Honestly I feel like the games industry has had more of an issue with humanslop from large publishers making live service and derivative stuff over the past few years than indie devs using genAI today.
Because of how genAI works, it can’t simply be the lead creative force for a game or the game will be identical to other games using AI for lead creative. You’d end up with lantern keepers everywhere.
But if genAI would allow for new or displaced devs to compete with the scale and production values of the larger studios for passion projects that take true creative steps forward or risks, then as a gamer it’s a huge win and I’m all for it.
I want to see evolving tech move the medium forward, not just expand profit margins for large publishers with leadership that looks down on their players by downsizing staff and shrinking game scope to chase mobile and micro-transactions.
The industry is dying (without AI as a factor) due to how consolidation happened over the past few decades. Honestly the only possible way I see it getting saved is if something arrives that reduces production costs in a way that allows small independent teams to make games that compete at scale the way studios cropped up earlier on in gaming (1990s-2000s).
And this goes beyond just the development too. Legal, accounting, marketing, etc are all costs that are relatively much smaller for mega corps due to pooled resources than independent studios.
So we can either have: (a) no AI and large publishers buying up great talent to put on derivative BS like every major publisher did for the last decade, or (b) smaller studios that use AI to scale out both dev pipelines and business needs to compete against those large publishers as they prove themselves in the market to secure capital for expansion and future games.
Ultimately the market will decade, but my hopes are on the latter.
Honestly I feel like the games industry has had more of an issue with humanslop from large publishers making live service and derivative stuff over the past few years than indie devs using genAI today.
Because of how genAI works, it can’t simply be the lead creative force for a game or the game will be identical to other games using AI for lead creative. You’d end up with lantern keepers everywhere.
But if genAI would allow for new or displaced devs to compete with the scale and production values of the larger studios for passion projects that take true creative steps forward or risks, then as a gamer it’s a huge win and I’m all for it.
I want to see evolving tech move the medium forward, not just expand profit margins for large publishers with leadership that looks down on their players by downsizing staff and shrinking game scope to chase mobile and micro-transactions.
The industry is dying (without AI as a factor) due to how consolidation happened over the past few decades. Honestly the only possible way I see it getting saved is if something arrives that reduces production costs in a way that allows small independent teams to make games that compete at scale the way studios cropped up earlier on in gaming (1990s-2000s).
And this goes beyond just the development too. Legal, accounting, marketing, etc are all costs that are relatively much smaller for mega corps due to pooled resources than independent studios.
So we can either have: (a) no AI and large publishers buying up great talent to put on derivative BS like every major publisher did for the last decade, or (b) smaller studios that use AI to scale out both dev pipelines and business needs to compete against those large publishers as they prove themselves in the market to secure capital for expansion and future games.
Ultimately the market will decade, but my hopes are on the latter.