[fabiopolimeni]

Uhm…, even you use something low-code, or even no-code tool, you still have to learn how to code (former) or learn how to use some kind of visual scripting tool (latter).

If you could simply type in plain English what are the mechanics you have in mind instead, then this new (simpler) way of creating game logic it may has the potential to unleash creativity from a broader audience.

It is like saying why would I need a photoshop brush if I can manually paint every single pixel canvas 1 by 1. Not the same thing imo.

[Bjorkbat]

Emphasis on "if you could simply type in English" (or insert native language here).

Sometimes the AI misinterprets what you want. Sometimes this is due to lack of sophistication on the model's part, but I think the bigger issue at hand are the shortcomings of natural language. Even when working with an intelligent human being, sometimes you have to communicate your thoughts/ideas through pictographic means.

It's something I've thought a lot about lately. No-code/low-code is about as old as GUIs themselves, yet it's never become the de-facto way of creating software. However, for everything else we do we use a GUI. No one creates illustrations on the computer programmatically (unless you're into generative art like me). You probably aren't doing your taxes in a terminal. You get the idea.

This is a segue into my other critique of prompting as a UI. A lot of UX people think it is the ultimate UI, and natural language the premier way of communicating jobs to be done. I disagree. I think symbols and diagrams communicate more with less. Concerning language, I think that for whatever reason programming languages are the most natural way (that we've currently found) to communicate intent in a programmatic context, markup languages are the most natural way to communicate intent in a layout context, and that's the reason why despite 50+ years of GUI innovation programmers still use text-editors. The old guard has all aged out of the profession, the new guard still uses text-editors.

So that all being said, I think the most incredible AI demo I've seen so far is the tldraw stuff done by Steve Ruiz, namely Make Real, and that's because you're communicating with the AI in a pictographic / symbolic context, and because it's a whiteboard, there's no limit to the symbols at your disposal to communicate your intent. The limit is AI's ability to interpret what those symbols mean.

[jprete]

If the AI doesn't get the mechanics right, and you have subtle game-breaking bugs that make it impossible to complete, you will never be able to fix it.

[antifa]

> you will never be able to fix it.

I don't know about the article's studio specifically, but regarding AI game engines, I'm mostly worried you won't be able to make engine edits, or the engine will only be able to make an extremely narrow subset of games, or exiting the WYSIWYG/SaaS means starting over from scratch. If the engine targets a specific genre, it could cause a flood of low effort garbage. Some genres are already flooded because the easier game engines have tutorials and asset packs for them.

[fabiopolimeni]

AI can create bugs, sure, as well as humans do. With time, I am more inclined to think it will be easier to ask an AI to fix them for us rather than the other way around.

There is a non-intuitive feature of current LLMs, and that is, they are capable of refining over and over their own previous outcome. You can ask to revisit it, to improve it, check it, etc etc. use this to fix its own bugs.

[antifa]

These days any time I ask an AI to fix something, it starts over from scratch and some random detail falls off the back of the prompt truck.

[bluescrn]

Precisely specifying desired functionality of software in ‘plain English’ is hard. Especially if you can’t provide diagrams, sketches, mocked-up screen layouts, etc.

Also, the low-code/no-code tools allow precise editing. With current prompt-based AI party tricks, a tiny change to the prompt can produce completely different output.

[ToucanLoucan]

Something that I never see addressed for this: So, let's just grant that someday, the tech will be mature enough that this is possible, and let's even say it goes beyond videogames to movies, to visual art, to graphic design, to writing, etc. Let's say that AI gets to a place where any joe blow can put in a prompt, and get a competent, and even let's be generous and say good product out of it. A solid 8/10.

So... who the hell is going to buy it? Because videogames as an industry is already entirely saturated with products that range a whole spectrum from utter dogshit to amazing works of technical expertise, writing, design, etc. There are over 70,000 games on Steam alone now, with 9,000 added in the last 9 months. If this tech actually got to this place, there will be exponentially more games, because all you have to do is tell an AI what you want to play.

