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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

#171

Post by lokar »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #158
asdff wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to put a wedge between quality content and slop fodder. I admit slop fodder is increasing exponentially. But quality content e.g. movies that see theatrical runs, it isn't like there is some huge increase of supply of that relatively speaking, or some huge scale up in theater capacity to show more supply. For games, forget steam as a whole but consider maybe a single studio. It isn't like EA is moving to m…

> I'm trying to put a wedge between quality content and slop fodder. I admit slop fodder is increasing exponentially Fair enough, but the increase does make it a lot harder to separate signal from noise > Output in terms of actual deliverables seems to be the same as it ever was. Any efficiency that the technology is revealing seems to be getting gobbled by bureaucracy to me. I suspect that what we're seeing instead…

Ironically, AI may end up being helpful in filtering out slop and discovering content you like.

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

#172

Post by GPerson »

threetonesun wrote: post #134
fzeroracer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as a developer this is one of the biggest takeaways I've had from this whole thing. I used to view features sitting endlessly in a JIRA backlog as a bad sign; a signal that we weren't prioritizing the right thing. But in reality this serves as a natural selection mechanic; if devs don't care enough about it to get it done and PM doesn't see the value in it then it slowly fades away. With agents you can just t…

I'm a big fan of forgetting. I throw out the phrase "forgetting is the point" a lot, loosely paraphrased from some musician (I forget who!) that said if you couldn't remember the lyrics they must not have been very good. Somewhere in the original spirit of Agile there was no Jira board, because the next thing to do was obvious to the team, and if it wasn't obvious it was easily discoverable, just go ask some users wh…

In his memoir Stephen King says not to write your ideas down since the good ones stick around anyway, and that a notebook is a way to immortalize bad ideas.

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

#174

Post by luke5441 »

drugstorecowboy wrote: post #136
daemin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any that use LLMs and my educated opinion would be that there won't be any in the next decade or ever. The main reasons are that games already run with tight margins of both frame time and memory consumption, and that designers/game developers want to control the interactions with the player and what the player experiences in the game. So an LLM won't be used for any story relevant NPCs in the game as…

In my completely unqualified and baseless opinion, I think the reason machine learning in games isn't more popular, is that ruthlessly difficult enemies that learn and adapt to the player just aren't.. fun. Level playing fields between characters and enemies just don't work. For example, the Dark Souls series is generally known for being "difficult but fair", however enemies are not smart by any means, they ultimatel…

There are enough people playing multiplayer games where this is not the case. Those are actually kind of annoying because ELO systems cause you to always loose about half the games (except if you are the top player of all the players) no matter how much better you get.

You could tune this to handicap the LLM such that the player wins 80% of the time or so and it should be more fun (except for the competitive aspect).

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

#175

Post by iamnothere »

bugbull wrote: post #152
iamnothere wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were to happen on a large scale, people could band together to provide security/resistance. Since what you’re suggesting is a complete collapse of rule of law. If IP law is the only thing preventing society from descending into anarchy, then maybe we deserve anarchy.

> 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.

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

#176

Post by archagon »

ryandvm wrote: post #42
lackoftactics wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Damn, enshittification was already one of the toughest unsolved problems that successful software platforms face. It had not yet occurred to me that AI was going to increase the pace.

It's pretty clear to me that the primary value-add of AI is as an enshittification accelerator. (At least in the commercial sector.)

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

#177

Post by [deleted] »

bugbull wrote: post #145
zetanor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people are also demonstrably not that discriminating at what they spend their attention on now matter how unsatisfying the experience was, once it's spent it's gone I've refunded more games than I've kept on Steam over the past decade. While there's now a much wider pool of games, there's not necessarily a much deeper pool of games. Since trash sells and since marketing a game has been absurdly difficult recently, I…

What I’m really shocked is that mobile gaming is as dire as it is. My iPhone from some years back was capable of running full blown Civ6 and earlier total war games. Despite the hardware clearly being capable of running interesting, complex games, the market is dominated by shitty gacha games, copy paste puzzle games and scams.

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by archagon »

madrox wrote: post #128

When we've used software to disrupt other industries to deliver more with fewer people we called that a good thing. And it is, because consumers tend to win. Games are a hit-driven business, so they're going to feel the squeeze faster than, say, SaaS, but it's coming for all of us. Software is now being disrupted. Reap the whirlwind. I worked at a (very) well known media company in Hollywood during the Netflix disrup…

It's a huge mistake to think that indie teams would make better games if only they could balloon their projects to AAA-size.

Some of the most meaningful and engrossing gaming experiences of my life have come from 1-3 person teams, especially over the past few years. Meanwhile, the vast majority of AAA titles just feel like time-filling entertainment chow to me: fun-shaped but ultimately pointless. I would strongly argue that artistry and auterism is nearly impossible to preserve beyond a certain game size; the experience can't be focused by definition.

In any case, many of the most talented indie game devs are rejecting this technology outright.

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

#179

Post by roosterIllusi0n »

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…

Engineers are not the CEOs. The CEOs are gaslighting to justify another self enriching layoff. AI decisions and control sits with a handful of grifting CEOs. Engineers get no say.

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

#180

Post by vablings »

invalidptr wrote: post #154
madrox wrote: post #128

When we've used software to disrupt other industries to deliver more with fewer people we called that a good thing. And it is, because consumers tend to win. Games are a hit-driven business, so they're going to feel the squeeze faster than, say, SaaS, but it's coming for all of us. Software is now being disrupted. Reap the whirlwind. I worked at a (very) well known media company in Hollywood during the Netflix disrup…

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 has started to change because I have way more choice.

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