At the time I’m writing this there are 78 comments in this comment section. I haven’t read all of them, so let’s just assume that every single one of those comments represents a unique individual who believes that the Switch 2 and the Steam Deck (and related) are direct competitors.
Given the nature of this platform and community that number is not even remotely surprising. It’s also an utterly insignificant number of people.
The overlap between people who would buy a Switch 2 and people who would buy a Steam Deck is a tiny sliver of a Venn diagram. Those are two largely separate categories of gamer.
I think this more people mistaking people expressing their preferences for a system and extrapolating that to meaning market share predictions.
Reword the question to do you believe Steam Deck will overtake Nintendo market share and you’d get different answers. Same with if you ask someone why is Linux better than Windows versus do you believe Linux can overtake Windows market share?
I find people on the internet have a hard time differentiating between people who are expressing preferences and people predicting market share shifts. People just see oh this person doesn’t like Nintendo or Windows and must believe Steam Deck or Linux is going to be more popular.
I typed out the below as a response to you, then reread what you wrote. We might be making the same point just with different words. Hopefully I’m not coming across as overly adversarial.
I think most people on social media, including lemmy, exist in an echo chamber that amplifies specific views to the point that it becomes easy to think those views are much more broadly held then they actually are.
Changing the question around like you suggest might help some people realize that, but I also think that there are a lot of people who think that the views expressed in their slice of social media are actually indicative of broader trends.
I also don’t think I’m immune to this effect, but I do feel somewhat compelled to point out specific instances of it when I notice it.
What I wrote might have been confusing, but I was trying say that places like lemmy may have view points that express preferences that aren’t representative of the mainstream. Like how there may be more positive Linux comments on average per user.
But, that it doesn’t necessarily mean the people expressing those views believe them to be representative of the mainstream. It is more just them expressing their thoughts.
However, people I found across social media can mistake what are simply individual opinions as general proclamations, and immediately jump to “Oh this person is claiming that their view point is one most people hold. What a bold claim.” When all they were saying was I like turtles as opposed to most people like turtles.
I’d say its more people stating why they prefer the Steam Deck over the Switch than actually believing the Steam Deck would overtake the Switch. Challenge them to a bet and you’d see very few take it.
I think it is people mistaking people’s preferences for market share predictions.
I gave away my switch to a coworker because i didn’t really like it to buy a steam deck. So i’d say for me yes they where competitors. I use a lenovo legion go now.
Depends on what you are after. Plenty of people are just looking to game, without anything specific in mind. Also plenty of people might see the real difference, want both, but only have the money for one. In these cases I would say that they are competitors as the buyer is contemplating which of the two to buy.
Honestly for me it came down to where i prefer to buy my games. Steam games will follow me for the forseeable future and switch games will not. I gave my coworker my nintendo account too with over $500 of games on it and i was like that’s it. That’s enough sunk cost that i will lose.
Instead of having to pay for the game’s premium battle pass or unlock that new hero through dozens of hours of gameplay, Blizzard will make Venture and all future heroes available to free for all players when they launch.
Wow, Blizzard actually taking a factually negative change back. No further modifications, no further rework, just a straight rollback of something that was a bad idea to begin with. That’s really a sign of the times changing, that always felt like something that is strictly forbidden at Blizzard! 😮
The new hero Venture is so/so though, IMO. Yeah their movement ability is awesome, but that weapon is so boring. And they hype it up so much, but it is just Sigma’s primary fire, including the ability to fire around corners and all. Unavoidable with so many heroes and not nearly enough niches for all of them that things will get doubled and tripled up, but it’s still disappointing to see something copied&pasted so directly.
I played the hell out of OW1. They turned off OW1 servers and required my actual real phone number to continue to play on OW2. Wouldn’t even let me use a VIP number. There is no time in this universe where I will want Blizzard/Activision or its advertising partners to have my real phone number. No interest in OW2.
It's a good change for sure, but the cynic in me can't help but think they're doing this solely because they believe it'll make them more money this way.
The actual reason is to hide the fact they’re probably not gonna have much if any pve content soonish. That’s the whole ‘reason’ behind ow2. They just layed off a bunch of staff too.
I don't see the correlation between those and making new heroes free. Maybe as a way to douse the community flames.
I think it's simply because people want to play the new content. While some cave and buy the battlepass, it doesn't offset the losses of the grind and paywall that stops people from coming back and investing to begin with.
The actual reason is to hide the fact they’re probably not gonna have much if any pve content soonish
They literally out right said multiple times that PvE content is mostly shelved and to not expect anything. This isn’t some sort of secret they are keeping
I 100% believe the claim that Microsoft executives mistakenly thought they’ve just nabbed the Donkey Kong IP by acquiring Rare. Definitely seems like something some c-suite ghouls who are totally out of touch with the games industry would believe.
