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"The 'AI Stigma' is real and severely punishes developers": A new study shows how much using AI in games hurts sales, and the numbers are hard to believe (www.windowscentral.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/gaming@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8882542

It's a different story for the more established studios with an existing following and previous titles. Game Oracle found that the use of AI by these studios resulted in a significant 40% to 60% drop in sales.

That's a huge difference. AI stigma seems to hit competent developers with a lot to lose the hardest, and I'm not sure that game studios are ready to accept it.

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[–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

I do have to wonder, though, if there isn’t a minority of gamers who are completely taken by the hype of AI in gaming.

Sure, I'll bite. Obviously nobody wants AI slop and the AI bubble killing hardware prices sucks. But I really do hope to one day see something like the holodeck.

Smaller LLM models could be great for expanding dialog options in game. Like tweaked versions of deepseek or others. Or to improve procedural generation and fill a generated place with life and characters. Or some kind of game master, when you do something unexpected that can alter the storyline to fit the new input. A "yes and" improv AI game master. Or maybe ingame crafting of items and armor (all I want is simple elegant armor lol).

I do think if you have concept artists who defines an art style and palettes and creates the characters for a game, using generative tools to "fill out" assets in that art style is also perfectly fine. Generative models that can directly generate AND render 3D models photorealistically plus 3D animations are very interesting too.

Video games are still very "limited" because costs to produce assets are incredibly high and that limits player freedom.

Lower costs to produce games will also increase diversity at least at the high end, and allows for smaller teams to make more creative games - in terms of gameplay at least. A game with new interesting gameplay and generic but aesthetically pleasing assets is win for me.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Smaller LLM models could be great for expanding dialog options in game.

    I don't think LLMs (smaller or otherwise) can ever clear the uncanny valley. The level of adaptability you're taking about but without hallucinations and random batshit-crazy behavior requires something humans haven't invented yet and that we have no specific reason will ever happen. (In fact, I think if we can be said to be on a path toward building the first AGI, I believe LLMs and "generative AI" and this whole hype bubble will be looked back on as having been a diversion/destraction from that path that delayed the advent of AGI.)

    Unless/until that someday happens, I'd much rather play, and feel like I'd find much more immersive, a game that generated, say, fetch-quests with something like My {rand("health","Lord","wife","none-of-yor-business",...)} {rand("demands","begs","commissions",...)} you to bring a {rand("tufted titmouse","Gauntlet of Light","turkey dinner","giant's toenail",...)} that you can find in/at {rand("Illsword Manor","The Cavern of Lies","the afterlife",...)} to {rand("the illfated dragon","Fenworth Blurd","The Rusty Scabbard Inn",...)} in {rand("Feyspring Vale","Weston","the northern wilderness",...)}. than something with the problems inherent to LLMs.

    I suppose I can agree that I'd be interested in new technologies that make gaming more immersive, but "smart" NPCs that can improvise and riff while not ruining the immersion like LLMs would seem so speculative and far off that I might as well wish to stumble into the possession of a genie lamp a la Disney's Aladdin while I'm at it. Meanwhile, grifters are making shit-tons of money at your expense promising you just that.

    AGI has been only ten years away for the last fifty years. Anyone who says it's less than ten years away now is trying to sell you a bridge.

    As for the "filling out assets" and "increased diversity at least at the high end", I think you're overestimating the capabilities of (at least current) generative AI. And if you're not, there are still a lot of legal issues with generative AI, and no matter which way those legal issues end up being decided, we can expect shitty results for consumers and competitors. (I fear, for instance, that the output of generative AI may be subject to copyright when big companies want it to be and not when lawsuits go in the other direction.)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Well that is the neat part, at least for in-game dialogue, hallucinations wouldn't be a problem at all lol.

    Your fetch quest example is neat, but what an LLM could provide on top of that is "understanding" and reasoning based on the specific quest. And then commenting if you bring the wrong thing or making jokes. Or even adjusting the quest based on reasoning.

    Not sure if you mean the actual uncanny valley, but image / video generating AI definitely can clear it. See this... well it's really badly edited and it's pretty lackluster, but it looks and sounds quite good. Better than 99% of all in-game cutscenes. Just imagine some random quest giver with that kind of animation and voice acting. In a video game this "slop" would be entirely appropriate and a huge improvement.

    I'm honestly a bit flabbergasted that people do not see potential in this. Obviously it would still need hardware advances / performance improvements, but it's clear what could be possible.

    For rendering, I'm mostly interesting in that "photorealistic look" for characters that AI can do, and there are ways to create a hybrid 3D mesh rendering / generation system. Instead of just generative AI, you render a skeleton animated character but it uses the last step of the AI output and skins that, and it looks as good as AI generated. And that would also improve performance drastically compared to pure generation. I'm not 100% sure this is possible though, but pretty sure. Skeleton animated meshes are a form of compression after all.

