Incline Is AI the future of AAA RPGs?

[Not.AI]

Following up on the other thread, Is AI the future of Indie RPGs? I made a sister thread for the contrarian take on the whole subject.

I presume everyone here knows the argument, so skip the post and vote in the poll. The post summarizes things for search engines.

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There is always hope, technology offers a break with the past. The making of good things awaits better circumstances, that is the argument.

Even more than creators of classic style or "Indie" RPGs stand to benefit, it is people who want to develop large, immersive "AAA" RPGs, games with possible-to-miss levels and content that is seen only in case of specific choices by players, massive interactivity but everything displayed visually and in great detail in 3D, not abstractly in 2D, who stand to gain the most.

The lack of such content in "AAA" games is the main driver of boring shit, unoriginal design in the "AAA" space these days (2023).

One business argument that falls apart, after widespread one-click generative ai, is that developers can't afford to make content that most players will miss, if such content is visually very concrete, not abstract. (Read: expensive but looks good.) However, if such content is inexpensive but abstract and graphically insufficient compared to competing games that dumped more of their budget into how things look, the competition wins the sales and public opinion. Two ways to lose and no way to win.

But, courtesy of a more ai-driven processes, the argument finally starts falling apart that "better" design is cost is prohibitive (2010-2020).

That means the big "AAA" style open-world developers can actually get back to making golden age innovative greatness (1990-2010).

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A big assumption in this essay is that most so-called "AAA" studios today have top decision-makers and enough employees with the good taste for better design, that actually want to make games with better design. Apparently this is counterfactual assumption, but that's what competition is for in the end. The more ai-driven process should increase the competitiveness of the market. Good.

For the indie developer, the cost is going down significantly to get things done, but no fundamental design constraint or pernicious institutional factor has been eliminated.

William Goldman said screenplay is structure. Well, games are design. For a while, the typical "AAA" game has had rubbish design. Because it was too easily justified. This justification is what is primarily being eliminated by ai at the moment, in the realm of large firms.

For the doubtful, remember, in "big" business, justification is as important as reality. It is as important as facts, when it comes to actions of firms. In the realm of large firms, where decision makers are employees, not owners, even if a technology changes nothing in the industry except what wordplay passes the horseshit test in critical meetings, that can change the entire profile of actions taken by such firms. So, in principle, the cost of things might not even have to go down in the really big firms, and they might already start to act differently. Though it actually will go down.

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Don't bother with the "hopelessly optimistic" tag, that's what the poll is for; use the poll.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Yes. The biggest AAA studios are heavily invested in AI for asset generation, especially assets that are very expensive to produce, like voice acting. The first games with extensive AI generated voices for minor NPCs will be coming out very very soon.

 

[tritosine2k]

AAA and future in one sentence is funny in itself.

 

[Bigg Boss]

This is like asking if computers are gonna be useful for art.

 

[Not.AI]

This is like asking if computers are gonna be useful for art.

Are computers going to be useful for art? Discuss.

Seriously. It wasn't obvious on day one, just because of the "economics" of art.

One museum in the UK bought a new installation: it was a pile of bricks. It cost them hundreds of thousands of quid.

According to one account, the tv media went around asking people whether they thought it was art.

"Is this art? Is this art or not?" One expert they asked sagely informed them that, yes, it was art. "Because, by definition, everything in this building is art. And everything not in it is not." Then he went back to doing his job, from which he was interrupted by the camera crew, which was sweeping the floor...

If art is defined ostensibly as what artists do, as the modern art guys wanted, then sure, it was a serious question, whether computer were gonna be useful to art. After all, if museums would shell out a two hundred grand for a bag of trash from the right person, but not from a computer, then the answer, at the time, would have been actually NO.

Etc...

Every question is equally valid, even apparently silly ones, because pretty much every question is equally super fucked in clown world. Because the circumstances (read: boundary conditions) are lately always super fucked. The only thing obvious is that nothing is really obvious.