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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

#221

Post by tstrimple »

vablings wrote: post #180
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 honestly couldn't disagree more. With the advent of online services, the quality of both tv series and movies have massively increased. Budgets are larger the appetite is larger and grass roots non-Hollywood creators have a serious shot at disrupting the market. I am personally no longer interested in the same shitty nostalgia rehash of previously garbage marvelslop and the same 15-20 actors on my screen and that h…

I think that was absolutely true for a time. But now outside of Apple TV who is doing high budget quality TV? Certainly not Netflix. Best they can offer is a Korean or Spanish soap opera.

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

#222

Post by bugbull »

iamnothere wrote: post #175
bugbull wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that were to happen on a large scale, people could band together to provide security/resistance. Oh wait. I’ve heard this one before. Just send in the national guard. A couple of well placed free speech donations with some winks and nods should be able to break that sort of terrorist organization.

If you truly believe this and aren’t just spouting off, I hope you’re either making plans to move or gearing up for the inevitable civil conflict. Given your green account I’m sure you’re just trolling.

[dead]

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

#223

Post by mock-possum »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #197

> now said CEOs can still see an end result that mimics the thing they don't understand—and are able to self-delude themselves into thinking it's replicable at scale, or that it's even producing the same quality as the product they've actually been selling. this is happening across all industries

But will people buy it?

(Spoiler: more than you’re comfortable with, yes they will)

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

#224

Post by astrange »

vablings wrote: post #181
astrange wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter was changed so that only views favoured by Musk show up prominently in replies. This doesn't happen anymore, it's actually relatively good at sorting bad comments to the bottom now. The current problem is it's full of wannabe LinkedIn influencers with "Building for AI agents in business in public" in their profile using LLMs to reply to everything.

Twitter only shows you what you want to see

Eh. They recently changed the algorithm quite a lot, and the guy who was in charge of it (Nikita Bier) made it a lot less evil when Elon wasn't looking. But now he's gone so who knows what will happen.

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

#225

Post by tzs »

dalyons wrote: post #165
badpun wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most follow the herd, but there are often noticeable exceptions. See e.g. how Toyota refused to jump on the electric vehicle bandwagon and stuck to hybrid engines. Or Mazda, which didn't even do hybrid.

Is that supposed to be an example of a good decision? Outside the US hybrids are quickly becoming irrelevant. The decision is looking like it will cost Toyota the crown

Worldwide outside the US BEVs are about 16% of new car sales (BEVs + PHEVs are about 25%). Hybrids are still going to be relevant worldwide for quite a while.

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

#226

Post by munificent »

asdff wrote: post #126
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…

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…

> I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released?

20 million videos are uploaded to YouTube every day.

>* NYT is now 10x as thick?*

One random site I checked says there are 600 million active blogs right now.

> Every source of quality has upped its quantity by 10x?

I made no claims about quality. If you spend two hours watching Citizen Kane, or two hours watching loot boxed unboxing videos, the fraction of your life that's spent is the same. The attentional cost is equivalent even if the value someone derived from it is not.

> I think writers who are trying to become truly gifted writers aren't going to be out of demand in the future.

Almost no one can make a living writing poetry any more. That means the hypothetically world's best poet probably doesn't exist because that requires a time investment that simply isn't available except among the idle rich. The trend is going that way for photography, music, and fiction.

In order to be truly gifted, you need a massive amount of time to hone your craft and it's very hard to find that in an economy that doesn't pay you to do that.

> Provenance has value. That is something that technologists often forget coming from engineering backgrounds, where everything they interact with is commodified and provenance doesn't matter at all, only the binary of if the spec is met.

I agree. Hand-made stuff is good. But imagine a world where every fast food restaurant charged five cents for an entire meal. Home-cooked meals would still be superior, but how often would the average person summon the time and willpower to make them? And in that world, how good do you think the average home cook would get?

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

#227

Post by pandaman »

The article makes note about profits as high as ever, which is true for the revenues. Revenue of the industry used to grow every year until 2020, when it stalled and had been the same for the past 5 years. While revenue remains the same, the cost raises - people want more money due to inflation, benefits cost more, capital costs more etc. etc. So no, profits are not as high as ever, they had been falling steadily over the past 6 years and as the result we see all the layoffs and studio closures.

Is AI the reason? I somehow doubt that AI caused the revenue to stall in 2021. In 2021 AI could not even draw hands, least write decent code. What we had around that period was a lot of M&A in the industry. Insane capital went into buying up game studios and even publishers like Zenimax and Activision. Embracer alone acquired ~200 studios in 2019-2022. If I wanted to know why the industry is fucked up now I'd be looking there, not at the AI.

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

#228

Post by altairprime »

tstrimple wrote: post #217
protocolture wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They’re all bad bosses, Brant.

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

#229

Post by reactordev »

altairprime wrote: post #209
reactordev wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, then Bungie post-Halo would still be Bungie post-Halo, a part of Microsoft. Not Bungie post-Activision... certainly not Bungie post-Sony... It's not all the studio head's fault in some of these situations. It was larger studios/publishers like Microsoft Studios coming in and buying them out. The consolidation of these studios is what burned them.

The point here is that mergers and acquisitions are not the underlying cause of the problem. Yes, most M&A is private equity these days, but the problem with that is private equity. Yes, as the post we’re discussing suggests, most AAA gaming is in shambles after the hAIst of the century; blaming that on mergers and acquisitions needlessly excuses the leadership of the acquiring companies from their ultimate responsib…

I agree on all of that, and to add to it that the leaders of these studios that had good games were leaders because they made good games. Not because they were good at business management. They weren’t and they thought bringing in the big folks would provide that and it always turns out terrible for everyone involved.

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

#230

Post by _s_a_m_ »

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…

"art"
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