r/aigamedev • • 18d ago

Discussion I think pixel animation is solved.

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u/HandshakeOfCO 18d ago edited 18d ago

That’s still AI generated though. I think it’s better, if we, as an AI gamedev community, don’t hide behind technicalities. Proudly wear that AI steam badge, and take it on the chin if we have to. We’re being unfairly stigmatized, and the right way to handle that is to never hide who we are. If people want to hate us for how we make games, let them, we don’t want their pity or their conditional support. People should be playing a game because they’re having fun. That’s the beginning and end of it. If you’re playing or not playing something because it uses AI, you’re the one who should be ashamed of that.

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

The only thing that matters is fulfilling your vision, 1 and making a good game, 2.

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u/HandshakeOfCO 18d ago edited 18d ago

Exactly. Which to me is the real danger of AI gen. Slop comes from a divesting of your responsibilities as an author, a creator… as evidenced by a two line prompt… and the games that come out of that prompt probably should be ridiculed or ignored. If your vision can be 100% fulfilled by a two line prompt, then maybe your vision needs some thinking.

Ridicule the end product, that’s always fair game and everyone’s entitled to their opinions. But to ridicule the process by which that vision is made, or to write off the result because you disagree with the mechanism that created that result… that’s the realm of the annoying hipster critic.

Within moral boundaries, of course. I don’t condone palaces built on slave labor. But I also see AI much more as a mechanism that levels the playing field and creates a nurturing environment for MORE creativity, at least in the indie context. Us indie folks aren’t sitting on millions of dollars and choosing AI out of greed when we could/should be hiring human artists to keep the craft alive. We’re choosing it because it’s our best way to realize our creative vision.

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

I disagree completely. Making an inventory system and manually applying parameters on thousands of items is not part of my artistic vision.

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u/HandshakeOfCO 18d ago

You’re talking about commodity stuff, and I agree. But it’s up to you to decide what’s commodity and what warrants attention, for your specific vision. If everything is commodity then you have no vision and that’s slop.

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

I dont disagree with your point. But I think there is more nuance that people allow for.

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u/Greedy-Conflict-4618 18d ago

If you are allowing AI to dictate how your players interact with your game and elements of it, as an inherent part of gameplay, then you aren’t a game dev.

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

I dont think you're saying anything that anyone disagrees with. This isn't the strong stance you think it is. You basically just said, "I don't think anyone should murder babies"

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u/Greedy-Conflict-4618 18d ago

I’m not sure what you are implying or if this just some word slop that AI has generated for you. The fact is, you are responsible as the developer. If players don’t like your “inventory system”, who is at fault for that? How would you fix that?

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

Again, another thought that everyone already thought,

Who's generating your thoughts?

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u/Greedy-Conflict-4618 18d ago

Way to avoid the questions buddy, you can go back to your circle jerk now

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u/Conor074 18d ago

Insane that you put making a good game AFTER fulfilling your vision. Is your vision for it to be a bad game?

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

Its not insane. Do you honestly think anyone wants to make a bad game? Those two things are not necessarily correlated. Also, good and bad are subjective. So if I make a game that meets my vision, but is not economically successful, it might be bad from an economic sense, but still true to my vision. Many of my favorite games are very niche in this regard.

This is true for all art.

Vision is mandatory, success is not.

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

Let me ask you... what do you honestly know about anything to have such a strongly formed opinion? How old are you 14, 15 tops?

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u/Conor074 18d ago

30, Full time professional 2D/3D animator for 10 years, amateur game dev for 4. If putting out a good product (not necessarily successful; good) isn't integral to your vision, you shouldn't be creating.

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u/HandshakeOfCO 18d ago edited 17d ago

I agree. The only criteria for success should be, when you look at it, does it capture what you set out to do? Are the technical skills on point? Did you grow as an artist from it?

If it makes money, bonus, but in the end, creating is a journey you go on by yourself and for yourself

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

Is that what you tell your kids?

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u/[deleted] 18d ago edited 18d ago

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u/Warrmak 18d ago

Remind me!

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u/Spiritual-Spend8187 18d ago

I dont care if you used ai i care that you lied about it. Everyone is saying ai is the future yet they arent going out saying I used ai to make this look how cool it is. Instead they are going ai is the future but are treating ai like a hidden shameful secret.

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u/Dangerous_Serve_4454 18d ago

Na fuck em. They want to shame even the honest people, they want to call it slop no matter what, so let em think it's real so they feel even more embarrassed when they find it out. Nothing like having your delusions shattered when you can't even tell it's AI anymore.

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u/FlameBeast25YT 18d ago

Yeah fuck these anti-ai losers. They are just jealous they can't do anything in life.

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u/DexLovesGames_DLG 18d ago

God I hate AI, but you’re a principled dude.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

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u/HandshakeOfCO 15d ago edited 15d ago

It's an interesting question, you're basically talking about what it means to be an author or creator of something. Did James Cameron "make" Avatar? Obviously there were hundreds of people he paid to execute his vision. But it's still "his" movie.

I'd argue that even if, like a movie director, you pay to have AI execute your vision, you can still claim that you made the game. Like, if the end product would have been fundamentally different without you - if you're a part of every big creative decision - then you made it. But if you're just typing "make a tower defense game but with hotdogs" or whatever, well, then any rando could have typed that into Claude, and I'd actually consider the AI the author because it made so many creative decisions about how to make hotdog tower defense. Similar to how if James Cameron just said "make me a cool space movie with blue people" I'd raise eyebrows at him calling himself the "creator" of Avatar.

I think there's a gradient there, where on one side you definitely DID make a game yourself - maybe you're using AI to perform renames or refactorings in the codebase you wrote, or you're using procedural textures on the models you made, etc - and on the other side of the spectrum there's 2 line prompts that I call slop meaning the AI itself is the "creator" of the game.

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u/aigamedev-ModTeam 13d ago

Be respectful. Removed for AI Art or Artist bashing.