Why am I so against generative AI in games?
Because I simply do not want my initial reaction to art to be one of suspicion and scrutiny, AI slop is fundamentally damaging my relationship to art and artistry, and I am deeply resentful that it is forcing me to be guarded when I should be wowed.
There are detectors that can detect AI generated stuff. Unfortunately detecting AI writing seems extremely difficult but detecting AI images and art can be done pretty easily. Game distribution platforms should have decs verify their games art through these in some way imo.
The constant enforcement of AI slop that tech companies keep insisting upon, ESPECIALLY on the art side of things, makes me low-key unmotivated as an artist of any kind because I have to keep my guard up on what should just be either an enjoyment of a piece of medium or worse, an interested hobby.
Couldn't agree more
I'm currently feeling this for animal videos especially. I got used to scrutinizing art. It sucks, but it's true. My guard is down for cute/funny animal videos though. Sent one in my discord server which turned out to be AI. That was upsetting... And then it happened again a day or two later.
It's cratered the relationship between artists and fans, too. It's painful to see established artists whose style, in particular, has been latched onto by generative image algorithms, get accosted by people who would otherwise be fans.
I hate it so much. I hate it from an artistic perspective, I hate it from a technical perspective and I hate it from a political perspective. these uses of ai are an insult to life, art, and technical prowess. Everyone involved should be shamed.
Did you see that post of the shooter game done in generative AI?
Such a fucking mess.
Try being an Unreal developer
Why play a game the devs couldn't even be bothered to make?
As a lifelong appreciator of art who grew up in a family steeped in it, I ignore AI as art. To me, art is a blend of the artist, the work, and the viewer. It cannot be complete - in my mind it cannot be art - if one of the three is missing. It can be a product to be consumed, but ceases to be art.
It's like I went to a restaurant that was well regarded for it's wonderfully cooked meals...
But I (somehow) manage to catch the head chef not washing their hands after sneezing in their hands.
I don't care how good the dish is, to have any doubt of cleanliness throws all of it into question.
Every time I play through Skyrim or a Final Fantasy game, I marvel at how complete everything is, everything down to a single book or chair is a choice by a developer to tell a story. That's what keeps the game fresh years, even decades later. AI can't do that, it can't tell real stories in stories.
And frankly, if I see any gen ai crap, I just assume the rest of the game is going to be lazy worthless trash. If you used it there, where else might you have used it? Just wasting my time engaging with your pumped out slop.
Well said.
If you can't be assed to care about the process of making art, I do not care what art you have made. I used to say that only about media meant to make a buck, and AI is worse than the laziest of slop.
The compromise position is that it no longer exists. Maximal is jail time, I'm not kidding.
I am a big Anno fan and the new game 117 having genAI art in it ruins the ability to engage with the art of the game because it is hard to know if the art decisions were a result of an artist making a choice or decisions to make it easy on the AI generator. A lot of the art in the previous game...
Facts.
Basically the classic mantra of “a few bad apples spoil the barrel.”
Totally agree, and look how it is being deployed in the "real world" bsky.app/profile/matt...
I hate looking at something now and wondering if it's slop... :(
That's a really interesting way to look at it and articulated better than I would have done.
Precisely this. I hate that I have to look closely at art to feel certain it's not ai. It feels unfair to me as an art lover, and unfair to artists who work hard. It also keeps me from ever sharing my own art. I hate AI images so deeply.
It’s a giant plagiarism machine
seems like it would be easier to just not worry about it
This reminds me of a quote from Detroit: Become Human.
“That is a perfect copy of reality. But art isn’t about copying reality. It’s about improving it. Expanding upon it.”
You totally nailed something that I've definitely internalized! Coming across something in a game, or even online my initial enjoyment is disrupted by the thought of "wait... This could be AI" and then analyzing it six ways from Sunday to determine it's not.
It feels like most companies are just sociopathic at this point. Just single mindedly pursuing profit regardless of the costs to quality and the people involved in actually making the thing
I hate how I now have to be skeptical of every cute animal video that comes across my social media feeds
Art requires human input. It is the product of artistic expression. AI is slop that just happens and is expressive of nothing.
This is pretty much why I'm so disappointed by seeing Expedition 33 get so many nominations.
One placeholder that slipped by means there were many. The game was built with gAI at its foundations, and it doesn't matter how good the final product was, it's compromised at its core.
Truth that 🫡💜
I say it before and i say it again. The only reason that this "compromises" are asked is because we live ina historical context that puting LLM is loved by shareholders. CEO package cutdowns are never compromised so. You first motherfucker.
nah i get it. the whole ai slop thing is basically turning everything into soulless mass production vibes. feels like we're losing the personality and craft that makes art actually meaningful yknow
Outside of games, every single week when I check discover weekly on Spotify I run into 3+ AI bands. I check every single band now and won't listen to anything that has only released music in '24 and '25. It's really shitty for real new artists!
I'm a dogshit artist, but I will much sooner release a game with dogshit art than use generative AI, and that's a promise.
I am constantly aggravated by this tech, it is foisting so much extra work on me, because throughout the last couple of years, the sheer amount of games using generative AI that are flooding my inbox, many that DO NOT DISCLOSE THIS, is forcing me to scrutinize everything that ends up in my inbox.
Exactly! I don't wanna look at a piece of art and immediately think "Is this AI?" I wanna be like "Wow! That's amazing!" but sadly there's lots of scumbags that use AI instead of picking up a pencil, some even having the audacity to claim they're not using it
I’d rather play an ea game than an ai generated game. There’s no way I’m supporting the destruction of creativity and quality game development.