And you can take that further: Movies are also highly saturated as an industry, especially as larger studios move ever further into less making "movies" or "series" and just making "content" endlessly remixing their intellectual properties. So now, all of those companies (and all the people who like their stuff) can now just make their own Iron Man movie? Their own Wandavision? Just endlessly making and remaking and remaking, as though tons of people aren't already sick to death of all the television programs and movies that are being made?

And again, you can just keep extending this to any media: print, music, art... we have more of everything now than we ever have before and the goal of companies like Adobe, like OpenAI, etc. is to put even more powerful creative tools into even more hands, broadening the group of people who can create stuff but like... even if you take it as granted that this can be done...

Who the hell is watching all of this stuff? Who is playing all of these games? And why in the world would you pay to watch someone else's AI movie when you can pay to generate your own with whatever you want in it? Why would you ever buy a game off Steam again if you can just ask your game making AI to make you the exact game you want, even just copying the damn description out of steam?

All I see this doing is potentially killing off dozens of creative industries and funneling shit tons of creative control and platform-style power to a handful of massive corporations, running warehouses full of fucking graphics cards, to generate the same games, the same movies, the same music, over, and over, and over, to suit everyone's personal taste, and absolutely destroying entire rainforest's worth of electricity to accomplish it. And like... why do we want that?

[FredrikNoren]

So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time. "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!". Well we went from no one being able to write to almost everyone being able to. But just because everyone can technically write, it doesn't mean that everyone is a _writer_.

I believe that the same goes for AI tools for games. Yes, more people will technically be able to produce games. But I think that will shift the focus; it won't be enough with an impressive tech demo in the future, instead you have to connect to the human side of people when you build games.

We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them? In that world, why would we want to gate keep game creation to only people that have time and money to go to a game school or equivalent? You might think "well everyone can learn on their free time", but that's not necessarily true.

I think we will see more human, and more personal experiences that touch us deeper, because they no longer can just be about the technology (since the technology will be commoditized). That's what I'm personally excited about and why I think it makes sense to work on this.

I do agree thought that it can feel overwhelming to look at all this in aggregate. There are already hundreds of thousands of games, why do we need more? But maybe looking at things in aggregate is not the right way to look at it. There have been countless conversations between people throughout history. Does that mean that a conversation is meaningless? I don't think so, and I think (some types of) games will move into this space too; something more personal, something we don't count in aggregate, something that is between maybe smaller groups of people, but more meaningful to those groups of people. At least that's something I'd be excited to see.

[ToucanLoucan]

> So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time.

I mean, you say that as though it is not increasingly year over year more and more difficult on balance to make your living as a writer. That it hasn't been a famously difficult thing to do since like... I mean good god, I remember writers complaining about this when I was a kid on forums back in the early 2000's and at that time it was old fucking news how hard it was to make it as a writer.

And like:

> "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!"

Many people say we have! Except writers didn't really do it, so much as grifters did it, paying gig-economy workers shit tier wages to crank out boring a repetitive e-books to sell to communities that are typically hostile to proper sources of information. You know, people entirely divested from writing as a profession did it, because they fundamentally don't care about writing and simply saw it as an avenue in which they could spam poorly crafted garbage to uncritical audiences.

Sound familiar at all?

> We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them?

I mean, I'm not arguing for or against the existence of accessible toolsets. If you want my opinion on that, they already exist. Games have famously been made by all kinds of people with all kinds of circumstances that make it notable said people were able to make said games. Various disabilities, physical and intellectual, all manner of life circumstances, on and on. Tons of people make games. None of those people (yet) have used an AI game builder, they used the same tools, combined with accessibility addons for computers, and recruited help for the parts they couldn't have.

I don't know where you get this notion you have to go to game school. Tons of amateurs make games. I think a lot of them (smartly) bring on actual software and game developers to fill in the gaps their lack of expertise cannot, just like they bring on musicians if they aren't musically inclined, or designers if they aren't graphically inclined, and there's nothing wrong with that either and tons of people do all of that for free right now, because plot twist, humans in general enjoy making things for other humans. It's kind of... core to our being in a lot of ways.

I don't see creatives benefiting from AI. I see the management/consultant vampires benefiting from it. The type of people who say things like "make the logo pop" and get annoyed when creatives roll their eyes at them.

