I’m with Tim Sweeney here - why restrict creativity with arbitrary restrictions like that? We already have some amazing 1-person games, how many more we’d have with this immense productivity boost? I’m excited for more games even if that means more trash out there, I have the brain power to sift through it if it means another Stardew Valley.
The problem is more that generative AI is trained on the actual work done by other, actual people. And we have no legal framework so far how those people should get paid in turn.
Plus, let’s not for a moment imagine that Sweeney is saying this out of a firmly held personal belief. He’s entirely based on his reactionary stance to Steam. Steam goes against generative AI -> Sweeney is in favor of it. If Steam would say they’re against eating live babies, you can sure as hell bet he’d sing praises for that, too.
Why is everyone have to be paid for everything? The real dillema is wether AI is learning or is it remixing and the science is on the side of learning while all grifters on the side of remixing. All of these lawsuits like the gettyimages one are for profit. They are grifting off this and people so blindly fall for this propaganda thinking they are protecting “the little guy” when big majority of world’s copyright is owned by mega corporations. Fuck that.
I wonder if you would be so adamant to defend AI if it could copy your work, and even your exact style by prompting your public name. I am going to bet on no
I’m a software engineer and AI can already do a lot of my programming and it’s great! Most of my software is FOSS - so your bet is very wrong.
If somehow AI kills programming and puts me out of job then that’s great! I’ll find another job and we’ll be living in objectively better world because code is suddenly infinitely more accessible and powerful :)
So, to me this protectionism thought process is very alien. Especially when it comes to something relatively meaningless as entertainment.
When you chose a FOSS license you explicitly say that you are ok with derivatives of your work. These artists never distributed their work under a license where they allowed AI to be trained on it and make derivatives of it.
AI is far from replacing programmers. It can replace some simple boilerplate, but is nowhere near understanding the logic behind applications. So you simply say this knowing you are safe for tens of years more.
I agree with both your statement about AI training and Sweeney. However, I do believe there is a legitimate argument for using generative AI in game development, and I therefore also think Sweeney has a legitimate point, even if he’s doing it as a reaction to Steam.
Something oft acknowledged as okay in art (or any creative endeavor) is inspiration. Legally, we can really go even further, saying that copying is okay as long as the thing being copied is sufficiently transformed into something that can be considered new. Say, for example, different artists’ versions of a character such as Pikachu. We might be able to recognize them all as Pikachu, but also acknowledge that they’re all unique and obviously the creation of one particular artist.
Why is this process a problem when it’s done with technology? I, as a human, didn’t get permission from someone else to transform their work. It’s okay when I do it, but not when it’s done algorithmically? Why?
I think this is a legitimate question that has valid arguments either way, but it’s a question that needs to be answered, and I don’t think a blanket response of “it’s bad because it’s stealing other people’s work” is appropriate. If the model is very bad and clearly spits out exact replicas of the inputs, that’s obviously a bad thing, just as it would be equally bad if I traced someone else’s work. But what about the models that don’t do that, and spit out unique works never seen before? Not all models are equal in this sense.
Because it is copyright laundering, which is ilegal. We are just too early in the tech to have it established. But see cases open against Microsoft’s Copilot.
I’m surprised people here on open source, free software project are defending copyright so fiercly. AI is learning not copying and even if you disagree - fuck copyright and fuck protectionism. There’s so much shit to do in this world and we’re back to “looms will end the world” nonsense. The propaganda machine is rolling hard on this one.
Open source software has specifically devoted much of its efforts to ensuring it never breaches those copyrights.
They might look at Oracle SQL DB and say “Damn, that looks so useful and well-written. Well, I guess we could copy its codebase and pretend we wrote it ourselves…but it’s probably safer to re-implement it from scratch.” Then you get alternatives like MySQL.
That’s a fast example that probably ignores extended history of database wars, but you get the idea.
You dont seem to know what you are talking about, or are dissingenous.
Copyright is the tool that allows to enforce GPL. The same with other free and open source licenses.