Also, I’m not sure how much of Rare’s downfall was due to Microsoft’s mismanagement or their core talent leaving to form other studios. Maybe a bit of both.
I assume a lot of the top level staff stick about until their contractually obliged period for getting a massive payday is over, and then look very closely at whether they actually want to be told what to do by a bunch of suits all day long.
Realistically they’re working to make somebody else richer at that point, and there’s only so much enthusiasm anyone can have for that. Certainly not enough for the long hours needed in the games industry.
To be fair, Age of Empires III was bad, and the last project Ensemble was working on before they got shuttered was a Halo MMO.
Also, Robot Entertainment (the studio that rose from the ashes of Ensemble) were the initial developers of Age of Empires Online, which was P2W slop that 90% of players couldn’t run because Games For Windows LIVE was a buggy crock of shit. And since then they’ve released nothing but Orcs Must Die games.
AoE III was excellent. It explored new ideas and did it well. As a long time AoE fan who played all of them since the first, AoE II is massively overhyped, and AoE III is unfairly shit on.
Also they were voluntold to do Halo Wars, and they did a good job on it. It’s a good game, and it did an excellent job on console with a controller scheme, which was impressive at the time.
Ensemble got shafted. They were held up at the time as the leaders of RTS and Microsoft didn’t give a fuck. Just used and abused.
AoE online was clearly executive suite demands. Of course it fucking sucked.
AoE III was excellent. It explored new ideas and did it well. As a long time AoE fan who played all of them since the first, AoE II is massively overhyped, and AoE III is unfairly shit on.
AoE2 genuinely had a small competitive scene on Voobly and Gameranger. It was being played as a grassroots esport by dedicated fans even before the HD and DE remasters.
One of the third game’s glaring problems was how poorly balanced it was. IIRC the winning strategy was to play French (who already had overpowered cavalry), rush to the third age and use a particular tech to effectively blockade your opponent’s home city and prevent them from playing anything in their deck.
Even when AoE3’s Definitive Edition came out, fixed a lot of the balance issues and added a bunch of new civs via expansions, the damage was already done and sales were so low that Microsoft cancelled their latest expansion and halted development a few months ago.
Also they were voluntold to do Halo Wars, and they did a good job on it. It’s a good game, and it did an excellent job on console with a controller scheme, which was impressive at the time.
Played the Xbox 360 demo of Halo Wars near its initial release and wasn’t impressed. All I really remember about the game beyond that was how bad the box art looked. I mean those spartans look like they have fucking long giraffe necks.
Gamepad controls and real time strategy just don’t mix. You either make something so mechanically slow that keyboard & mouse would shit all over that control style, or have to bastardize the game mechanics so much that it’s all but fully automated. The only game I’ve seen remotely work as a gamepad RTS is Tooth and Tail.
I couldn’t believe it when they shut down the studio that did Hi-Fi Rush. They put out a great game that received universal praise, then shut them down like a few months later. Infuriating.
Amazing. Hopefully that company moves into the 21st century and allows crossplay to all their online games, and perhaps even a step further and redecuding exclusive games and add release more PC games.
As much as I hate to say it, I dunno that reducing exclusive is the best play right now with Microsoft locking down Bethesda and anything else they can get away with.
Perhaps, it seems they are only doing it because Sony won’t play nice. There would have to be some sort of agreement between the two titans. Nintendo won’t play nice ever.
I think in this dynamic, Microsoft+XBox has done by far the most damage to gaming, and so has the least amount of karma and trust. Whereas Sony had free, great online multiplayer services on even the PS2, Microsoft quickly ripped off everybody else's consoles, relied on Halo to sell, has the worst everything, and has pushed the majority of anti-consumer practices in both gaming and the wider technology markets.
I bed to differ. Microsoft has done a ton of good in the recent years with PC gamepass, all their titles available on PC and even many on steam. Sure Sony was fantastic in up till PS3, PS4 and PS5t have gone down hill. Worst payment structure, and their PS equivalent of gamepass is/was awful. On the plus side PS has been adding a couple games a year later after their respective launch onto Steam.
This post implies that Sony has more trust is ridiculous. They refuse to secure their online services, leading to recurring hacks. There was whole rootkit fiasco which was crazy bad.
They defended the ridiculous launch prices of the PS3 by saying that they think consumers should just work more hours to afford one.
They still do shit things like hide basic features like cloud saves behind a paywall. That have no problem paying for exclusive games and exclusive content and if they had the money MS had they would do the same thing MS is doing.
