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No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

wired.com

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Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#101

Post by mh- »

rufasterisco wrote: post #59
swiftcoder wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how can it be that and then inside the article i read > > Last year’s indie darling, the Myst-inspired Blue Prince, was funded by a solo developer’s personal savings and the ad revenue from his Magic: The Gathering website. “When I finally approached publishers, it was only after I had completed my game, looking for marketing, porting, and release support,” Blue Prince developer Tonda Ros says via email. Blue Princ…

I don't know if English has a word for when you are half confused and half amused, but that is how I feel. From this same article, here is the co-head of the studio that wanted to produce Myst. > “I don't think people realize the true cost of developing games,” Anderson says, having used Kickstarter to partially fund two of Cyan’s past titles. “A million dollars seems like a ton of money, but it doesn't even come clo…

> I don't know if English has a word for when you are half confused and half amused

I think bemused is the closest I can think of.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#102

Post by [deleted] »

watwut wrote: post #90
cubefox wrote: post #82

1. Approximately every software engineer secretly dreams of developing an awesome video game instead of the boring software he actually makes. 2. Consequently, there are way too many people wanting to develop video games relative to the commercial demand for them. 3. Consequently, it is incredibly hard to get funding for a video game project.

Meh, no not true. Plenty of software developers dont even like playing games. And making a game is not all that much more fun anyway. A lot of that work is plain boring. Fun software project and flashy outcome are two different things.

[deleted]

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#103

Post by mrweasel »

WJW wrote: post #4
thataccount wrote: post #3

Is it really that no one can afford it, or is it more no one really wants to back independent studios?

There are hundreds of indie studios out there that find funding just fine. Even indie studios making eclectic puzzle games with weird stories. So this is probably not the reason.

Might there be so many indie studios competing for the same financing? So they can get financing for smaller games, because investors can just bet on 50 eclectic puzzle games, and if one takes off that will cover their investment, but they can't finance one larger game, because of the risk profile.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#104

Post by pmontra »

maccard wrote: post #72
nucleogenesis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you I hate more than anything when I’m lied to. Some AI art could be fantastic (haven’t seen anything yet but I’m sure it’ll happen someday). I don’t want something you prompted an AI for because genuinely I could just do that myself. The barrier to entry is nil. I’m not interested in the idea an artist has I’m interested in how they execute it. If they executed it through human effort then I place a much…

Generally anti AI person who is a game dev here: > The lines might blur if an artist uses an AI to manipulate their own art that they made. Where’s the line? Is using tools in maya and photoshop to rapidly speed up asset generation ok? > I could never have that appreciation for something a machine generated. Do you feel the same about PCG?

Procedural Content Generation?

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#105

Post by Ariarule »

_Dimhaven_, released just a few months ago, looks fairly Myst-like from the videos I've seen. While I haven't played it, Zadbox, the developer, also made the very Myst-like _Quern_; released 2016 and which I have played.

I can't help but think the article is a story about _Cyan's_ woes conflated with industry woes. Which isn't to say that the industry doesn't have problems! But Cyan really underperformed with _Firmament_. Look at the Kickstarter comments:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyanworlds/firmament/co...

They did a rug pull on whether they would ship DVDs with the Firmament collector's boxes _after_ they had complaints about the quality of the equivalent Obduction backer reward. While they did ship a DVD for Obduction, from personal experience the box itself it came in was a bit underwhelming. I didn't care so much about packaging, but I could see how someone would, and the whole situation on this point with Firmament was a very eye-rolling "again?" scenario. The first time with Obduction that they weren't able to ship what they planned in this way was bad luck; the second time was, generously, bad planning about something that was entirely foreseeable on their part.

More details here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/754890/discussions/0/38264157...

They made a bad bet on how well VR would take off, with Firmament very obviously created with VR play in mind.

So many people were disappointed with Firmament itself. "18,420 backers pledged $1,433,161 to help bring this project to life" but they can't do that again specifically because they burned a huge amount of goodwill with the people most likely to support them that way. Keep in mind that's a 2019 number and CPI adjusting would bring it up to about 1.8 million, at the lower end but solidly within the 1 to 10 million amount Wired said they were trying to raise for Anglerfish from a publisher. And _Obduction_, while beautiful, was a bit short and had its own issues.

I would also note with all the discussion of the impact of AI art on games that Cyan was an early _target_ of the anti-AI crowd over their use of AI art in Firmament. IIRC, Steam did not have a dedicated disclosure section at the time Firmament, but they did disclose it responsibly and appropriately in the credits. A more detailed statement from Cyan can still be found at https://cyan.com/2023/06/08/regarding-ai-assisted-content-in... -- on this, I agree with Cyan's 2023 post, we ought to be able to distinguish "AI Assisted" from AI-generated, although it seems many are allergic to such nuance.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#106

Post by tyromaniac »

threatofrain wrote: post #60
picofarad wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem to follow.

The degree to which you can discern is the degree to which you can meaningfully ask for human vs AI.

Art consists of decisions made by the artist that are interpretable by the audience. Automatically generated imagery lacks this, but still presents a fascimille of it. The intention and thoughtfulness of the artist is encoded within their creation, and when there is no artist this is lost.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#107

Post by vkou »

galangalalgol wrote: post #18
bob1029 wrote: post #13

The biggest issue is that it has become very accessible to approach AA quality in a solo setting. The jump from indie to AA is much more plausible than the jump from AA to AAA. The middle of the market is in a gigantic space trash compactor right now. I could sit down with one other level designer / environmental artist and create something that would be visually competitive with Myst in record time using modern tool…

Why is using it for code more acceptable than for art? I can't imagine we aren't already seeing tons of both in indie games. Maybe aaa too? Is there any ramification for leaving off the disclosure, or adding one? Personally if the gameplay is good I kind of don't care if it used lots of ai.

> Why is using it for code more acceptable than for art?

There's no good reason for it.

Nobody seems to piss on an artist who leans on AI for the programming side of their game, whereas when it's the other way around...

The consistent position is to condemn all of it, or to only focus on the quality of the outputs. AI-gen art looks like shit, and always requires an artist to fix it post. (Just like letting an AI vibe-code it's way to a finished program with no programmer oversight will inevitably produce a large pile of shit.)

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#109

Post by esafak »

bitwize wrote: post #89
HeavyStorm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a professional coder, I both agree and deeply hate this position. And code indeed has its values. See all algorithms invented by Carmack like BSPs, z-fail, etc.

Carmack didn't invent BSP trees. He read about them in a paper and produced an efficient implementation that could render a 2D map in 3D using integer math on 386-class CPUs. He has always envied the mathematicians who actually come up with this stuff. I think he did come up with "Carmack's Reverse" (a dynamic lighting algorithm) independently. But not even the "fast inverse square root" was his; that, oddly enough,…

> When AIs learn from other AIs, model collapse occurs.

I don't think is so. Models continuing to improve by learning from other models is a counterexample.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#110

Post by sph »

TACIXAT wrote: post #108

The article said they are looking for $1m to $10m in funding. Given the hype and pedigree, I feel they could crowdfund the low end of that trivially.

In this economy, when only old people like me care about Myst (and I’ve been around enough to know not to crowdfund games)? It’s not the 90s any more.
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