You seem to be leaning towards “permissive” libertarian licenses like MIT and BSD. Those don’t care much about the end users (I got your code, now fuck off I can do whatever I want with the modifications, including never sharing them back and making the whole thing closed source).
But for GPL and licenses that protect the rights of developers (including the right to ask follow-up developers to keep the code open for the benefit of users and developers), copyright laws are the tool that enforces that.
You seem to be awfully ignorant of the history and I suggest you get back to it. Copyleft and free software is fundamentally anti copyright. Copyleft and GPL is legal play against copyright because guess what - we don’t have the power to change the entire legal framework. I’ve been foss dev for over 20 years now so might as well fuck off lol
I thought the standards people were talking about were the exceptional treatment the players received (Larian provided a full game experience. This is no abusive DLC scheme, no predatory microtransactions and way more polished than the average AAA game experience)
It turns out all the fuss was about the game size?
I think it was about all of the above. The actual quote is about the game size, but not all the way. He says that smaller studios may not have the resources to do what they did by having a multi-year early access period. Remember, they have to pay people that whole time without getting much money from the product. Also, he points out that larger studios such as the one making Starfield should have the resources to do what they did and more.
The size of Baldur's Gate 3 isn't the standard I want it to set anyway. I just want RPGs to be that deep with that level of production value. I finished Act 1 in the time it took me to finish all of Mass Effect 1, and I can't believe I've still got two thirds of the game left. This game is the entire Mass Effect trilogy in one game, but Mass Effect didn't give me a ton of ideas for different ways to play the game I just finished. You can play a Shepard who kills more with powers than with guns or more with guns than with powers, but it's nothing like this.
Also, here's the other standard. The game has multiplayer, but it's not a horde mode. It's not a live service hero shooter. It's just co-op; the video game version of playing tabletop with your friends. It's got LAN mode and direct IP connection. It's available DRM-free. It supports controllers and mouse/keyboard really well. Other than that weird Larian launcher that you can disable easily enough, this game is doing everything I need it to do from a software perspective and to stand the test of time in a world where live services inevitably keep dying.
I think I read another user said “they treated the time I have to spend on video games with respect.”
And that line has stuck with me.
So while I don’t expect anything close to BG3’s scale or polish but every few years, I do expect not to buy a game and have the game hold its hand out for cash.
Games respecting my time is something that I’ve definitely come to value a lot more. Quantity for quantities sake, inane things like overly restrictive save points or busywork for people who don’t pay to skip… I just can’t really be bothered with it.
Save points stopped being an issue when game suspension/quick resume became standard. I’ve left my Series X mid game before, powered it off at the wall and gone away for a week, the game loaded back exactly to the point I left it still.
Yeah I love suspend/resume on my steam deck. I definitely don’t think it’s stopped being an issue for me though, sometimes I want to turn the device off or if I’m playing on PC I want to quit the game and do something else or just turn it off.
It’s just frustrating because saving the game is not a technical problem and hasn’t been for decades, it’s a design choice and I shouldn’t need to lean on a technical solution to get around it. Maybe I’m just stubborn though
saves are also important for archiving and sharing game states, maybe i want to preserve this specific game state so i can relive it for the rest of my life? or i want to download a save from someone else to experience something specific they found or made
That is SUCH an amazing way to put it. No grinding, no waiting for timers to run out, no traveling back and forth to savepoint, no insanely hard challenges or unlocks. Just experiencing it, and (for the most part) even failing forward.
Just scores of empty containers to check. I know they can’t all have something but respecting my time would include minimizing having so many empty containers. That’s about my only complaint so far though in that regard so it’s not that bad or anything either.
Lol my pinky gets tired holding down the alt key all the time. I need a mod that permanently enables those highlights and I need it to highlight everything including plates, cups, bottles, etc. Because I’m gonna take it all!
