Post by IslandWind in Generative AI Disclosure tagging

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It can be used and abused like any tool. Personally, I wouldn't be able to make the slice-of-life RPG I'm working on right now without AI-generated art. I don't have the artistic experience to make the assets I need myself, I don't have the money to hire artists (who thus aren't missing out on work anyway), and I doubt there's free art assets that fit what I need for the game. If my game miraculously takes off, I'd love nothing more than start a Kickstarter to raise money to hire artists who could replicate the ingame art from Midjourney, but as it is, on a student budget and making a freeware game, it's a pretty big ask to hire professionals to do the art for me.

tl;dr, it's a bit black-and-white to claim AI hurts artists when I literally couldn't have made the game I've dreamt of making for a long time without the assistance of AI. Again, all AI generators are tools that can be used or abused, they're not inherently good or bad.

I really liked Austin McConnell's take after he received a lot of criticism for using AI-generated art and voices in a video he made.

Also feel it's grasping at straws to use AI-generated articles on WP as an argument against AI-generated assets in games.

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Hugues Ross42 days ago(+3)

Sure you could. You could draw some crap art, plenty of fucking fantastic RPGs have taken this approach in the past and it didn’t hinder them at all. Working with and around your limitations is part of the craft.

I can only speak for myself, but I find projects with visuals that have poor technical quality significantly more impressive than ones with AI art–regardless of how you feel about the financial aspect, in the former case it’s immediately clear that the creator actually gave enough of a shit to try.

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erikhoudini30 days ago(+1)

you should check out these two games if you think AI is just blanket bad:
https://jameshillten.itch.io/strange-journey-2

https://jameshillten.itch.io/megami-tensei-neuroheroine-2

creators like this shouldnt be punished over some moralistic nonsense.

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Hugues Ross30 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hold on–I’d urge you to stop and consider the implications of your last sentence.

creators like this shouldnt be punished over some moralistic nonsense.

This is about disclosure, and allowing people to select what they want to see and not what they don’t (after all, games with and without AI content are all visible by default).

Yes, personally I don’t want to see games made with AI content. I’ve given my reasons, and I assure you that a couple of fangames that couldn’t be arsed to even come up with an original setting aren’t going to sway my opinion. It’s your right to argue about whether you feel that’s unfair, try to change people’s minds, etc. But at the end of the day, it should still be peoples choice to make.

In short, contrary to what a shocking number of people in this thread seem to think this isn’t a fucking punishment–it’s about letting people decide what kinds of content they do or don’t want to see. And look–if you still feel like it is a punishment because people don’t want your content once they find out it’s got AI stuff in it…maybe stop and think about the implications of that fact.

EDIT - Just realized you’re in this thread not advocating lying about this so I guess you not only have thought about the implications, you came to the conclusion that ‘it means you’re lying to your players’ was cool and good. Christ.

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IslandWind40 days ago (2 edits)

Tried replying directly to Hughes and got an error message for some reason.

Fair enough. I'm considering trying my hand at tracing photos of the places I'm taking photos of and seeing if I can make backgrounds that way (unless I just slap filters on the photos and call it a day), but drawing people? I think that's too high a hurdle for me, thank you. Also there's the slight issue that I want my game to actually be done at some point. So far I've written 20 000 words (or roughly 44 pages) of dialogue and narration and I've only covered a fraction of the scenes I'm planning to make. If/when the game is done, it'll probably be novel-length in terms of narration/dialogue. Then there's all the time to spend coding, testing, bug fixing, taking photos of locations, etc. Learning to draw people on top of that sounds unrealistic, to say the least.

Sure, you could say people should work around their limitations, but I'd rather my game looks good. And I mean, I'll also be sourcing my music from others, probably a combination of free and licensed works, yet I don't think anyone is going to criticize me for not trying to make my own music, you know? To be frank, I don't understand why the moment we talk of AI, suddenly there's this expectation that creators are supposed to do everything ourselves, or gatekeep creativity by saying it has to be done a certain way, otherwise it shouldn't be done at all.

Also, see the vid by Austin that I linked to.

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