MS, Sony, Nintendo and everyone else out there doesn’t care about trust, disagreements, or “playing nice”. They will do what is most profitable for them. Sometimes that means doing something pro-consumer, like announcing the backwards compatibility program or releasing exclusives on PC day one, other times it means buying out the competition and securing exclusive releases to fight off the competition.
The idea that Microsoft of all things would “play nice” with Sony, as if they were children playing together in the schoolyard, is absurd, and revisionist at its finest considering Microsoft’s history in and outside the gaming sphere.
When I was young a dumb, I followed the anti-feminist YouTubers that used Anita Sarkeesian as their punching bag. I loved video games and bought into their idea that she was trying to ruin them. Now that I’m older and wiser, I can see that that was a load of baloney. I watched the original Tropes vs. Women in Videogames series and it was very level-headed and rational. There were a few things that the anti-feminist YouTubers said “well what about this???” and Anita actually covered that in the video but the YouTubers cherry picked and didn’t show the response. Anita has done a lot of good and has had so much hate and harassment that I feel she deserves a break.
Are there any other virtual stores on the console? There’s obviously physical store fronts, but I’m pretty sure there’s only the one digitally on console.
Are there any other virtual stores on the console?
No but since none of the console vendors have a monopoly, antitrust laws don’t apply. They can do practically any shit as long as none have a dominant market position.
So Nintendo can force everyone to buy a Switch to play Mario games? From what I see, consoles are locked in as well and we are forced to have PS/Xbox/Switch for their exclusive games. And this is legal because they aren’t as big as Apple? Why can’t I buy one console to play any game I want just like I can install any OS on Android?
Did not know that. So it’s just the sales numbers then because iPad is the same as an iPhone in terms of functionality and restrictions. Mac is more open compared to their mobile devices.
So it’s just the sales numbers then because iPad is the same as an iPhone in terms of functionality and restrictions.
Sales numbers and more specifically market power of the Apple App Store on iPhones. In absolute numbers there are more Android devices out there but that includes super low-end devices where the owners don’t spend as much money on apps.
Apparently tablets aren’t being seen as big of a factor in the overall market, at least according to the EU. The special exceptionfs announced recently by Apple for the EU also for the most part are only about iPhone.
“The changes do not apply outside of the EU, nor do they apply to iPadOS in any country.” --https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-stores-eu-grace-period/
I’m fully aware of that but if history showed one thing it’s that Microsoft runs game developers into the ground.
Also Take Two, Nintendo, EA, and Sony exist. Microsoft has no monopoly just because they bought a crap publisher. The lastest Call of Duty game on mobile already tanked.
I agree that it is about market power, but one could make the argument that Xbox/PlayStation have a duopoly similar to iOS/Android.
Although I think PlayStation dominated with roughly a 70/30 split worldwide (higher in Europe). Nintendo is somewhat in its own category imo, since they mostly do their own games and don’t directly compete in that sense.
But I guess in a way consoles also compete with PCs.
It’s not the same model though, is it? I can buy XBox, PS an Nintendo games in a shit ton of physical or digital stores. So there are different channels. There is no equivalent on iOS. If you don’t want to publish in the app store, no one will be able to install your app (developers with own certs and enterprise customers with mdm excluded).
A chunk of those sales go to the platform, regardless of where they’re bought. And you can’t just sell an Xbox/playstation game without permission and royalties
Right, but I feel that this method of distribution is very similar to gift cards in that the retailer has no control over pricing, promotions, etc. additionally, these codes cannot be re-used.
It’s a bummer we can’t decline Steam Game updates anymore. That would help avoid these types of situations. Being forced to update a game before launching it was always going to lead to this type of bullshit. Same with all the GTA fuckery.
You don’t even need the external tool, you can use the Steam terminal itself to download the depots, which I personally find more palatable than having another application that is getting access to my username and password (it needs those to get the access from Steam). Even though I don’t think that tool is malicious I would still prefer to not have to rely on it.
Go to SteamDB, and search up your game.
Click on the app ID of the game you’re looking for to go to its details page.
Take a look at the depots, and click on the depot ID of the one that looks like the one you want to download.
Click on the Manifests tab. Look at the list and find the version that you want to download. Record its manifest ID.
Open the Steam console. You can do this by opening a command window “Run” by pressing «Win + R» and then enter the command: steam://open/console, and then press Enter, or by opening any browser and enter the URL-address field write the same command: steam://open/console. You can even have it always available when you start Steam by appending -console to the launch options of the shortcut to the Steam exe.