The standard argument here is that you’re not supposed to look in every container for loot. However yep everyone I’ve seen play this game including myself is an absolute loot goblin. What if this rotten fruit basket has a +2 greatsword or boots of elvenkind!
I think there’s a mod that adds a button you can click to “loot the room” - characters make perception rolls and “find” anything of value and put the items into their inventories. Haven’t tried it but might be your jam.
I completely agree with your comment. It’s a bit of a slowdown from play when you search everything but at the same time if playing tabletop you’d have people trying random things that don’t light up for interaction of a video game. In the end it’s only a slight slowdown anyways and does add to immersion so it’s not terrible but more a time waster is all.
I haven’t looked at mods yet, I like to do a first playthrough vanilla usually but I completely forgot they were a thing here, so thanks for the reminder.
The way I see it, there are enough quality indie games, retro emulators, and titles on the average Steam backlog (to the point that it’s a tired joke) that gamers can afford to only pay for unmissable quality. People know what they like, and they talk.
Economically, money is scarce. So is free time, for a lot of us. We don’t care what you tell us to “expect” from you, game publishers with hot takes on BG3. If you can’t release finished games at game prices, maybe you’re not the beating heart of the game industry.
That might be the way it works in your head, but the reality looks different.
AAA games make the most money on PC. And even those games despite micro transactions, DLCs and so on are easily overshadowed by mobile games.
My favorite games are indie games, but indie is simply not feasible in some genres. Take MMOs for example, every stab at it has burned to the ground or was abandoned (or a scam).
Criticizing the big publishers is the only thing we have, because obviously voting with your wallet doesn’t work. You might not buy it, but several million other people who saw a shiny cinematic trailer did. And they will continue to do so, even when Call of Duty 23 sucks they’ll go and buy 24 next year.
I wanted to stick to my I Statements a little more than I did. I cede mostly to your points but reserve that it’s bullshit to tell me not to expect quality just because someone proved it can still be done. It tells me the bigger gaming industry has gotten too large and dreary to be much use to me.
Sad that we went to unfinished games by moneydevouring publishers and all its errors that come along with that (overworked staff, bad salaries every here and there).
When did we leave the path that finished games should be released around the clock?
Basically, capitalism can be traced back as the reason for most decisions corporations make. Although the fact people will complain and do it anyway is something else.
Day one patch means they released an unfinished game. They haven’t done enough testing before physical production. Also fucks over the people with a slow connection.
A patch 1 year after release is fine. Some people found a rare bug which can be fixed. If the game gets patches 1 year or longer after release tells me the developers have love for their game and/or community for fixing it long after they had any obligation to.
A day-one patch is the day of the release, so it counts as included in the release in my books.
It doesn’t mean « they haven’t done enough testing before physical production », it means they took advantage of the inevitable several weeks or months between start of physical printing and release.
And of course a patch 1 year after release is fine. What I’m saying is that I prefer a broken game that is fixed on release day over a broken game that is fixed 1 year later.
Except that’s not what happened in the old days, I’ve been getting PC game patches for as long as I’ve been gaming, upwards of 30 years. You’re not going to get every bug. Console games just didn’t get patched, if it was a buggy PoS it remained a buggy PoS.
BG3 had a day-one patch, and is at its 6th hotfix now. Does it make it a broken game?
With the scale of modern AAA games it is inevitable, if a studio had to wait until every bug in a game the size of Starfield was fixed to release it, it would simply never release. You have to decide at some point that the game is in a releasable state, and at this moment you start printing discs, then you keep working on it and fixing bugs and that constitues the day-one patch. And don’t worry about the expansion, they started working on it long before the release.
Having a day one patch doesn’t make a game broken, but it is a symptom of a bad internal process. Here are the patch notes for BG3 Day 1 (not sure if 100% accurate, but this is the best source I could find). To me, that doesn’t sound like anything game breaking.
I’m not saying BG3 is the gold standard for AAA game releases, I’m merely saying it’s what we should expect for an average AAA release with some being a little better and some being a little worse.
