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No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

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Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#131

Post by devmor »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #120
numpad0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people are confused and/or behave defensive and hallucinate copyright issues(which is real, but IMO not the reason why artistic or creative AI contents aren't accepted). It's just not good enough. AI art generators aren't used in porn industry much. That should tell enough about quality and value of those. Bad VHS tapes were worse than YouTube 144p, and still totally fine for that industry. We're almost as f…

>We're almost as far away from viability of AI art as we are from reliable self driving cars. Have you been in a self-driving car?

Have you driven around them? Waymos have caused me more near misses in the last month than I can recall in a year of driving in Atlanta.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#132

Post by micromacrofoot »

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.

code is a tool that produces an outcome, art is the outcome

you can produce art with ai, but not everything ai produces is art, etc... when you produce code with ai it is always code

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#133

Post by jcranmer »

Ekaros wrote: post #88
paulcole wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the hard-pill-to-swallow meme truth. If it didn’t already exist, you could make Myst today and it would be massively popular because it’s a great game. It would cost almost nothing to make. Yes, a company can very easily find ways to spend $1-$10 million dollars to make a game. And some great games do cost a lot of money (much more than $10 million). But great games can be made for almost nothing as well. If…

I am not sure Myst actually is a great game. And I mean that as a game which audiences enjoy or want to play. It is great as in sense it did something special at certain point of when technology was available. I just don't believe there would be many gamers with modern sensibilities who would play it or like it. And the more casual audience have found other things. So you do not need the showcase of multimedia specta…

It's worth pointing out that Cyan made 6 Myst games (not counting remakes), and people only really talk about the first two. That gives you some idea of the staying power of the franchise...

I recently played the remakes, and I have 8 hours in Myst and 12 in Riven. Compare that to 21 hours in Return of the Obra Dinn, 44 hours in Outer Wilds, or 90 hours in Blue Prince, or hell 35 hours in Terraformental (whose GUI is essentially a text adventure game). Compared to modern puzzle games, Myst is just so short; there's surprisingly little of actual substance there.

As a modern game, Myst does largely hold up. The puzzles are still quite reasonably by modern standards (indeed, in many ways, Myst did revolutionize the puzzle game genre). As an example of environmental story-telling, it's still one of the premier examples. But the game is extremely thin by modern standards. And the remakes never did a proper redesign to account for how unrestricted 3d motion requires you to change how to guide the player's attention to key objects (in Myst, the key "what am I supposed to do" letter to start the game is surprisingly hard to find, even when you know where it roughly is!). And puzzle games have never been a strong genre--Myst is more notable for its role as a tech demo than for its role as a puzzle game.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#134

Post by teamonkey »

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?

PCG is authored, its usage has intention.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#135

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #67

What are you talking about? I can make a Myst-class game by next weekend, for practically no money. The audience won't like it because they have beef with the tools I'd choose to use, but that's a them problem, not a me problem. Maybe I'm God's gift to game design but I just suck at art. They'll never know, I guess.

> I can make a Myst-class game by next weekend, for practically no money.

I don't believe you can.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#136

Post by lightedman »

GormHouj wrote: post #112
lightedman wrote: post #111

Myst has severely overlooked a platform that has recently made some pretty decent strides - VR. I have a Kat Walk C2 and a game like Myst in VR with that VR rig would be absolutely goddamned insane. Myst ruled because you felt like you were in another world back then. Recreate that with the tech we have to really make you feel like you're in that world.

The 2021 remake of Myst has VR support as well as the remake of Riven. I think I own five copies of Myst now. There are at least 4 remakes/remasters. It's kind of insane.

No, I want a Myst or Riven game where I'm actually walking around the world. The VR support/remake pales in capability versus what I've seen done with actual VR games, and Myst could easily pull that off if they'd just look at the platform seriously and have some actual VR gamers to bounce ideas off of/beta test.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#137

Post by teamonkey »

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.

That’s a weird value to get funding for right now.

If a publisher wants to fund something cheap and niche, maybe a bit of a gamble, it’s too much.

If they want to fund a more fleshed-out title that is likely to succeed with a bit of marketing spend behind it, it’s almost too little.

So I think they might be right, they’re in a weird space that publishers don’t want to look at right now.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#138

Post by OroPla »

numpad0 wrote: post #113
galangalalgol wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of people are confused and/or behave defensive and hallucinate copyright issues(which is real, but IMO not the reason why artistic or creative AI contents aren't accepted). It's just not good enough. AI art generators aren't used in porn industry much. That should tell enough about quality and value of those. Bad VHS tapes were worse than YouTube 144p, and still totally fine for that industry. We're almost as f…

AI art is kinda like CGI. If you can tell, it usually means that it's bad. If you can't it doesn't matter.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#139

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #48
galangalalgol wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s how double standards work, there often isn’t a clear reason. The art and audio is somehow seen as more important and something only humans should de in a game than the code and design, you know the actual game portion of the game.

AI slop is cringe and bad. (From an artistic point of view.)

You can't force people to like it.

Re: No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

#140

Post by teamonkey »

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…

Apples to oranges, I think. Blue Prince was self-funded and solo developed for much of its long development time. Publisher funding was sought to polish and market the game.

The developers in the article are taking about seeking upfront publisher funding for a small studio to develop the game with a much shorter time horizon. The publisher would likely need to invest much more, but would take a much greater percentage of revenue, and with an established franchise like Myst and a team of veteran devs the risk is - in theory - lower.

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