The syntax to the “download_depot” command is as follows: download_depot <appid> <depotid> [<target manifestid>] [<delta manifestid>] [<depot flags filter>] : download a single depot
You only need to worry about the first three arguments to it. Type the command, then the app ID, depot ID, and the manifest ID of the depot version you want.
Wait for Steam to download the depot. You won’t see any indication of progress, but you can tell it’s downloading by looking at the network usage on your downloads page. The download can pause/resume if your connection goes out, but won’t if you restart the client.
After the download is done, Steam will show you where the files were downloaded to.
Go to the game’s installation directory, and move the files somewhere else. Then go to where the depot files were downloaded to, and move everything over to the game folder.
You may have to rename the game’s EXE file if the dev changed the launch options recently. You can find the current EXE name by going to the game’s SteamDB page and clicking on the Configuration tab. 11. You should now be able to launch the old version through Steam.
Personally I found that you can just start the game from the download location and it will still have the Steam overlay if the game basically uses Steam as DRM.
Are you downgrading to several different versions? Because I’ve used the console variant and just run the game from the download folder and Steam doesn’t update it
I’ve just not replaced the files in any directory at all, just start the game from the download location for the depot (one should be able to rename the folder for it to the version) and then you keep any number of versions to play available by just going into that download location and starting the game.
At least that’s how it has worked for me. I just thought that was easier than having to replace files every time.
At least that’s how it has worked for me. I just thought that was easier than having to replace files every time.
It is, I just can’t do it because I have all the custom songs and plugins in my main folder and copying/linking all of that is a lot more work than just overwriting the game files each time.
Oh boy, Travis Worthington comes off as such a selfish asshole in this interview. Paraphrased, and being a bit unfair to him, he just kind of says, “oh, we know fine well that we are benefiting from stealing art from others, and I’d really like if you believed that I cared about that, but the reality is that I don’t really give a shit, and if you’re an illustrator, just give up on your dreams of getting a job someday, because I certainly won’t be paying you”
Definitely gonna be avoiding indie games studios from now on.
Wow that name is so bad, it’s just a description. No wonder these uncreative twats need AI to make art. They can’t even think of a cool name for their studio.
I’m glad that you asked this question, because I also was like “wow, seems a bit extreme” before I saw people replying to you that that’s the studio name
Frankly, it's an absurd question. Has Polygon obtained consent from all of the artists for the works used by its own human artists as inspiration or reference? Of course not. To claim that any use of an image to train or influence a human user is stealing is to warp the definition of the word beyond any recognition. Copyright doesn't give you exclusive ownership over broad thematic elements of your work because, if it did, there'd be no such thing as an art trend.
Then what's the studio having its name dragged through the mud for? For using a computer to speed up development? Is that a standard that Polygon wants to live up to as well?
Totally agree, but where the line is, I think, is that companies want free lunch: they want to leverage a mind-like thing (either a human brain or a trained AI) that has internalized a ton off content that it can use to generate new content from, but they don’t ever want to pay them or treat them like a living being.
If these AI models ever become advanced enough that people actually consider them to be alive or conscious or something, suddenly the tables will turn, and companies will be fighting against their ethical treatment. It will basically be another, much more philosophically difficult, slavery debate, and we all know which side the corporations will be on.
Or maybe it’s simply a false equivalence we all need to accept. Maybe creativity can exist independent from a conscious brain, or maybe it’s just a vulnerability in human consciousness to look at these stochastic arrangements of data and say “that looks inspired”.
Either way, in 300 years our progenitors will look back at us and think, “wow, I can’t believe they thought that was ok. Clearly it was just a different time.”
they want to leverage a mind-like thing (either a human brain or a trained AI) that has internalized a ton off content that it can use to generate new content from, but they don’t ever want to pay them or treat them like a living being.
That's anybody, really. Everything you've ever accomplished has depended upon the insights and knowledge of countless other people who never saw a dime from you for it. That's part of living in a society and it's a crucial part of how it advances.
Or maybe it’s simply a false equivalence we all need to accept. Maybe creativity can exist independent from a conscious brain, or maybe it’s just a vulnerability in human consciousness to look at these stochastic arrangements of data and say “that looks inspired”.
I think that most of the value we get from creativity isn't from the mechanics of creating something. And I think that by removing the mechanical barrier, we unlock that value much more widely across humanity. Art is a form of communication. Will we ever feel the same connection when that communication comes wholesale from an AI? I don't know. But we're certainly not there yet.
That’s anybody, really. Everything you’ve ever accomplished has depended upon the insights and knowledge of countless other people who never saw a dime from you for it. That’s part of living in a society and it’s a crucial part of how it advances.
Yes, that is why I phrased it as I did.