I’m not saying every bug needs to be fixed. Even older games before SW patches were a thing had a ton of bugs. I’m just saying, the game should play well even if users never patch the game. This is really important for game preservation, so you should always be able to take the game disk and install it offline and play through the whole game and have a great experience. That’s not the standard many AAA studios hold themselves to.
Look at this way, you’ve got everything you needed to fix complete. The game is uploaded the the storefront database. It’s now a week before release. There will always be bugs to fix and no game will ever be completely bugfree (especially not games at this scale). At some point you have to release the game, so why not just release what you’ve been working on since when the game launches?
I’m not saying the game needs to be perfect, but it should be a great experience beginning to end without applying any patches. As in, I should be able to take the game disk and install it without any Internet connection and play through the game with only minor bugs here and there.
This is really important for game preservation (the patch servers will eventually go offline), yet many AAA games are almost unplayable without day one patches.
I’m a huge fan of software updates for games, but those updates should merely improve an already great experience, not be the method to fix a broken game. A broken game should never leave QA.
As usual, people have no idea of the complexity of software. Games are extra complex. Games that are meant to run on an infinite variety of hardware combinations are worse. And it’s not any game, it’s an expansive RPG with hundreds of hours of gameplay and paths.
It’s impossible to ship this kind of product bug-free, and it’s quite probable that it will never truly be bug-free. A day-1 patch is obviously expected, and bugfixes in the following weeks mean that devs are closely monitoring how it goes, and are still working full-time on it. That’s commendable.
Day one patch is fine. It’s just an odd remnant of buying physically as the discs have to be pressed and shipped several months ahead of launch while the Devs carry on working. Digital owners just download the latest build on launch.
If there’s a patch and the game is still full of issues, thats another story.
So pressing unfinished games on disks is fine for you? They should release a finished game. What if the console shop or server goes offline? How can you play it then? For preservation, day one patches are a nightmare.
I’m glad to see the trend of releasing more games for pc beside their console counterpart rising. It makes preservation easier.
Pressing unfinished games is a trade-off and a lesser evil than instead choosing to distribute games digital only. One alternative would be to delay all launches until multiple months after the game is considered “ready,” but that would likely impact revenue streams in a way that the people making those decisions would never agree to. It would also upset the 80% of the market who buy games digitally - why should their release be delayed?
Would you prefer for physical releases to not be available until 3-6 months after the digital release (and more frequently, for there to be no physical release at all)?
Even if you press finished game, you still find tons of issues to fix before the release. It should be treated as bonus polishing time though, not time to finish the game.
BG3 has plenty of bugs, some of them game breaking. Look at the litany of fixes they delivered in each patch. It’s not about that. It’s about releasing a game that isn’t a “service”, and just a purely high quality game - tactical combat that works well, characters with good writing, a solid plot hook, a distinct graphical style, phenomenal voice acting and mocap (which matter more for this genre than they would in, say, a third person shooter).
Every game has bugs, that is not really what a ‘finished game’ is about. Its more about consistently working features, delivering what you promised and working on fixing things you know arent working correctly.
Like everyone else is saying, I think the standard for primarily single player video games should be releasing a finished product for a reasonable price. I’m sure I don’t speak for just myself but I’m super tired of things like: unreasonably priced tiered purchase options, cash shops/microtransactions, battle/season passes, twitch drops, preorder bonuses, and just any kind of FOMO in general. It feels like a lot of modern video games are only designed to siphon as much money from the consumer as possible with the least amount of work possible. A lot of these games have no soul and they’re unfinished and broken on release. I just don’t even bother with them anymore.
Some of the things you just mentioned are actually things Baldur‘s Gate 3 did, though. Namely Twitch drops, pre-order bonuses and (arguably) unreasonably priced purchased options with their day 1 DLC. The latter is especially baffling since Larian Studios makes a big deal of not paywalling extra content while doing exactly that from the start. It‘s also guilty of having quite a lengthy early access phase prior it‘s release.