[hluska]

You come across as being extremely condescending. And I’m sure you make some good points, but I can’t find them behind the tone. It’s a shame because again, I’m sure you make good points.

[ghostzilla]

On the internet, no one hears you being subtle. (Torvalds)

I'll add my own view: when you watch a movie, read a book, listen to a song, play a game... you CONNECT with the mind of the person who made it. When there is no mind, or the source is a dead, statistical amalgamation of countless fragments of other minds, there is nothing you'll want to connect to, nothing you'll want to squander precious hours of your life on.

And while you may be curious to see, once maybe, a movie such an imaginary AGI-LLM has created from your prompt, no one else will have the slightest interest in seeing it. And vice versa. Which means there would be absolutely NO MONEY in that market. There would be no market.

[johnnyanmac]

>Why would you ever buy a game off Steam again if you can just ask your game making AI to make you the exact game you want, even just copying the damn description out of steam?

If we're assuming AGI levels of development, AAA scope, and very little compile time: cost. If it costs $20/month (VERY optimistic) to use an AI program to make your stuff, and some dude on Fiverr offers to pay $2 to make your game for you, the better deal is to "hire a dev".

Also should never underestimate the power of community and brands. Even if you can make your own Ironman, people will still want to see and talk with each other about the Ironman movie. That's why making a competent knockoff that may in fact improve on the original movie/game will still sell nowhere near as well. Companies pay a lot of advertising to make that the case.

[chrz]

Making a game is not big problem. Making it FUN is. Theres no formula for this. Lets say AI can make a game from prompt just like that - I dont know if its going to be fun to play.

[krapp]

If AI works well enough that just a vague prompt leads it to spit out a professional, compelling and creative game with assets, VO, music, coherent level and production design, and everything else that goes into successful modern games... companies are going to own that and keep that on lockdown, because it's essentially a free money machine.

You won't have a "game making AI" that isn't already owned by big media companies, crippled and handicapped, and expensive as hell. You won't legally be allowed to compete against them. ChatGPT is never going to do that. That isn't how capitalism works.

[majormajor]

Nah, the standard will just change.

A "AAA game" will be the ones that have that extra it whether that's something resulting from human curation (the person firing off prompts who knows how to tune them and knows what other people want) or style (the person assembling things to be more cohesive) or editing (the person making sure the AI puts out an absolutely amazing story instead of a meh one) or whatever.

Basically, look at what a AAA game was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago compared to today, and then extrapolate the other direction. ;) The person who wanted games with the quality of 30 years ago has countless options, yet people still pay for the ones they think are the creme of the crop.

[johnnyanmac]

as a nitpick, you can argue there was no "AAA title" in 1994. Games like MGS2, FF7, and RE2 in '97/'98 is where we commonly consider to be the beginning of the moniker for "AAA".

But yeah, GTA 3 was over 20 years ago. A bit sad that it's still non-trivial to make a game that scope as one person, mostly because 480p assets and fixed lighting pipelines won't cut it anymore (regardless of scope).

[majormajor]

Not something like 1994's Wing Commander or other PC games with Hollywood actors and cutscenes?

I'm not super invested in the nomenclature but it's odd to me that those are all Playstation games.

[ToucanLoucan]

I mean, I don't disagree in the slightest on any point! I'm just curious why anyone who isn't working in the C-suite of any large media company wants that product to exist!

[krapp]

I'm not even certain that product can exist, at least not anytime soon. But AI is in a hype cycle right now so everyone wants to jump on the gravy train.

Of course a lot of people don't want it. A lot of artists, developers and creative people want nothing to do with it, for obvious reasons. I don't want it. I think AI-driven tools only serve to commoditize and diminish human creativity. I've never seen anything generated by AI that I find interesting beyond the sense of superficial aesthetic or vibe. But I'd never prefer it over something made by a human being.

But no one cares what the muggles think, and criticizing AI right now gets you denounced as a crank in much the same way as being an anti-vaxxer or flat-earther. There's nothing to be done but hope the fever breaks before too much damage is done to the world.