I agree that art is a form of communication, but it’s also a source of inspiration regardless of the artist’s intent. A person can derive meaning that the artist never intended. So I wouldn’t say art is totally a subset of communication.
most of the value we get from creativity isn’t from the mechanics of creating something
This part I would disagree with. I think 99.999% of all art is created solely for the creator’s benefit. The other 0.00001% of art is hanging on display in museums, etc. In the case of creating music, the playing of the instrument is very important to the fulfillment of most musicians. And learning the mechanics of painting, or sculpting, etc., is where I think most of the value of most art comes from. The mechanism of creating art IS the act of communication; it’s channeling thoughts and feelings into something tangible. You likely had an art class in school, not because they wanted you to create something you could sell, or to learn a skill that was going to pay the bills, but because the act of creating art is fulfilling to the creator.
I think this is part of why Sand Mandalas are destroyed after they are finished being created. It’s not the existence of the piece that is important, it was the creation of it.
A bit of a quibble, but I think it’s a stretch to say that current-gen AI is mind-like. I’m of the opinion that, given the way current AI works, there isn’t any “creativity” in how midjourney/etc. generates images. Though you could make a solid argument for a detailed prompt being creative, or for a functional/algorithmic AI being a creative tool of the coder, in neither case would I say that the source of the creativity is the computer.
Then again, legal definitions would only allow creativity to come from humans, but I think other animal species are currently capable of creativity/art, in the sense of “do they do actions for purposes other than survival or reproduction.”
Yeah, the thing with neural nets is they’re neuron-like. Saying they’re mind-like is like trying to say your visual or auditory cortices have consciousness. Intelligence, sure; but that’s a low bar. Single-celled organisms have cognitions about the environment. So do plants. They’re both intelligent, in the same way that a lot of the low level machinery in your brain is intelligent, the same way that neuron-like software and hardware is intelligent.
Just another example of hierarchies embedded in capitalism. Artists have no rights, humanities are disdained; but big businesses that treat people as “resources” and “consumers” are privileged.
Absolutely. Just yesterday I tried asking stable diffusion to draw me “An elephant and a monkey dance while two cheetahs drink punch. The elephant and monkey look very happy. The cheetahs look bored.”
It drew me two elephants with monkey hair and two cheetahs. No punch, no dance.
If what you ask is somewhere in the bank of images it will draw it. But if what you ask is a situation the AI has never encountered before in any image, it will fail to invent it.
If all artists used AI we would be stuck on a loop of content that is not novel. Years from now we would stop seeing amazing incredible art. There would be no evolution at all in the styles.
I am glad that there are artists who continue to draw without AI even if it must be hard for them.
Can you think of a better term? I tried to clarify by saying, “thing that has internalized a ton of content that it can use to generate new content from”, but there’s not a succinct term for that. I would not call an LLM a mind, but I would say minds do this observe patterns->distill information->generate new patterns thing very well. So “mind-like” is all I could come up with.
legal definitions would only allow creativity to come from humans
That would be part of the ethical dilemma we will need to solve, which corporations will be on a very predictable side of. Our laws were written assuming that only humans were capable of creativity and consciousness (however linked, or not, the two might be).
Humans and computers see and understand artwork completely differently. If you tasked both a human and a computer to look at a painting for 10 milliseconds and asked them to recreate it from memory, how accurate would their reproductions be? It is completely wrong and very misleading to equate human learning with machine learning. They are completely different processes.
People who use AI will create a better cheaper product and at the end of the day its use as a new technology is justified. You'll be clinging to an ever smaller raft and eventually have to abandon your ideals.
And at the end of the day art is not stolen when used to train a machine. Copyright itself is an artificial legal construct, and it's the right to redistribute, not the right to learn from art. You can't invent rights out of thin air and get any when they're broken
People who use AI will create a better cheaper product
i feel like this assumes that there will still be human produced art to train on to improve the genAI model when there isnt any incentive for humans to spend so much time to learn to make art when it can be used for training and when machines can churn out pieces at a faster cheaper rate
(c) Restrictions. You may not … (iii) use output from the Services to develop models that compete with OpenAI;
from section 2ciii of OpenAI’s Terms of Usesomehow while its justifiable for corporations to use human produced work to train a machine that competes with humans, using corporate machine produced work to train a competing machine is not
this assumes that there will still be human produced art to train on to improve the genAI model when there isnt any incentive for humans to learn to make art when it can be used for training
Fears like this never pan out. People don't stop doing things just because of AI existing, and we still have people doing things like making vinyl records even though CDs exist or whatever, or taking old-fashioned photographs.