The success does not come from lack of bullshit, but from delivering a good, polished product regardless.
Yeah, I wasn’t too happy with the twitch drops thing but I caved in and created an account so I could get them. I feel like I let the 10 USD DLC slide because 70 USD total seems to be becoming the standard price for games anyway. They’re not totally innocent of the things I dislike but they delivered such a phenomenal game that I can overlook it.
The 10€ DLC iirc only has content that references their past Divinity games, I feel like it’s one of the fairer DLCs, given that it’s completely innecesary for the full experience and might even detract from it for non larian fans. I feel like it’s better to give it as an extra purchase than include it in the pack.
Full disclosure I backed/preorderd the game the moment they announced in kickstarter and I have gotten it for 40ish euros iirc, and I got the DLC content for being an early backer. I don’t usually preorder but it’s Larian, they always overdeliver, and this time they did also, while raising the price of the completed game because they overdeveloped the initial concept way too much lol.
What devs see is “all those other devs are too lazy to make a good game”.
What players mean is “all those other games are full of micro transactions and sell missing content and features as dlc”, which is not the same thing.
What players want to be addressed is the bad influence investors have on the products. Publishers aren’t interested in publishing good games, they only care about money.
Devs don’t go about making a game only for the money. Most of them would rather do it the same way Larian does it, focus on quality and provide a good gaming experience, but their hands are tied.
So the message gamers try to get out goes to the wrong recipients, and it’s obviously being taken the wrong way.
And that’s why I generally prefer indie games. Many indie games are made with passion, with money being down the list of priorities. AAA games are made with money first, though there is certainly passion as well, it’s just not the top on the list. As studios and budgets get bigger, so will their expectation of profits.
So if you want better games, buy from smaller studios. Show them that you value passion over high budget.
But when a game like BG3 comes out, with all the stuff no indie studio can afford to do and it has this level of passion without sticking its hand in your pocket, it absolutely reminds us that AAA doesn’t have to be like it is.
As good as indie RPGs are, Disco Elysium was only able to afford voice acting after being a giant commercial success. No small budget team is going to be able to have mocap work on the level of BG3. These things cost a lot of money and involve paying a lot of workers. BG3’s Kickstarter got to be carried by the name recognition of Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons & Dragons in general, following a huge popularity surge for the latter thanks to the rise of real-play podcasts and such.
Do games need hundreds of voice actors and incredible mocap to be good? No. But it’s something that only AAA studios have the ability to add, and it’s a shame that it’s all going into the next fifa/COD/whatever other money pit GAAS the industry is shitting out.
Agreed. But I’d much rather sacrifice AAA features like mocap, voice acting, and RTX if it means a higher chance of playing a game with a lot of passion put in. Those are nice to have, but not the reason I pick a game.
Yup. And I wish more AAA titles took more risks in gameplay and storytelling, but those seem to be few and far between.
Starfield is a fantastic example. If you asked me to describe a Bethesda game set in space, it would look a lot like Starfield (but I probably would’ve missed the procedural generation). Usually AAA games are pretty much as expected, with one or two surprises on the side, and that’s it.
BG3 basically delivers on Cyberpunk’s promises (branching storylines, mocap, great visuals, etc), and it did so on launch, which is really rare.
“not always possible for other developers”, mostly because they’re busy shitting out rubbish, buggy titles riddled with micro transactions (or whatever nonsense they can get away with to nickel and dime their customers)
People took note of how great BG3 is because it’s just a good game, you’re not be treated as a resource they can squeeze to get extra cash
I mean it should and they didn’t set a new standard, they just brought back a old standard of having a developer and publisher actually giving a fuck about making a good, complete game.
This is the perspective that is totally forgotten and missed by most engaging in the discussion. Not to diminish Larian’s achievement, but they literally busted out the old playbook. Credit where it’s due, but BG3 shouldn’t be controversial - it should be the standard because that’s what the standard used to be.
