Again: This is not a cake. This is a recipe book and an oven. Scenario’s demo reel showcases models they have finished training, and vouch that you can make one from scratch. I am asking you for a finished AI model you have ready to use.
Really? Can you share your fully realized and operational generative AI that exists, and only created its model from artwork you personally made or retain full legal reproduction rights to?
Does sound like laziness. I get the impression it’s because some things change in the game depending on difficulty, like number of items, etc. So, it can’t exactly go back and turn the 3-ammo pile you picked up into 8 ammo.
Same way you’d celebrate a studio for “No workplace abuse.” People would have to come forward to testify about it, as concept art generation is very likely to arise from hiring fewer artists.
It’s also pretty easy if the credits list an abnormally low, or zero, number of concept artists.
Okay but first, will you admit that if my cancer curing Unicorn only dispenses 100 doses of its miracle medicine from its butt when I kill a homeless man, you’d agree killing the homeless is a moral good, right?
Or, you know, we could throw away silly fantasy scenarios.
Between this and the Divinity controversy, I think the gaming world needs some kind of Responsible AI seal, like the old Nintendo Seal of Quality. While Microsoft is shoving Copilot into Notepad, it can be really hard to guarantee every team member has never used an AI for anything.
Standards like “No generative AI” are a good one, and it turns out we’re also under debate whether AI for concept art - something absent from the game files - is okay. Many say not.
In some ways, I think we have to accept the early years of “8 indie games for $2!!!” is over. Inflation has hit, and indie devs have to buy their coffee too. If you really want a near-freebie, keep an eye out for bundles on Fanatical, where they’re sometimes $3 each game.
In some ways, I try to acknowledge the original race to the voting on prices was sometimes bad for indies. The Factorio dev even saw the writing on the wall and decided to head it off, declaring “This is the game’s price floor. Buy it or don’t.”
I’ve had an idea of making a visual novel with gen AI, but I’d want to attach “Placeholder: AI Artwork” in a visible location for each sprite. And I only even consider that because I’m not exactly a known game dev and don’t have ready access to artists.
Larian should likely expect if they’re taking shortcuts in their position, they’d get backlash. I can at least recognize that they’re trying to be moderate about it.
Emulation seems neat to me, but I know behind every comment on it there’s a whispered implication: Piracy. Very few people are imaging their own game discs. That unfortunately makes it less appealing to me, especially as trustworthiness shifts at many of those sites.
Best way of handling this is to load the environment with random events that can occur on various return trips. Sea of Thieves and Red Read Redemption 2 do this, though it doesn’t work for every game.
The other good way to handle it is a fun movement system, eg Insomniac games.
Something I tried to do earlier to help with it, in this very channel, was a “Downvote any game you’ve heard of before” thread. It was a nice exercise to help people post odd games no one had heard of.