Artists are going to still exist and they're going to still be drawing art and they're going to continue to share it. It may take a chunk out of the number of people who want to learn art, but that's life and the people training these AI will adapt to it.
And even if they somehow totally disappear, people will find plenty of new and exciting ways to continue to push the boundaries of what AI can do, because at that point being able to do that will be what gives you a competitive advantage in the world.
OpenAI’s Terms of Use
Open AI is a shitty unethical company. Never use them as a litmus test.
And unfortunately despite what is right or wrong, lawsuits still managed to determine how behavior happens in our modern system, and groups like the MAFIAA (the music and film industry association of America) are happily willing to abuse the law to get their way so that they can make as much money as possible as well.
just like vinyl and other vintage works, i do think it will be a shame that human produced art will become scarce and likely only for the rich to enjoy. i dont see why they would share it freely anymore
And even if they somehow totally disappear, people will find plenty of new and exciting ways to continue to push the boundaries of what AI can do
this assumes that genAI models can improve without any new input. but to be honest, it feels more like a, once they wipe out a generation of artist, they are free to increase the price of their “Skill as a Service” out of the reach of an average person for more profit. the GPU and water the genAI models run on arent getting any cheaper so no risk of anyone spinning up their own cluster
will become scarce and likely only for the rich to enjoy
Look at the other side of the coin, every single person on the planet is going to have instant access to an artist in their pocket, a little machine that they can give an instruction to and get a workable piece of art out of.
That is something that only the rich have access to right now, enable creative expression beyond our wildest imagination for all of the people who don't have 5 to 10 years of their life to dedicate to learning art.
You looking at the negative, a relatively small negative, and totally ignoring the positive side of this coin which is going to change the face of human creativity as we know it.
It's like being angry that only rich people are going to have bands playing in their restaurants because the poor people will be using records. Sure, but we quite enjoy having prerecorded music nowadays and we would never give that up in exchange for live artists.
The same principle applies, our lives will be improved by this and as long as that's the case it's a good thing, even if it means change.
From my perspective you're fighting to keep this sort of self-expression in the hands of the few instead of the hands of the many. Your practicing elitism and pretending in the process that you're fighting for the common person, but the common person will benefit more from widely accessible and easy to use tools than the rich will.
i dont see why they would share it freely anymore
Because humans like to express themselves and share that expression as widely as they can for no other reason than the active sharing and having their works seen by many.
The most pure and durable Art is Art as a hobby. Art as a form of self-expression?
this assumes that genAI models can improve without any new input
They can. Or at least, you can use things like human rating systems to guide an AI to produce outputs that people enjoy and train it that way instead of using raw works of art.
As a rule, if humans can do it, AI can do it too. It's only a matter of figuring out how.
do let me know if im coming off as combative and this isnt the place for it, i do admit i definitely am a pessimist
Is something that only the rich have access to right now, enable creative expression beyond our wildest imagination for all of the people who don’t have 5 to 10 years of their life to dedicate to learning art.
isnt this possible just by commissioning an artist from fiverr or deviantart with your own prompt of an image you want. for the amount of times a person wished they had spent time learning how to draw, we would let many more companies get away with not paying artists for every piece of art available in a board/card game so they could make more money
Sure, but we quite enjoy having prerecorded music nowadays and we would never give that up in exchange for live artists.
would we give that up instead for genAI created music? no one has the time for 5 to 10 years of vocal training too
Because humans like to express themselves and share that expression is widely as they can for no other reason than the active sharing and having their works seen by many.
when genAI models can learn from art faster than a human can, art becomes a working professional artist’s only competitive advantage if they wish to live off of their work. while it may be shared, but possibly only behind a glass screen in a private gallery with metal detectors prohibiting cameras at the front, considering how futile anti-AI art filters may end up
Why do you doubt the most pure form of art? Art as a hobby. Art as a form of self-expression?
because people are unwilling to spend 5 to 10 years learning art as a hobby to express themselves when they can still earn some money from it as their passion now
Not really. It's still $5. This is a problem for two reasons. First is that no artist can make a living drawing art for $5 a pop, it's just not sustainable and the only way for you to regularly do this is to take advantage of people who are learning.
So you're not going to get anything very good, and in the process you're basically paying a human being with some minimum wage to do work for you.
we would let many more companies get away with not paying artists for every piece of art available in a board/card game
Well yeah, that's the point. Art becomes free, easily accessed, and more widely spread. a big company right now is going to say what, a few percent of their budget?
But small studios? Little groups? People without a large budget? All of a sudden they are able to create works that are competitive with these former large studios because they don't have to hire an artist anymore. An independent creator can now do more than they ever had, and that makes them more competitive with the big studios.
