Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by cyanydeez » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:12 AM UTC

darkteflon wrote: post #141

asdff wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? NYT is now 10x as thick? Every source of quality has upped its quantity by 10x? Not at all. Seems output in this brave new AI era is more or less the exact same as it was in the dark ages. The only output that has gone up, logarithmically at that, is spam and other low effort fodder. I also want to push back on the…

Doesn’t the claim in the first paragraph only make sense if you assume that content becomes irrelevant as it ages? That holds for news but not for most other media. I have a huge Steam backlog and a Plex server stocked with (ymmv) many of the finest movies available in the form. There’s so much media there that there’s no realistic path to experiencing it all in my lifetime. That certainly has an impact on my inclina…

The argument for new media is pure conspicuous consumptiin.

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

#212

Post by riizade » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:12 AM UTC

msm_ wrote: post #194

Aerroon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a huge Steam backlog Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated. It's not just the graphics that ages, but also the game mechanics, UI and UX, and the general presentation of the game. I would rather play Path of Exile than Diablo 2. > I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supp…

>Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated. I don't agree with what you wrote literally (I almost exclusively play old and old-ish games, and I have fun), but: >Path of Exile is a 2013 free-to-play action role-playing video game developed and published by Grinding Gear Games I'm confused. Why is your example of a modern game is a game from 2013? Most people's backlog is p…

The analogy works if you know the comparison.

I mean, first, Diablo 2 did come out in 2000, 13 years before Path of Exile.

But also Path of Exile is maybe the game that has received the most updates and content of any game in existence (No Man's Sky looks stingy compared to Path of Exile, imo). It receives a small expansion's worth of content every ~4 months. Path of Exile in 2026 is an entirely different experience from Path of Exile in 2013.

I absolutely would not play the 2013 version today (and also am unable to because it's a live service game).

The better comparison would be Path of Exile 2, which came out last year or comes out later this year depending on your perspective on Early Access games, but it's less a 1:1 evolution of Diablo 2 and more its own thing.

I also like old games, but I grew up in the D2 era, so they hold nostalgia factor for me. There will always be games that stand out as classics, like Diablo 2 and Super Mario 64, but not many people play them who didn't already play them during their era, and even fewer people are going out of their way to play Titan Quest or Gex 64 for the first time in 2026.

Games do age, more so than books and movies, imo, because it's a younger medium and the technology keeps evolving.

As an aside, I also think entertainment industries are not saturated. I'm always hunting for recommendations that hit just the right spot, and so much is a miss for me. I'd love if there were 10 Path of Exiles to choose from, I'd play them all. (Hell, I'd be happy with just one quality Pokémon game...)

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

#213

Post by joegibbs » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:14 AM UTC

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #101

daemin wrote: post #93

The one that sticks out to me is the last quote lamenting the fact that you can't talk about AI in games any more since the term AI has been hijacked to mean LLM instead. I wonder how long it will take for job ads in the game industry to bifurcate into AI (LLM) developer and Behaviour (game AI) developer.

Unrelated but are there any games using LLMs or ML for the NPCs? I really want enemies that adapt to the player.

I did it for story events in my grand strategy game (Fall of an Empire) with a set of finetuned local models. It doesn't affect performance (for most people) since the game is bottlenecked on other things. Players seem to like it, there are some issues since the models are so small they are more prone to hallucination, and you also have to give them preset topics or they go on the same track again and again.

I haven't been able to use it for more than events since the tokens per second aren't high enough - I would like to use the models to e.g. generate actions for characters based on their history of interactions with other characters, but that ends up taking so much time that the player never gets any events.

I also did a demo of an LLM-powered NPC, I think the issue here is that you need more than just the LLM in e.g. a 3D RPG where you can actually go up and talk to the character. You can generate the text, but from there you also need to generate speech, from that you need to dynamically generate realistic facial and body animations that match up with it - this means you need 3 or 4 models chained together in a pipeline.

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

#214

Post by ChoGGi » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

msm_ wrote: post #194

Aerroon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a huge Steam backlog Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated. It's not just the graphics that ages, but also the game mechanics, UI and UX, and the general presentation of the game. I would rather play Path of Exile than Diablo 2. > I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supp…

>Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated. I don't agree with what you wrote literally (I almost exclusively play old and old-ish games, and I have fun), but: >Path of Exile is a 2013 free-to-play action role-playing video game developed and published by Grinding Gear Games I'm confused. Why is your example of a modern game is a game from 2013? Most people's backlog is p…

He may have meant poe2; it came out last year? Then again the remaster of d2 was fairly recent and quite playable by my standards.

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

#215

Post by pibaker » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #100

Foreskin_Mafia wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Namely... every society in existence before the year 1496. Our current form of property rights includes copyright, which had no formal treatment until the city of Venice issued a decree that fined anyone who printed an author's work without direct permission. Previous to that, the effort of copying a book was seen as so high, that one deserved reward simply for doing that. In fact, there were times that copying books…

So your argument is what worked back when most people were illiterate and books were a luxury and audio and video recordings were non existent will also work today?

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

#216

Post by tstrimple » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:38 AM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #52

altairprime wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

Ubisoft, Bungie, id software… Blizzard

MBA syndrome. People who allegedly know "business" but know fuck all about the domains they frequently ruin.

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

#217

Post by tstrimple » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:38 AM UTC

protocolture wrote: post #188

altairprime wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

Todd Howard gets a lot of flak from the bethesda fanbase, but I reckon whoever replaces Todd Howard is guaranteed to be worse.

I don't know that we want to resort to comparing which sellout is worse.

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

#218

Post by tstrimple » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:41 AM UTC

martythemaniak wrote: post #24

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. Alte…

And thus microservices were spread across the unsuspecting world.

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

#219

Post by laughing_man » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:41 AM UTC

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)

Not necessarily. Some of the most profitable games out there are not very fun to play, but they have their monetization strategy nailed down.

People laughed at Blizzard when it came out with the mobile game Diablo Immortal, and I've never heard it listed among Blizzard's best games, but Diablo Immortal was one of, if not the, best earners the company ever made.

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

#220

Post by tstrimple » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

madrox wrote: post #198

invalidptr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix disruption might be an apt metaphor, since it did severely damage the industry and reduce the quality of its output. Those Hollywood execs were right, even if they were ultimately doomed. It's another step in the Sheinification of everything. If it happens to software too, it won't be a victory for anyone except the owners of software companies.

I think people who long for pre-Netflix era are looking at the past with rose colored glasses. Distribution was terrible compared to now without a lot of choice. Anyone who thinks that time was better and the quality was higher don't actually remember it. They just remember the best of the era and TV shows they liked when they were younger.

Distribution got better for a time and then became the same old bullshit. When Netflix was the only dominant streaming service it was great. Now ever other person has their own custom streaming service and content is distributed across them. Back to the high seas for me. I don't mind paying. I mind the inconvenience. There was a brief window when Netflix was improving TV quality. But now it's almost all non-native US made originals that are cheap as fuck. They aren't all bad. My wife has a weakness for Spanish and Korean dramas for some reason. But it's all noise to me.