It's a good attitude and you're right. An AAA studio with a massive budget and an army game devs has no right to be cutting corners with gen-AI - at the moment.

But for an solo dev, it's more than acceptable, as long they're not relying on it to automate say narrative.

There are assets and cinematics that AI can generate that a human can't - that's also a valid angle for a solo dev IMO.

For 3D models, this thing is exceptional: https://www.meshy.ai/discover

You can sign up for free and get it to generate any 3D model you can think of. Better to get an AI to generate an image of the idea first, then get Meshly to convert the image to a 3D model.

I can't see the quality difference between the models generated with meshly and those generated by a human. Plus models take a crazy amount of time to create by hand.

It has a plugin to import them to unity as well. So far, the quality I've seen is mind-blowing.

So as long as I've an idea, I can just keep creating acres of unique 3D assets, with no effort.

It will auto-add 'rigs' (for animation) to certain models - humanoid and quadruped.

Unity AI itself can animate those from a prompt.

For VFX, there is no AI that can create them. You can try, but it is extremely bad at it.

Take a look at this 'easy fireball VFX' tutorial for Unity to see how bonkers complex it is to create basic VFX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWw99JDXdY
Also note the sheer amount of smoke and mirrors. Your VFX in games are the most elaborate trickery on earth. There's no 'logic' to the process, it's just a set of layered fakery.

If there's no logic to the process, this makes it very difficult for an AI, because it is particularly bad at trickery of this level.

The gaming industry, arts, music, etc... are all ♥♥♥♥♥♥, we will have no talent people flooding all industry which will be worse than DEI hiring.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Alice Liddell:

The gaming industry, arts, music, etc... are all ♥♥♥♥♥♥, we will have no talent people flooding all industry which will be worse than DEI hiring.

If you think you don't need talent to make a game with AI, you are off your rocker.

It's blood, sweat and tears here at the minute trying to get through a MVP. I'm actually working on it while I should be working on my 9-5. I work nearly every waking hour I have on it.

There will of course be bad gen-AI material.

There's bad human art, narrative, music, etc as well.

But people trying to push the AI to create something novel are artists, simply put.

The easiest way to look at it is, have you ever seen anything like it? Is it completely novel?

If so, doesn't matter how it was created. It's a thing you've never experienced. That's what 'great art' is.

While I can understand the use of AI for repetitive / boring tasks, its use should be limited to the bare minimum.

Why? Because this will create a generation of lazy, untalended devs flooding the market with extra-mid, boring, uncreative games, and this at full price. (Yeah it's already an issue, that would just make it worse)

Learning how to draw? No, ask AI.
Learning how to compose music? No, ask AI.
Learning how to write a story? No, ask AI.
Ect ect...

Say goodbye to innovation, say hi to the same copy pasted ai-generated slop. Until it eventually collapse as AI will run out of actual original work to feed on.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Siluva:

While I can understand the use of AI for repetitive / boring tasks, its use should be limited to the bare minimum.

Why? Because this will create a generation of lazy, untalended devs flooding the market with extra-mid, boring, uncreative games, and this at full price. (Yeah it's already an issue, that would just make it worse)

Learning how to draw? No, ask AI.
Learning how to compose music? No, ask AI.
Learning how to write a story? No, ask AI.
Ect ect...

Say goodbye to innovation, say hi to the same copy pasted ai-generated slop. Until it eventually collapse as AI will run out of actual original work to feed on.

Except people can tell laziness.
It is okay to cut corners but then you have something like the flood of H-games on steam that are reused assets, RPG maker and now AI generated images and nobody buys these.
Kagura puts more effort into their games but it is absurd how much mileage they have gotten out of that one RPG Maker license.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Siluva:

Why? Because this will create a generation of lazy, untalended devs flooding the market with extra-mid, boring, uncreative games, and this at full price. (Yeah it's already an issue, that would just make it worse).

You clearly don't work with AI if you think that's the case.

AI can be pushed to create things humans can't. I've made a career out of that in my 9-5.

But for art, it's about pushing the AI to create art no human has ever seen.

A human imaginaton must be involved.

For AI-gen game mechanics, again the human is the one who imagines the game mechanics. They are either unique or they are copied. Doesn't matter if you ask a human engineer over an AI to create a game mechanic. Both will go about the process in the same way. And more than likely, the human's code will be far worse.

But the code is irrelevant. The code merely creates the idea.

There are no AIs that are capable - yet - of coming up with their own ideas.

Mainly the issue is that while both humans and AIs 'train' on data in similar ways, humans have the advantage of training on realtime data, as creatures that walk about the world and interact with others within it. An AI doesn't yet have that luxury - and probably never will.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Knud den Store:

Except people can tell laziness.
It is okay to cut corners but then you have something like the flood of H-games on steam that are reused assets, RPG maker and now AI generated images and nobody buys these.
Kagura puts more effort into their games but it is absurd how much mileage they have gotten out of that one RPG Maker license.

People can maybe tell laziness but it doesn't prevent them from buying / supporting it.
There's a reason why companies like EA or Ubisoft still exists.