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Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

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Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#121

Post by hwbunny »

bnralt wrote: post #45
hwbunny wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95 % of games are boring, and unoriginal. Why? Because most of these people, who create these games are entrepreneurs. They only see the possible money from these. These games have no heart whatsoever, why? Because good games need passionate people, not blue collar suits. There are 1 million subscribers at the gamedev reddit. It's ridiculous, and when people ask something, they get total balooney, ridiculous botlike…

Being passionate doesn’t guarantee a game being a success, though. Look at a game like Knights of the Chalice 2. It's definitely a labor of love, and many people who play it think it has the best DnD combat of any game out there, and maybe some of the best turn-based combat as well. It has mediocre graphics, though, and a high price point, so it’s had extremely slow discoverability. It also has a somewhat niche audie…

People are in their own bubble and believe everything that people say to them on the internet. People lie all the time, plus they don't want to create friction by saying that a specific game is, well, shit. That game is built on already outdated foundations. You need to give something to users that will stimulate them.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#122

Post by hwbunny »

jayd16 wrote: post #49
hwbunny wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95 % of games are boring, and unoriginal. Why? Because most of these people, who create these games are entrepreneurs. They only see the possible money from these. These games have no heart whatsoever, why? Because good games need passionate people, not blue collar suits. There are 1 million subscribers at the gamedev reddit. It's ridiculous, and when people ask something, they get total balooney, ridiculous botlike…

Games are boring and unoriginal because it's incredibly hard to make original, engaging content no matter who you are.

I don't think that's the case. Just look at the 90s, early 2000s.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#123

Post by [deleted] »

bogwog wrote: post #30

They mention using a service called Meshy for generating models, and I noticed that they have a free plan where the generated assets have a "license" of CC-BY-4.0[1]. Any lawyers in here that can comment on that? They're claiming copyright ownership over models generated from customer prompts, and I doubt they trained their model exclusively on stuff they own/licensed. 1: https://www.meshy.ai/pricing

[deleted]

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#124

Post by jsheard »

stale2002 wrote: post #107
jarjoura wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea you might want to update your blog post with some original and creatively inspired new content. Demoing Star Wars is just asking to be picked apart by people.

> Demoing Star Wars is just asking to be picked apart by people. I am confused as to why you think think this is a bad thing. That's likely the best way to go viral and get traction, to have a bunch of people being upset about this tool.

Getting people upset is one thing, getting Disney upset is another. They don't mess around with people appropriating their IP.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#125

Post by forrestthewoods »

EncomLab wrote: post #11

Hard facts: Steam has over 73k games - and is growing at over 10k games per year and increasing. The median game on Steam earns less than $800 - down from $4k in 2020. Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.

> Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.

Literally no one who has ever made a game says this. Making games is so incredibly hard that the phrase “making games is hard” is a running meme!

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#127

Post by skyyler »

kyleamazza wrote: post #89
password54321 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Aegis Defenders 7/10 on Steam and Metacritic. Reviewed by major publishers. Over 100 reviews. Not sure what you mean by "no traction". But I'm sure it did fantastic in some alternate universe because Sean Carroll.

But we're in this universe. Based on the number of years it took to develop the game, it wouldn't be considered one that achieved "15 minutes of fame". 100 reviews is quite a far cry from your example of Balatro with 33k. I'm not sure where you plan to draw the line on "success", but I think this is a broadly reasonable contrast.

3 of my steam friends have already purchased it. One of them has it on wishlist.

I only have 40 steam friends.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#128

Post by stale2002 »

jsheard wrote: post #124
stale2002 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Demoing Star Wars is just asking to be picked apart by people. I am confused as to why you think think this is a bad thing. That's likely the best way to go viral and get traction, to have a bunch of people being upset about this tool.

Getting people upset is one thing, getting Disney upset is another. They don't mess around with people appropriating their IP.

> getting Disney upset is another. They don't mess around with people appropriating their IP.

I am not sure why everyone repeats this line so confidently when it is so clearly wrong.

Have you been on the internet? Do you understand how common copyright infringement is?

Especially related to Star Wars? Its ubiquitous. Its everywhere. People make fan art of star wars. They write stories. They make fan games. They make youtube videos.

All of that is mostly illegal copyright infringement and everyone is doing it, and basically nobody ever gets in trouble for that.

I am not saying that there isn't a line. There clearly is. You couldn't just release your own star wars movie in theatres, or sell bootleg star wars merch in every walmart. (You could sell infringing merch on etsy, and mostly get away with it though!)

But the bar that you have to go above to actually get in trouble for infringement is extremely high. And a random demo of a bad tie fighter game just doesn't pass it.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#129

Post by doctorpangloss »

Philpax wrote: post #117
jarjoura wrote: post #105

I know this is a small team and experimenting, but in my mind, this engine is already limiting the potential of games it can output. I don’t know, but Unity is already pretty much point and click game building. I spent a few weeks building a card game with it during lockdown, and without a lot of code, I had an ugly, and basic, but totally playable game. The hardest part to a game is building something fun yes, but i…

(I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.) We experimented with a few different form factors, including integrating into existing game engines, before taking this path. Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind. Our platform's entirely on the web, so you can…

> Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind.

How does that pan out?

There's hundreds of millions of dollars of product development in Unity and Unreal specifically for game design. How will you ever catch up?

Godot got $8m, for the people who authored it, what does it have to show for it? It seems like hopelessly little money.

Maybe you said to the investors, "You don't want to be locked in" or whatever. The browser still an engine. Mobile Safari and Chrome are also moving targets. You're still playing in someone else's back yard. There are no games that are designed to be played in Mobile Safari and also make money. I mean the browser also has AI assistants.

Obviously I want you to succeed but this sounds more like a good story than a good strategy. It doesn't hold up to an ounce of scrutiny. Right now it sounds like it's not interesting to develop the toolset for Unity because they are already doing it.

Re: Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

#130

Post by [deleted] »

FredrikNoren wrote: post #12
mysterydip wrote: post #4

How will you ensure the content created for a game is free from copyright violations? Or is that up to the user to determine?

We haven't looked into exactly how this will be handled yet, but I believe this would fall under the same laws and restrictions as any other online platform (YouTube, TikTok etc.), it's just that the production tools are different.

[deleted]
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