    On AGI I make no predictions. The big finding from LLMs is that they show that you DON'T need sentience to create intelligence. Which is huge. We can make literal slaves that can intelligently do what we want, can even be creative and are not self aware and do not "suffer" from slavery. Which is perfect for video games. Maybe we should never go further than this until we create something like artificial ethics.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Well that is the neat part, at least for in-game dialogue, hallucinations wouldn’t be a problem at all lol.

    It will be if half of what is hallucinates is quests that the rest of the game fails to actually implement. NPC: "Yes, you're absolutely right, I misidrected you to a 'Satin Forrest' that you spent two hours wandering around trying to find. I actually meant to say that the Dryad Queen is waiting to be rescued in the 'Cashmere Forrest' that I totally, 100% guarantee exists for real this time."

    what an LLM could provide on top of that is “understanding” and reasoning

    No. Just no. "Understanding" and "reasoning" are not things that LLMs can do. They can decide what word (or phrase or part-of-a-word or whatever) statistically follows the usual pattern given the training data. It's not the magic you make it out to be.

    See this...

    Guarantee that took huge amounts of some combination of babysitting, editing, fraud, and/or other things that make it completely unsuitable for generating reliably-sensical cutscenes that dynamically respond to in-game events that the devs never accounted specifically for.

    people do not see potential

    That's exactly the problem. It's all empty promises of something "just around the corner". And that's all that's driving the bubble. Fantasies about a super-unrealistic futures in which some completely vague and hypothetical advancement makes it actually work for something useful. I don't believe the technologies we have now will ever fulfill those super-unrealistic promises. And as I said, if something fulfills those promises one day, I doubt the inner workings of whatever does will resemble an LLM or Stable Diffusion or whatever. If we want something that can generate game content on the fly, we're very much barking up the wrong tree trying to somehow make LLMs do that.

    it’s clear what could be possible.

    That's just straight up self-deception.

    Instead of just generative AI, you render a skeleton animated character but it uses the last step of the AI output and skins that, and it looks as good as AI generated.

    You haven't seen a lot of those "fail" videos where some Twitch streamer's beauty filter fails and flickers, have you?

    I’m not 100% sure this is possible though, but pretty sure.

    I'm not 100% sure this is impossible though, but pretty sure.

    On AGI I make no predictions.

    Me neither except that a) LLMs aren't it and b) I think anything that could pull off the kind of dynamically-responsive realtime game content generation that you're talking about would pretty much have to meet most reasonable definitions of "AGI". And I doubt anything short of that in a game would be a net benefit to immersiveness. (*Maybe if the LLM had super limited scope somehow... like generating short stories that you'd find in random books around the game like the books you find in the Elder Scrolls games or something, but even that seems super iffy.) Mind you, I probably would still opt out of that if it was a thing. (For the same reason as I'd never touch anything with loot boxes -- I don't trust game studios not to take advantage of me to try to addict me to their products.)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    That’s exactly the problem. It’s all empty promises of something “just around the corner”. And that’s all that’s driving the bubble. Fantasies about a super-unrealistic futures in which some completely vague and hypothetical advancement makes it actually work for something useful.

    No, it's completely different. Video games have always been driven by technical progress where some nerd invented a new rendering technique, implemented it and then convinced some artists and studio to use it and build a content pipeline. Or some new gameplay idea. There is always risk. It's a highly technical "hit business" where 1 hit pays for the development of 10 misses. It's technical nerds or artists driving the risk and businessmen managing it.

    What we're seeing with too early AI adoption is just nonsense rot economy. It's business people driving the risk to reduce costs and get bonuses for short term profit. And they are following the business speak of the AI gurus because they invested billions into marketing for business dumbos. They are not testing if any of this works to in real business use, they are just firing people out of blind faith. They are not waiting and testing what comes around the corner like I'm suggesting, they are already firing people and investing without testing.

    And you can test it to see if it works. See Skyrim NPCs with AI and Skyrim remastered by AI.

    So no it's not the same as what is driving the current bubble lol.

    Anyway, that's my opinion on the potential for AI in games. I don't think there is any need to talk any further if you don't believe that understanding and responding to complex text requires some basic level of reasoning and intelligence. If that were so there would be no problem with dead internet or AI bot comments. It's doublethink.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (1 child)

    See Skyrim NPCs with AI and Skyrim remastered by AI.

    The first video in the search results in the first link here has "it got weird fast" in the title and NPCs are breaking the third wall and responding strangely to things in general. (The lady at the orphanage mentioned the player "looking through a flickering screen." I didn't watch much further than that.)

    The second is likely heavily curated and variables very strictly controlled. The characters are perfectly centered in frame and standing mostly still aside from idle animations. The landscapes are... well, they're inherently still life. There's no actual gameplay showcased, and there's no indication from the video just how many of the video creator's attempts had major issues like too many fingers or were scrapped in favor of the ones that turned out better. The art style switches strangely between characters, with, for instance, the first one looking much more photographic and the second mimicking more what you'd get from a better-quality 3D render. And many of the characters feel very uncanny valley. (The third one, for instance. I haven't watched that video much further than that either.)

