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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

#191

Post by jijijijij »

lobf wrote: post #115
louthy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

This is one of my favorite eras / subjects in tech history. I was just recently reading about the history of the Ultima series and you’re describing Richard Garriott. As games were pressured to be bigger and prettier and use 3D graphics, suddenly the lack of managerial experience (partly) caused the later games to spin out of control and they were forced to release a series of bad titles that brought the whole franch…

Have you seen Halt and Catch Fire? It's really, really good television and may be your kinda thing thematically. Excellent soundtrack too.

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

#192

Post by ethbr1 »

not_the_fda wrote: post #49
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.

Companies haven't been well run in decades, if ever, especially American ones. I've worked for about a dozen companies in my 30+ year career. None have been well run, most are out of business. I do design services now, and have worked with dozens of companies through that, and the pattern continues. We don't have leaders, or people that can make hard decisions, or think for themselves. They all follow the same book o…

> I've worked for about a dozen companies in my 30+ year career. None have been well run, most are out of business

I did tech consulting early in my career, so got to see a large number of companies as I was working for them. Some good, some bad.

There were a few reliable characteristics about the good ones though:

   - Distilled corporate culture into learnable points, ensured everyone learned those, and then reliably used and referenced them in the context of everyday business decisions
   - Centralized strategy, decentralized tactics. Execs cane up with strategic targets, then implementers were free to design their own solutions to deliver those
   - Had an expectation of employee-initiated internal mobility (team switching) and used it as a management evaluation signal
   - Had a strong internal process for recognizing when they promoted / hired a bad manager (i.e. they made sure a bad manager with a good team didn't look good)

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

#193

Post by krapp »

tptacek wrote: post #84

I say this with all possible respect, reverence even, for what Tarn Adams has accomplished and what continues to work on, but there may be no worse messenger for the problem of disintermediating game designers and creators from actual code authorship than the author of Dwarf Fortress. It's an amazing game that succeeds in spite of and not because of its code. Had Adams been able to use Opus or Sol when he started wit…

There is no universe in which Dwarf Fortress becomes a "cultural milestone." It's core concept and gameplay would never appeal to the mainstream.

The premise that the only thing holding it back is not using an AI seems far fetched. How much game code have you looked at? If it shipped, chances are it's a goddamn mess. People made memes about Undertale's thousand-line switch statement. But it isn't the code quality that makes a game (unless it breaks, if it works literally no one cares) but the design and intent behind it. Using an AI wouldn't result in anything as unique or as innovative as Dwarf Fortress. It would just get something forgettable and mediocre to market faster.

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

#194

Post by msm_ »

Aerroon wrote: post #166
darkteflon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 probably shorter than 13 years, so if 13 year old games are fine then I'm not sure that contradicts OPs point.

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

#195

Post by madrox »

unknownfuture wrote: post #182
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…

Who's we? You're certainly not speaking for me. Making things previously impossible possible? That's the business I joined. Destroying people's livelihoods without care for the consequences while pursuing monopolies, capturing the value as rent seekers, and ultimately enshittifying entire industries? Yeah, no, I know I didn't sign up for that, thanks. And if you're thinking "wait that's not AI". Yes. That's precisely…

That's honorable, but software has been used in no small way to disrupt traditional business. Uber. Doordash. Netflix. Tesla. Airbnb. Zillow. And yes, AI is coming for another round.

It's a part of the culture. You can say that isn't what you signed up for, but I find it hard to believe that you don't know it's part of the culture you're participating in, which is the "we" here.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

madrox wrote: post #195
unknownfuture wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's we? You're certainly not speaking for me. Making things previously impossible possible? That's the business I joined. Destroying people's livelihoods without care for the consequences while pursuing monopolies, capturing the value as rent seekers, and ultimately enshittifying entire industries? Yeah, no, I know I didn't sign up for that, thanks. And if you're thinking "wait that's not AI". Yes. That's precisely…

That's honorable, but software has been used in no small way to disrupt traditional business. Uber. Doordash. Netflix. Tesla. Airbnb. Zillow. And yes, AI is coming for another round. It's a part of the culture. You can say that isn't what you signed up for, but I find it hard to believe that you don't know it's part of the culture you're participating in, which is the "we" here.

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by insane_dreamer »

> 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

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

#198

Post by madrox »

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 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.

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

#199

Post by Foreskin_Mafia »

true_religion wrote: post #100
Foreskin_Mafia wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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…

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