on the list. Since I don’t have the money to pay someone to make a game for me or 4 years to learn the whole of the skills from scratch, generative AI is my only option. Plenty of people will look down on me for that but if they had a robot that would do all their welding and woodworking for them they’d tell me to get fucked for asking them to pay.
But you do have four years to learn the whole of the skills from scratch. Who’s forcing a deadline on you? What’s the point of engaging in a creative process if you’re offloading the creativity onto a machine? When you take the creativity out of the creative process, you’re left with just a process.
The point of a welding is to join two pieces of metal together. The quality of the work is quantifiable, and there is no artistic input. Unlike the creation of art, there is no value in the human input. Woodworking is a different story—I would pay more for a piece of art that was carved by a human than a chunk of wood that was cut by a robot, even if they were indistinguishable to me. The human input is what gives the art meaning. Unless all I’m buying is, like, a bedside table. That shares my welding take
So I’ve got a few points on this. The smallest is that welding is very much an art. Any dingus can stick two pieces of metal together. A consistent bead, a steady hand, it’s all on par with painting but no one considers that because it’s used practically instead of aesthetically.
That segways to my next point, art isn’t just the pictures. I don’t have 4 years to learn how to make the art because I’m not passionate about that. I love the mechanics of the game, my creativity is in balancing and abilities, loot tables and incremental growth rates. You wouldn’t say the people who decide the spray pattern of digital guns or the appropriate damage for level 12 don’t deserve to be in video games because they didn’t paint the skyboxes.
I love a story about a single guy making a game from scratch over twenty years as much as the next guy, but it’s unreasonable to say that everyone has to do it that way or it doesn’t count. Just as unreasonable as saying someone’s idea for a game doesn’t deserve to exist because they can’t pay a team to make it.
To be clear, I’m not defending the slop. There’s probably plenty of games on steam that are AI garbage to grab a quick buck. That’s fine to hate. But all the people out there that put their hear into the work and wrapped it in the wallpaper of AI, they deserve to be seen. We can’t all be good at everything and that doesn’t make what we do any less valid.
So join a team. I would say that the guy who makes the spray pattern doesn’t deserve to make his game if that was all he made. Literally nobody is suggesting that you should have to develop your game 100% by yourself, what I’m saying is that a) you could develop the art yourself, and b) if you don’t, you should work with someone who can. What you shouldn’t do is contribute to the industry that’s putting those people out of work.
And this is where the it comes full circle. To have a team I need to pay the team. To not have a team, I need to do every position provided by a team. Which means if you can’t do it or pay for it, you don’t deserve it and no matter how well thought out the idea may be it will never happen.
Tell me where the line falls.