At a certain level, it is going to be a chore to determine who is or is not slopping up with AI media. Not every asset comes out with six fingers and a half-melted face.
I can see legitimate frustration with an industry that seems reliant on increasingly generic and interchangeable assets. AI just becomes the next iteration of this problem. You’ve expanded the warehouse of prefab images, but you’re still stuck with end products that are uncannily similar to everything else on the market.
And that’s before you get to the IP implications of farming all your content out to a third party that doesn’t seem to care where its base library is populated from.
We’ve had tools to manage workflows for decades. You don’t need Copilot injected into every corner of your interface to achieve this. I suspect the bigger challenge for Larian is working in a development suite that can’t be accused of having “AI Assist” hiding somewhere in the internals.
Glitzy AAA open-world-ish games have beautiful visuals but their replayability is near zero
I mean, I gotta disagree, at least in part. Some of these games don’t age well. But I still know folks who line up for the “WoW Classic” experience. Hell, I know people who have been playing since the game came out in '02/'03(?) and now they’re out playing with their kids. I know one family who plays with their grandmother, ffs.
I think one thing that really gave Blizzard and Nintendo titles staying power was the choice to deliberately tack towards the cartoon-y style of art. When you’re not going for that hyper-real experience, the games age better. Hard to pick up a vintage Laura Croft or Devil May Cry without feeling its age. But Wind Waker? Mario 64? They do just fine.
No they aren’t. Games flop all the time and the companies don’t quit this bullshit. No business executive has ever walked out of a tense call with their investors and re-committed themselves to being nicer to the staff. You’re delusional if you think people not buying a game results in the quality of life of that game’s staff improving.
What improves the lives of game developers is going indie and doing well. What improves the odds of doing well as an indie developer is producing games that can compete with the GTAs absent the absurd marketing budgets. That requires a symbiosis between indie games media, indie developers, and early adopters. But the gooner gamer is at the end of the line in any event. They don’t even know the game exists until it gets a splash ad on the Steam Store.
Your retail consumer market is a consequence of industry practices, not a cause.
Hype around a game is directly related to the marketing budget. If people are looking forward to the next edition in a franchise, it is inevitably because they’ve been bombarded with “NEW THING! NEW THING! NEW THING!” radio/TV/streaming ad reels for months prior.
All that aside, yeah our countries hate unions and hate workers and everyone in power hates you and wants you to die.
We’re going to replace all the working class schlubs with AI, haven’t you heard?
why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy
It’s not like they’re plastering “We Busted A Union To Get This Game Out Six Months Late” on the packaging. The overwhelming majority of retail customers have no idea how the sausage is made. Those that are curious enough to ask typically aren’t the ones going in on the “Rape And Loot Simulator” franchise to begin with.
Gotta get off this hobby horse of blaming the anonymous gooner gamer at the bottom of the food chain for decisions made in a smoke-filled board room long beforehand.
I remember a lot of love for the Guild Wars franchise and for the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMOs.
But as a business model, they’re dinosaurs in every sense of the term. Very expensive to produce and maintain. You really need a critical mass of players to cover the costs. They can’t compete on graphics/gameplay relative to your Looter-Shooters or JRPGs. And once the title launches, you’ve got this vanguard of power-users/whales who demand all your attention while the bulk of your player base burns out before they even get to the endgame. So unlike a seasonal Fortnite or Minecraft, you risk a rapid fall-off in participation unless you can satisfy both the high and low ends of the market.
When there’s one or two big MMOs, they can build these enormous audiences and clean up. When there’s a million of them, they can’t kept people engaged long enough to cover their operating costs.