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Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#21

Post by bhewes »

dexwiz wrote: post #7
tiahura wrote: post #3

The argument that it is in shambles wasn’t particularly persuasive. “videogames are as profitable as ever” It seemed more like the understandable frustration of someone whose profession is being automated. Schumpeter creative destruction, but not shambles.

Profit in video games as an industry is largely the gambling industry hiding under the another umbrella. I'm not even talking about loot boxes. Just old school gambling games like roulette and slot machines but in a digital format. Once you strip that away and loot boxes, the numbers are great for classic games.

Worse then gambling at least I can take cash out. These are pure extraction machines. When I was part of a game studio startup all the VCs wanted the loot gambling games, some of the teams they funded hired casino guys.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#22

Post by hax0ron3 »

>They're trying to have a CEO press a button that makes a game, and then everyone else somehow buys it without a job.

If AIs get just a few times better than they are now, the CEO probably actually will be able to press a button that makes a good quality game. The problem for the CEO is that every other CEO will be able to do the same thing, so what will be the distinguishing factor?

The buying without a job part isn't necessarily a devastating problem for now. Blue collar workers and service industry workers aren't in immediate danger of being replaced by AI, so there is a cushion period in which there is still a large number of people who have jobs.

>Since the advent of modern capitalism (and likely a long while before that), those in charge have often misunderstood, underestimated, or dismissed the hard work that goes into labour they don't understand.

I'm no big capitalism fan, but this sentence is funny. The author just had to put in a dig against capitalism, mildly qualified with the "and likely a long while before that". What do you mean "likely"? Lol. It's absolutely obvious that this has been true for a long while before modern capitalism.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#23

Post by sm-silversight »

ctoth wrote: post #14
moshun wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that some investor somewhere making profits is considered the only real marker for success. It’s an insane perspective that devalues all other (arguably more important) aspects of a work’s success.

It sounds like you're complaining about capitalism, not AI?

Shareholder capitalism as milton friedman argued for it. Ford had a different vision but the Dodge brothers stamped it out.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#24

Post by martythemaniak »

newtonianrules wrote: post #5

Does it seem like companies just aren’t that well run anymore? I mean, companies seem to be having massive layoffs and placing ever more work on the remaining employees. At what point will the remaining employees just collapse? Are we just reverting to the mean after years of zero interest rate policy? Would love for folks with experience working in tech in the 90s and 00s especially to chime in.

I'll give you my diagnosis, which is derived from this: https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-t...

The thing to realize about the SV executive class is that they have constructed a closed ecosystem around them where they only talk amongst themselves and a small number of supporting actors who say what the execs need to hear. A CEO will talk to other CEOs he will not talk to his skip reports. Alternative viewpoints or dissent are not part of this social circle, and despite their 'conterarian' self-image, there's an immense amount of social pressure to conform.

You can can see hints of this outside - for example this site used to see YC folks as regular commenters, but no more. Twitter was changed so that only views favoured by Musk show up prominently in replies. These people certainly do not encounter normal people in their day-to-day lives.

In this information environment you see extremely rapid horizontal spread of weird, stupid and esoteric ideas - one CEO does a layoff, all of them will do layoffs. One turns MAGA, they all turn MAGA, etc. One guy starts yapping about some snake oil, they all yap about snake oil. There no negative feedback loop there.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#25

Post by dibujaron »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #22

>They're trying to have a CEO press a button that makes a game, and then everyone else somehow buys it without a job. If AIs get just a few times better than they are now, the CEO probably actually will be able to press a button that makes a good quality game. The problem for the CEO is that every other CEO will be able to do the same thing, so what will be the distinguishing factor? The buying without a job part isn…

"Blue collar workers and service industry workers aren't in immediate danger of being replaced by AI"

I wouldn't be so sure about this; robotics is advancing rapidly. I do think there'll be a substantial market for "human-made" products and services as luxuries, though, so at least some humans will retain these jobs.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#26

Post by louthy »

newtonianrules wrote: post #5

Does it seem like companies just aren’t that well run anymore? I mean, companies seem to be having massive layoffs and placing ever more work on the remaining employees. At what point will the remaining employees just collapse? Are we just reverting to the mean after years of zero interest rate policy? Would love for folks with experience working in tech in the 90s and 00s especially to chime in.

> Does it seem like companies just aren’t that well run anymore?

If you mean the games industry, it was always poorly run. I worked in games in the 90s and 00s it was a cottage industry of nerds, many of whom had success with an 8bit game in the 80s (where they did everything: a one person team), to then have to run large teams of devs/artists/designers/etc without any leadership experience and more complex hardware.

Happy days :D

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#27

Post by jasonlotito »

andrewmutz wrote: post #13
makerofthings wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly the problem. All the folks in charge care about is money. Money has absolutely nothing to do with whether a game is fun to play or not. An eternal curse on the houses of anyone involved with these AIs.

Don’t you make more money if the game is fun to play? (People buy the game)

No.

100% not. To equate fun to play to people buying the game is 100% not how you should say making more money is more people buying the game. Money is money. If the game is mediocre but it is fun enough, it can get more money than a game that is more fun but doesn't have as many opportunities to spend.

This is why things like dark patterns exist that try to get you to spend money through FOMO and other mechanisms like loot boxes.

You can argue that all of these things are people having "fun," but I wouldn't define that as fun to play.

Finally, none of these necessitate people buying the game, but rather spending money in the game. Usually, it's free games where people buy a secondary currency to spend on virtual items. Mobile apps, for example, are huge with this.

So the real answer to your question on multiple grounds is no.

Edit: Now, I will give you that people do have to make a choice, but that's like saying that gambling addiction is not real and it's a choice, or drug addiction is real and it's a choice. The reason for alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous is bogus because it's just a choice, but it would be dangerous to classify it as just a choice.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#28

Post by bena »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #22

>They're trying to have a CEO press a button that makes a game, and then everyone else somehow buys it without a job. If AIs get just a few times better than they are now, the CEO probably actually will be able to press a button that makes a good quality game. The problem for the CEO is that every other CEO will be able to do the same thing, so what will be the distinguishing factor? The buying without a job part isn…

The issue isn’t every other CEO having access to the “make game” button, but who will buy that game when the customers have access to their own “make game” button?

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#29

Post by altairprime »

newtonianrules wrote: post #5

Does it seem like companies just aren’t that well run anymore? I mean, companies seem to be having massive layoffs and placing ever more work on the remaining employees. At what point will the remaining employees just collapse? Are we just reverting to the mean after years of zero interest rate policy? Would love for folks with experience working in tech in the 90s and 00s especially to chime in.

Previously on “companies just aren’t run that well anymore”, HN considered this analysis of Boeing’s collapse following a reverse-takeover by an acquired, collapsing, competitor that ended up kicking out the quality-focused management in favor of profits: (6 years ago, 281 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971040

I assume a similar analysis exists somewhere for the big names in gaming that financial engineers have similarly destroyed other formerly-great companies; ZA/UM comes to mind as one example.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#30

Post by lackoftactics »

munificent wrote: post #20

1. Human attention is a finite resource. 2. Digital media allows a single authored work to consume the attention of an unbounded number of people with near zero marginal cost. Further, once a work has been authored, it is available to be consumed forever. 3. Computers, software, the web, and now AI have drastically lowered the cost to produce a work of digital media. You can't have fixed demand and have the supply in…

This seems to extend even beyond the arts. I would say that the race to add more features to web and mobile apps will face a similar obstacle.

How long can we continue making 10x more features just because we can, until somebody realizes that users do not have the attention to spend on them? There might be a shift, but currently, we are too focused on pleasing shareholders.

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