This isn't the room for the big companies because they don't have to pay the artist anymore. It's actually a massive loss, because the more the barrier to entry goes down the worse off they are.
And at the end of the day artists aren't entitled to my money.
we would let many more companies get away with not paying artists for every piece of art available in a board/card game
Without a question we would. I would absolutely love to take my current library of music and feed it to an AI and say make me more stuff I like and have a constant stream of brand new music instead of listening to the same 200 or 300 songs that I've downloaded over the years.
I'd like to chime in the point out that the vast majority of employed artists aren't making anything as creative as cover art for a hobbyist board game. If they're lucky, they're doing illustrations for Barbie Monopoly or working on some other uncreative cash grab. More likely, they're doing incredibly bland corporate graphic design. And if you ask me, the less of humanity's time we dedicate to bullshit like that, the better.
Professionals will spend more of their time concerned with higher order functions like composition and direction. More indies and small businesses will be empowered to create things without the added expense. And consumers will be able to afford more stuff with higher quality visuals.
the vast majority of employed artists aren’t making anything as creative as cover art for a hobbyist board game.
its not just the cover art for a hobbyist board game, it is art for every card in the game. for hobbyist card games, it can go to several hundred to thousand artworks each from an artist. for a game like Android Netrunner the art of each card works with the theme and mechanics of the game acting like a brief window into this futuristic society world you compete in. (also blatant shilling, this is a great game if anyone is into cyberpunk and card games, unlike anything Magic the Gathering can ever hope to achieve), there is also graphic design for games like Kanban EV (by Ian O’Toole) which is unlike anything ive seen. boardgame hobbyists can and do regularly buy these things with quality visuals
maybe im too emotionally invested into games but i think these art, and the art for things like beloved character design for computer games, decorative tarot cards, novel artwork which take you to another world even if just for a brief moment, is worth encouraging, putting up with Barbie Monopoly and paying for
the alternative i fear would be these people’s time being spent instead on working soulless jobs like labelling training data for genAI models, manual work which so far only humans are cheap enough for and figuring out how to squeeze more money out of consumers
I'd say that this kind of technology lowers the cost of production enough to see those kinds of quality visuals more widely. There's a lot of rote technical effort that goes into even a single CCG card. Having a generative AI that can take care of those parts frees the artist up to focus on the parts of the art that really stand out to you. That means more quality art, for cheaper, which means more games will feature it.
i dont know much about how an artist work to say they would welcome genAI for such efforts
but for boardgame costs, im doubtful because much of the price comes from the logistics of manufacturing, storing, shipping and markup compared to the art. games like Horseless Carriage (the design is intentional) and the above mentioned Kanban EV both great games in their own right (about $100 each), employ one artist for the project and cost more than the entire base set (252 cards) of un-randomized distributed model cardgame ($40 at release) featuring artwork from around a hundred artists (unlike many commonly known randomized CCG blind bags, for this one you know the exact cards you will get in all releases)
People who haven’t used this tech really have it backward. This enables indie artists to create stuff on their own without corporate oversight. This interview was an opportunity to explore that, but they decided to follow the corporate line of attacking this actually successful four person studio instead of asking about what makes them tick with any actual interest.
the thing is this indie group, have been creating boardgames since before genAI models for artwork were popular. their first game in 2016 (top 10 since its release as rated by hobbyists among over a thousand other games) and subsequent expansions on kickstarter did really well even with public domain artwork that dont even look like they fit into a cohesive set. the expansion fetching usually close to a million dollars on kickstarter each time even before retail release
what makes the game appealing in-spite of the public domain artwork have long been discussed. so to me and possibly the journalist it seems like a question why they felt the need to use genAI art now with so many successful releases without it in the past seems to come off like not wanting to pay for better than public domain artwork
Why does the use of AI to modify art require justification?
We seem to have this general culture of people who don’t make things coming after those who do. Every decision of design, methodology, or artistic preference treated as though the creator has an obligation to please every single person who posts their opinions on the internet.
The reality is that this simply isn’t true. Art that spends all its energy fretting about whether people will like it ends up being some bland bullshit produced by committee. Art that allows itself to be what it is doesn’t need opinions and suggestions to flourish.
If the author of that article were remotely interested in their process or what the actual practical implications of using AI on a project are, they could have had something worth reading.
Instead they went into the interview looking to push a position and badgering without listening rather than making even a passing attempt at something resembling journalism. Because ultimately they don’t care about AI, or art, or games; they care about rage clicks.