That’s what the standard used to be, because it used to be much cheaper to satisfy. For indies, if you try to do a quarter of what Larian achieved there in production value, and your game doesn’t sell, your studio is dead. For AAA, you’ll have to fight execs/management endlessly trying to shoehorn microtransactions and/or dlc to “justify” the costs.
I’d love it to be the new standard, but this only happened because Larian is basically a huge indie imo. Which unfortunately is an anomaly.
Is it another CEO trying to squeeze as much money as possible before abandoning the ship? I mean, from what I read people have already been migrating to Unreal.
It essentially allows for special closed source builds. These closed source builds can have the engine support for consoles and still be in keeping with Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo's licenses.
So, basically the console manufacturer gives you the SDK, integration code, etc after you sign their NDAs. After that, you can either use what they gave you to port it yourself to that console, or you can pay someone else for their build.
Hey EU. How about lowering that barrier to entry by pumping a couple of million Euro’s into cold-room reverse engineering the API’s and developing an open source alternative that can be distributed freely.
We’ll invite Sony lawyers, Microsoft lawyers, watch them cope and seethe as their framework is made more open…
…aaaand then realising that a lot more people will take the shot to pay for actual licensing. Go figure.
It's still valuable information for those that would seek to load homebrew (unsigned code) onto their systems.
Console security is one of those things where every additional barrier helps. The goal isn't to outright prevent homebrew or piracy but to limit the scope of breaches and delay them as much as possible. Even modern consoles like the Switch and PS5 are not immune
It would be great if there was a guaranteed way to homebrew your consoles, but yeah security and stability is the real thing we benefit from. I don’t think anyone would advocate for more hackers in console multiplayer games, and I don’t want a homebrew game I’m running to crash or brick my system because of their fly-by-night hardware usage.
So, I didn't bring up Xbox earlier, because Microsoft has an official way to run homebrew on Xbox consoles.
All modern Xboxes have access to something called developer mode. This allows people to put whatever code they like on it, but removes the ability to play retail games. The change isn't permanent, however, and switching between the modes is perfectly safe.
This is a big part of the reason why Xbox 1 never had piracy; pirates couldn't piggyback on the back of homebrewers, who simply opted to use developer mode instead of cracking the console.
Interesting, I didn’t realize this. I assumed a dev kit was always required for that behavior, and that’s why Nintendo offering a cheap switch dev kit was such a big deal. TIL
I am not sure this is something other engines even offered at this level, but my issue is bindings support.
3.X had (3rd-party) production-ready bindings, even for niche languages.
4.X, with hopes of improving support for compiled languages, has a new bindings system meaning that all bindings need to be redone as a new effort. This happened with the language that I'm interested in, the group that made the production-ready 3.X bindings abdicated the crown and there have been splintered efforts by individuals to work on 4.X bindings.
So it (3.X vs 4.X) is language vs engine features. When/if 4.X bindings do come out, it is not known how similar they will be so (aside from non-Godot-specific code) that will likely add complication to it as well.
I don't really care about consoles (needing to jump through hoops to develop for it is one reason) so a different potential issue would web export limitations. Both for different languages and for visual quality (AA). Those were issues in the past, though I'm not actually sure where they're at now (the 4.1 docs do say you can't have C# web exports in 4.X).
I’m all for Godot getting better; that said, has Epic, Open3D, or Crytek made similar moves?
(I know Crytek isn’t much of a player currently, but as someone who’s been following them closer in recent years, it really seems like they got their house back in order)
I think epic made their engine more appealing by waiving some Epic Games Store charges for Unreal games. And had a no fee until 1m earnings thing. Not this kind of shit.
That was correct about maybe 5 + years ago. However, particularly the latest 4.x builds, the 3d is top shelf. It won’t beat unreal, but it’s 3d capabilities are better than most people’s ability to use them.
@chloyster So if I want to reinstall a game I have to decide if it's worth making the dev pay more money due to my game reinstall or install on another device? Is that what I'm reading?
gamedeveloper.com
Najstarsze