    So, yeah, if those videos are "testing it to see if it works", the answer is a resounding "no". There's nothing workable there, and no indication LLMs and Stable Diffusion are a step in the right direction, despite what Nvidia might tell you.

    I mean, do you watch those videos and think to yourself "this is it -- this is the destination -- we've done it"?

    So no it’s not the same as what is driving the current bubble lol.

    I mean, there's no there there, and no reason to think there ever will be beyond the fact that humans seem pretty intent on developing AGI. Clearly what AI can do now isn't any kind of boon. So what's keeping people high on hype if not empty hopes for a breakthrough in the near future?

    if you don’t believe that understanding and responding to complex text requires some basic level of reasoning and intelligence.

    That's the opposite of what I said. The kind of real-time dynamic responding to things you're talking about requires reasoning and intelligence, but LLMs possess neither.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (1 child)

    I mean, do you watch those videos and think to yourself “this is it – this is the destination – we’ve done it”?

    Look, it's an objective fact that people have a hard time distinguishing AI generated video from real video. So your whole argument that "this looks horrendous and nobody could ever like it" is just incorrect. Pointing to technical problems doesn't change the fact that this could move video games towards photorealism especially while animated. It might not work out, but you're saying nothing that precludes it.

    You clearly hate AI and hate anyone who likes anything about it. But that blinds you to reality.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago*

    Look, it’s an objective fact that people have a hard time distinguishing AI generated video from real video.

    Not without a lot of curation.

    “this looks horrendous and nobody could ever like it”

    I never said that. What I meant by the "do you really think this is the destination" comment is how can you look at a very curated collection of AI-generated video snippets and extrapolate from that that the Stable Diffusion (or whatever) model they used can be just unceremoniously dropped into a game engine without tons of random hallucinations like turning random wood grain in a fence into a full-ass hallucinated person or dog or steak dinner or whatever. And without making one character look drastically different now than they did the last time you visited them 20 minutes prior. (You've seen videos of beauty filter fails, haven't you?) Let alone extra fingers and garbled text and accidental body horror and stuff.

    If you generate a bunch of stuff, throw away the stuff that doesn't look right (a.k.a. "curate"), and carefully edit the remainder into a video, yeah, you can get some pretty decent-looking results. But that's not how games work, unless you're just talking about pre-rendered cutscenes.

    this could move video games towards photorealism

    This can't. Not without something we have yet to invent. And thinking that whatever may some day exist that can is in any way related to the "this" that you refer to is speculation at best.

    you’re saying nothing that precludes it.

    I'm not saying photorealistic video games won't happen. I'm saying that the companies forcing it on gamers are knowingly (or at least uncaringly) pulling a massive grift marketing what's available today as the thing that will fill the promise of perfect photorealistic video games when nothing like that exists today and they have no reason to think it will any time soon.

    You clearly hate AI

    "AI" can mean a lot of things. I took a course in college in 2005 called "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence". And in that class, they introduced me to the A* algorithm. (When you do an escort mission in Skyrim and an NPC follows you, the code that determines how the NPC should traverse the distance between the two of you in order to remain in proximity to you -- accounting for terrain features, circumventing obstacles, etc -- is almost definitely the A* algorithm or some minor variation of it.) I can say I'm fully down with the A* algorithm and have nothing against it. I've had occasion to play chess against chess engines several times. 10/10 would play again.

    As far as LLMs, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E are concerned, guilty as charged. And the way the industry conflates all of "AI" as if it's one thing and not a whole bunch of different things (touting advancements in drug research as some kind of proof that their completely unrelated LLM is competent or whatever, for instance).

    and hate anyone who likes anything about it.

    I mean, I think you're pretty self-deluded, but not any more so than you think the same of me (as your "that blinds you to reality" states pretty plainly).

    Beyond that, the whole world seems to be conspiring to make Generative AI not optional. Want to opt out? Fuck you, your search engine just spats slop on your screen now and some of your favorite content creators on YouTube are slathering it all over their videos now, and your phone and your computer and your browser just updated and now nag you constantly to use AI summaries and stuff. You also have to smile and be diplomatic about it at work because the CTO made a deal with Microsoft to push Copilot on you constantly. Plus, the communities that you've enjoyed previously are suddenly inundated by Generative AI fanboys filling your feed with shit.

    And I have to imagine it would be hard for someone who thinks Generative AI is "a good thing actually" to really grasp just how fucking intrusive it is to be force-fed that so constantly. It has a way of turning a mild dislike into seething hatred. (Even if Generative AI was innocuous, the Green Eggs and Ham factor huge. At least that guy only had to deal with one Sam-I-Am.)

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