Gamers have to be one of the most interesting groups of people. I'll define "gamers" as people who spend more than 40 hours a week playing games, and probably overlaps significantly with streamer consumption.
Extremely needy, demanding, and simultaneously spineless.
Riot releases a $500 skin and make a million dollars, GTA6 has a $400 edition that doesn't include the game, and of course the OG horse armor.
Outrage after outrage, yet they keep on buying.
Additionally, 99% of them have no clue how hard it is to build a game, at any scale really. They don't understand where corners have been cut, and that it's possible to use AI without cutting corners.
They quite literally demand the world despite having never created a single thing themselves, blindly consuming, never producing.
Personally, it makes no sense to build a game without AI. A lot of code is needed and you need to iterate on it, perfect use case for AI.
Art, buttons, sprites, and models, often need rounds of iteration, why not start with a basic set and work on it?
There's nothing wrong with iterating, there is plenty wrong with slop (like the 6 fingers in the trailer). So let's be mad at the slop, not the AI itself.
> I'll define "gamers" as people who spend more than 40 hours a week playing games, and probably overlaps significantly with streamer consumption.
Does anyone else in the world share this definition? This seems very contrived because the vast majority of people who care a lot about games are not going to be putting a full time job's worth of time into it. It's like defining being employed as working over 70 hours per week.
The only reason I can see for jacking the requirement up so high is to try to narrow your scope so you can merge people into one group and define a single average 'gamer' opinion that everyone apparently has, so you can then come in and demonstrate their insane hypocrisy.
Would you be surprised if I said that the person complaining about $400 special editions is actually less likely to buy it? Gaming is mainstream. When you're talking about controversies in games with millions of users, there will always be a proportion of people who really care about it, but in spite of that there are always many thousands of people who won't, and will keep buying the thing they like without much thought given to it.
> They quite literally demand the world despite having never created a single thing themselves, blindly consuming, never producing.
If the chef brings you a meal that tastes horrible, should you be shunned for complaining about it? You've never made something 1/10th of that level of culinary sophistication. Even if you're the one paying for it.
What's even funnier is that in this case, 'the world' means 'making games the exact same way they've already been made for over 40 years to enormous success'. And the developer says "Yes, we will continue to do what has been successful for us for decades". If even the developer agrees and you still find an issue with it, it seems that the real problem for you isn't that gamers are demanding something of developers, it's that the developers aren't using the big new thing you really like. Which is immediately proven by your next sentence.
> Personally, it makes no sense to build a game without AI. A lot of code is needed and you need to iterate on it, perfect use case for AI.
Again, games have been built without AI for decades. Some of the best gaming experiences have been created in that way. And yet, genAI comes along, and after a brief few years it's suddenly unthinkable that anything good can be created the old way? And besides, if we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater - where are those AI-first masterpieces that top the old games? Where are the games with loads of AI code and assets that people love and regard as highly-polished, one of a kind experiences?
From a technical standpoint, AI is a less good fit for games anyway. We have basically solved 95% of all products people would ever need to put out on the web. For any problem you have, there is probably already a combination of high-quality solutions someone has made. AI has vast amounts of training data on web stuff and will probably produce something that doesn't stand out from the pack. But games are highly variable, have very unique problems, are very sensitive to optimization and can involve some of the most complex fields of computer science. Simple games may fare better, but anything large or really unique needs a solution made with purpose. Something that's just 'almost good enough' and not 'good enough' in a high-quality game will be immediately noticeable, especially in terms of gameplay.
bearjaws · · focus · HN ↗
Extremely needy, demanding, and simultaneously spineless.
Riot releases a $500 skin and make a million dollars, GTA6 has a $400 edition that doesn't include the game, and of course the OG horse armor.
Outrage after outrage, yet they keep on buying.
Additionally, 99% of them have no clue how hard it is to build a game, at any scale really. They don't understand where corners have been cut, and that it's possible to use AI without cutting corners.
They quite literally demand the world despite having never created a single thing themselves, blindly consuming, never producing.
Personally, it makes no sense to build a game without AI. A lot of code is needed and you need to iterate on it, perfect use case for AI.
Art, buttons, sprites, and models, often need rounds of iteration, why not start with a basic set and work on it?
There's nothing wrong with iterating, there is plenty wrong with slop (like the 6 fingers in the trailer). So let's be mad at the slop, not the AI itself.
tavavex · · focus · HN ↗
Does anyone else in the world share this definition? This seems very contrived because the vast majority of people who care a lot about games are not going to be putting a full time job's worth of time into it. It's like defining being employed as working over 70 hours per week.
The only reason I can see for jacking the requirement up so high is to try to narrow your scope so you can merge people into one group and define a single average 'gamer' opinion that everyone apparently has, so you can then come in and demonstrate their insane hypocrisy.
Would you be surprised if I said that the person complaining about $400 special editions is actually less likely to buy it? Gaming is mainstream. When you're talking about controversies in games with millions of users, there will always be a proportion of people who really care about it, but in spite of that there are always many thousands of people who won't, and will keep buying the thing they like without much thought given to it.
> They quite literally demand the world despite having never created a single thing themselves, blindly consuming, never producing.
If the chef brings you a meal that tastes horrible, should you be shunned for complaining about it? You've never made something 1/10th of that level of culinary sophistication. Even if you're the one paying for it.
What's even funnier is that in this case, 'the world' means 'making games the exact same way they've already been made for over 40 years to enormous success'. And the developer says "Yes, we will continue to do what has been successful for us for decades". If even the developer agrees and you still find an issue with it, it seems that the real problem for you isn't that gamers are demanding something of developers, it's that the developers aren't using the big new thing you really like. Which is immediately proven by your next sentence.
> Personally, it makes no sense to build a game without AI. A lot of code is needed and you need to iterate on it, perfect use case for AI.
Again, games have been built without AI for decades. Some of the best gaming experiences have been created in that way. And yet, genAI comes along, and after a brief few years it's suddenly unthinkable that anything good can be created the old way? And besides, if we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater - where are those AI-first masterpieces that top the old games? Where are the games with loads of AI code and assets that people love and regard as highly-polished, one of a kind experiences?
From a technical standpoint, AI is a less good fit for games anyway. We have basically solved 95% of all products people would ever need to put out on the web. For any problem you have, there is probably already a combination of high-quality solutions someone has made. AI has vast amounts of training data on web stuff and will probably produce something that doesn't stand out from the pack. But games are highly variable, have very unique problems, are very sensitive to optimization and can involve some of the most complex fields of computer science. Simple games may fare better, but anything large or really unique needs a solution made with purpose. Something that's just 'almost good enough' and not 'good enough' in a high-quality game will be immediately noticeable, especially in terms of gameplay.