Understand that this is not an IP right that OpenAI is defining and promising enforcement of, but simply a contracted obligation. As it currently stands in the US, there is no property right in the outputs of a generative model (like a gpt or sd).
yes but it comes off as really hypocritical of companies putting that in their Terms because they know rival genAI models could train on their output data to undercut them the same way they trained freely off of human’s data to undercut humans. and somehow its only ok if theyre the one benefiting from it because they have a bigger team of lawyers
Note that ToS are not legally binding in any way, it just means they reserve the right to deny you use of their service for doing so. They probably cannot (and have not tried) to sue anyone for commercial training use of their models.
They can be binding in the sense that they can govern the licensing or potentially ownership of submitted assets. So like, for example, a ToS could have a bunch of clauses that carry no legal obligation for you, but could also include a clause that grants the company licensing to use your likeness or things submitted to the server or interaction with it. The same way any ToS can license the use of your metadata for sale to 3rd parties.
That doesn’t have any particular legally binding requirements of you, but it can serve as a shield in the event of a lawsuit if, say, Facebook uses your profile photo in some advertising materials.
It can also be useful if you’re running a small project like an independent game server. Even if there’s literally no money in it, it can be helpful to clarify who owns what in the event of something like a false DMCA. If a developer who once was doing work with you suddenly decides to take their ball and go home, some sort of agreement that outlines your ownership or usage rights surrounding code submitted to your mod can protect you when they turn around and send Steam a DMCA.
But yeah, nobody’s going to get sued for using a service in a way that the ToS prohibits unless it’s already illegal, like theft.
AI art of any reasonable quality still requires significant human input. I don’t just mean prompt engineering, I mean actually having an artist using more traditional techniques to make adjustments or provide a base for the AI work. The output of raw AI art on its own can be impressive at times, but it’s not consistent enough to maintain a style for any sizeable piece of work.
If you want to be able to create a bunch of assets that look like they were designed for the same project with AI, somebody still needs to do some art.
What AI does do, though, is give those artists the ability to exponentially increase their productivity independently, with no particular need for the sort of labor-hour organization that a corporation provides.
It should be telling that the corporate media spin on this is to attack it and to publicize voices that criticize it, but never those that express nuance. That’s because it terrifies every useless corporate lackey who understands its actual potential to empower independent artists of all kinds.
It is less bad than code-in-a-box. That's not a high bar, but it is less bad.
There are two main reasons to buy physical:
Ability to share, trade, and resell your games. These key cards still support this, whereas code-in-a-box did not. So, slightly better.
Then there's the peace of mind that your games will still work in the distant future. I think if you ask most people who primarily buy physical, myself included, we'll say this is the main appeal of physical games, and the big reason why key cards don't feel acceptable.
Some day when the servers eventually go offline, these key cards will become bricks. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We have no idea how long Nintendo will support them for, and they're not going to hard commit a timetable out loud for us. But we know it can't be forever.
But even for standard physical games, there is some uncertainty regarding their long-term future that I'm not sure people realize. When those servers eventually go online, your cartridge only has 1.0 on it, you won't be able to get patches. That's better than a brick, but for a lot of games that's probably not the version you want to play.
And then the even darker concern is bit rot. No form of physical media is permanent. Every disc and every cartridge will eventually degrade. Worse yet is that for many forms of media, we don't even know how long they're set to last for, we only find out once some of them start to fail. Cartridges are generally better than discs, but beyond that we truly have no idea how long Switch cartridges should be expected to last.
Carts of the first variety should last as long as any previous generation. Carts of the second variety are a big fat unknown, since NAND can lose charge over time.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve played through games with it and it’s really great. But there’s a ton of glitches and games that don’t play well. In another 5 or 10 years (hopefully I’ve upgraded my hardware by then) it’ll probably be great. But today it’s reserved for enthusiasts who enjoy tinkering with settings or playing less demanding games.
I only used it to replay Kingdom Hearts a few years ago, but I never had any issues with it. And based on this video RPCS3 released yesterday, it looks like there are plenty of games that are very playable, by any definition.
Playable status with the green mark has been a pretty polished experience for me without issues after putting the settings recommended in the wiki. Those that have issues have been stuff like Mgs4 and infamous get ingame status.
I played through MGS4 recently on Arch Linux. Lots of community patches, and tinkering with settings. But it was mostly playable. Textures on any kind of screen in-game (like when a character is video chatting you), some of the flashback sequences, and a few random times the NV mode in south America went completely out of whack. But it was enough to look past the issues and enjoy the story and gameplay after playing MGS1-3
Yeah but as the shareholders get used to companies laying off workers to “cut costs”, any company not doing it sees their shares tank. Which is Not Ok™️, so they keep firing people so the execs can pay themselves bigger and bigger bonuses over high stock prices.
polygon.com
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