I had this same reaction while playing the demo for The Secret of Weepstone. The game is totally my jam, an old school dungeon crawler, but the art is quite reminiscent of AI stuff. The developer has adamantly denied that there is any AI used, but I hate that I still have to worry about it.
It’s reputational poison.
If you’ve used even a little generative AI in a game, it calls into question everything else you’ve made. Is it art made with deliberation and craftsmanship, or is it some extruded content product that was quickly cranked out of a machine?
I read a lot of pitch decks from ad agencies in my job and I want to jump out a window. It’s all gone to ai trash. I’d rather see stick figure story boards drawn by a human than the crap I get now. Also funny is when they use ai to draw my product. I know what my product looks like, that ain’t it.
Checking the number of fingers no longer works. Now I find myself looking at dates or if its a trustworthy source. I hate it.
I've become more and more wary of checking out new creators on Youtube for the same reason - There's an intrinsic distrust that now comes with engaging with content. It sucks.
Hell, these assholes are making my initial reaction to silly animal videos one of suspicion and scrutiny. Fuck "AI" forever.
Also this
This recently happened to me with Where Winds Meet where I was so curious about the premise, only to learn that some NPCs are powered by LLM chatbots which immediately made take a step back. And then I learned you can upload clips of yourself/your voice and I'm EVEN MORE WARY and suspicious 💀
AI makes games automatically worthless to me. If developers can't put the time, effort, and care into their games why should the consumers spend their money on it? Developers know they can be lazy now and still get money. Its so FRUSTRATING it is that so many games are starting to use it.
It’s also destroyed how people talk about games. Whenever something seems kind of bad, instead of people going “wow that’s bad” now everyone will immediately ask if it’s AI generated.
This is why I've fallen off a game. A bit of story, I jailbroke my DS decades ago and played a little RPG by Atlus that wasn't available in the US called Inazuma Eleven. I loved that game and bought a scratch guard for my DS because I was playing it so much and didn't want to damage my DS. When
This is exactly how I feel about grading student essays.
i genuinely miss the times where i could look at a beautiful piece of art and think "wow this is so amazing, this person is really skilled". i dont have that initial reaction anymore, now im just squinting my eyes at everything in suspicion.
and that actually sucks :/
incredible that for big companies, this is gonna be considered the 'uncompromising take'
That's such a mood. Whenever I find a fun new music channel on youtube, I immediately go "wait, is this another slop channel?"
I hate getting burned by that over and over again. >:(
It’s wild that “I want art made by artists, not the vomit that comes from stealing art made by artists” is a hot take in this era, but here we are
I personally like it when media is made by people, has ideas, and says things
You've just described exactly why I tell my friends my ability to spot/hear AI in games etc is both a blessing and a CURSE. It's deeply exhausting to essentially always be on the edge or in fight/flight to look out for AI, before I even actually ENGAGE with something.
Recognizing generative AI content in something triggers the same unpleasant feeling in my brain as recognizing a fascist dogwhistle.
Art should be to be enjoyed and experienced, not scrutinized
Somewhere both Wilde and Shaw are PISSED
nobody is forcing you to be guarded and suspicious. this is a personal choice you are making.
That's ultimately your decision. As I see it, video games are about the finished product. If that finished product is a fun, rewarding experiencing, then that's a good game, even if they took shortcuts on certain components. It was still humans who put those components together, wasn't it?
Same. I hate not being able to trust what I see
This exactly and it's been exhausting. I've seen several videos on youtube that are just about places around the world and there's a disclaimer note that says it's 'heavily synthetic' or some shit and I'm like "WHY???? WHAT PART??? CAN YOU FUCKING TELL ME????" video? voice over? music?!??
Recently received an email asking if I would want to get paid to give my models to an AI service for 3d. I really don't think there's a price that they can offer me that would make me want to. I'm getting so sick of this, especially when times are tough.
I was absolutely gutted when I found out that the devs of Stellaris were using generative ai in the process of developing stuff for the game. Haven't touched it since, and find that I don't want to.
This is very good.
Aye, I think it's kinda telling that even in a case with everything stacked in GenAI's favour (arguably the most ethical GenAI generation [at least if Adobe is to be believed], used by a well-regarded creator who is known for loving the creative process, only being used for the least creatively...
There are too many reasons to list. But you can really sum them up as quality and ethics. It's gonna fucking suck and it's gonna suck in a way that hurts people and required hurting them to make.
Also, the thing not enough say is that the art kinda looks samey and soulless along with its weird finger issues. There's a vapidness to AI art and voices apparently just don't deliver the way they should. It's inferior and lazy and it makes me wonder how much care was actually put into the game.
Plus some of us wanted to be game devs when we were kids 20 years ago. New talent is going to be discouraged from even TRYING anymore, or try to coast on all AI generated slop
I will never forgive AIbros for robbing us of the simple joy of seeing something cool online and being able to enjoy it.
I say this not even knowing if it would work, but generative AI might work if it's for character actions in games. IE give it control of a plane I'm dogfighting, force me to get really good at it
Preach it, sister. I'm sick of how suspicious of every new art piece this GenAI slop has made me. I want to be amazed by art and culture again; now I'm constantly looking for signs of forgery via slop machine.
The biggest issue I have is... there's so much lore crafting in games. "This enemy has a weird attack pattern, is that because -insert lore reason-????"
And sure sometimes the dev is "I didn't think about it". But it would gut me if the answer was "idk AI made it up."
That's why I try not to scrutinize while I'm engaging. I'll do a bit of research before picking something to play (or watch for that matter), then watch the thing as is, and if I find out later that it had gen-ai, I'll at least still have the memories of being wowed even if I have to drop it now.
