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Devs are more worried than ever that generative AI will lower the quality of games (www.gamedeveloper.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

Ok, so... maybe choose to not use it, and choose to not buy games that use it

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

Ah but that's not how being a gamer works. When the game companies do something sleazy you have to:

Complain about it endlessly online
Buy the game anyway and play it for 500 hours, stopping occasionally to post online about how terrible it is
Buy all the DLC, complain about it being a ripoff and then leave a negative Steam review

Then start saving for the sequel, which will be nowhere near as good as the first game.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

profit
hivemind

big changes are HARD to come by

[-] [email protected] 45 points 3 days ago

I mean, most AAA titles don't even run on launch nowadays, so I'm not really sure how the quality can get much worse than "unplayable."

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

I worry that if I shot myself in the leg on purpose, I might bleed out

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I used to worry that if I shat myself in the leg on purpose, I might bleed out. i still worry that, but i used to, too.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 3 days ago

And the bar was already very low.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago

Just remember what call of duty calls original content

[-] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

That's not even the worst of what Call of Duty used.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

I see extra fingers are not exclusive to 2d images

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Is the second to last"finger" the curb?

Still terrible ai tho...

[-] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

Whoever uses AI to crank out shit games is already cranking out shit games anyway. Only way to fight back now or in the future is to stop paying for shit games.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago

...don't use it and the problem solves itself, no?

[-] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

I'm sure that's what they'd like to do but then some executive gets some bright ideas about how it could make the game better despite having never ever played a game before in their life.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah.

The 'dreamer' part of me pictures this as enabling solo devs with masterpieces in their heads to finally make the game they want. Or small studios to undermine AAAs even more.

...But grifters gonna grift.

And apparently people buying slop can't help themselves, whether the slop is AI or not.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Ideally, so many of modern technologies would be an incredible net positive, freeing up so much wasted human time and enabling people to pursue happy, fruitful lives. But under capitalism, those same innovations are instead ruining livelihoods, dismantling society, and destroying the ecosystem.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Wait, if devs are worried about it, and players are worried about it, who the fuck is doing it?? If it's a widespread fear, they should band together and set up an AI-weary union, and gamers would support the shit outta them for it. Make it like a privacy policy, a binding agreement that AI will be used sparingly if at all.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Wait, if devs are worried about it, and players are worried about it, who the fuck is doing it??

The CEOs and upper management goons that don't care about anything but a single number getting higher.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 3 days ago

Why are players worried about it? It has the potential to take video games to another level entirely.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

Yeah... But "below rock bottom" isn't the level we want.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 3 days ago

That's a ridiculous take. It could add a level of variability and replayability that far exceeds games today, even those using procedural generation. There's no reason to think it would lower the quality to "below rock bottom", at all.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You're assuming AI will be used in a sensible way for the aspects it is good at, and not by forcing developers to use it for code generation uncritically with the hope they can eventually dump most of their workforce.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Using AI in games isn't about AI coding. Using AI to code games is likely already in almost every studio.

When they say AI in games that means AI artwork, voice lines, environments, etc.

i.e. imagine NPCs that change their voice lines based on recent events like recently completed missions, or your player looks/equipment/etc. With AI you don't have to pre-record a near infinite amount of voice lines they can be generated on the fly.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Yes, that's the sensible aspect I was referring to. But I doubt the heads of these companies are going to show that level of restraint given all available evidence.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

The biggest question is going to be will the AI be able to run locally or will they use it as an excuse to turn the game into a subscription.

I can see it now... "The game needs to make calls to OpenAI that we have to pay for to generate dialog so we need to charge by the month for the game"

They will finally have an excuse to turn single player games into subscriptions as well.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

If they used the generative AI to actually generate dialogue on the spot it could be pretty dope assuming it is trained properly so its consistent with the lore of the game and you could actually have a productive conversation with the NPCs without being constantly gaslit.

But that's not how any major dev has planned to use it. They use it to cheap out on art assets and writing the pre-scripted shit.

As it stands, even the few independent games doing the thing mentioned in my first paragraph are pretty garbage because they can't even remain consistent enough in their own logic to make the games actually playable.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

The problem is hallucinations are part of the solution to conversations with LLMs, but they're destructive in a game environment. An NPC tells you something false and the player will assume they just couldn't find the secret or that the game is bugged rather than an AI that just made some shit up.

No amount of training removes hallucinating because that's part of the generation process. All it does is take your question and reverse engineer what an answer to that looks like based on what words it knows and it's data set. It doesn't have any "knowledge", not to mention that the training data would have to be different for each npc to represent different knowledge sets, backgrounds, upbringing, ideology, experience and culture. And then there's the issue of having to provide it broad background knowledge of the setting without it adding new stuff or revealing hidden lore.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we see this attempted, but I expect it to go horribly wrong.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

so are you currently employed as a vibe coder or looking for work as one

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

It was already pretty badly ruined because of asset packs.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Just don't buy shitty games.

this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025

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