itch.io

Chatbot meets visual novel. The dark part (some say it's too dark) comes at the very end.
https://robertgoodwin00.itch.io/cheree

You actually see this when accomplished professionals from other elsewhere in the entertainment world (novelists, movie makers, sports stars, etc) decide they're going to make a game. Doesn't matter that they may have been successful in other areas of life. Their game will not be a big hit. That's how tough the market is.

There are just too many games out there these days for most people to take notice of anything that isn't high end and ultra-polished. I've been making games for decades myself and agree with what you said. Back in 1998 it was enough just to *complete* a decent game. You would get players. Nowadays, even highly original games get neglected.

Don't despair! The nightmare will end if you say a certain word that begins with 'A'.  Repeat it 3 times. (assuming the character is more or less done telling you his crimes) "I am her A___ V______"

Hi!  That premature mention of the scrapbook does sound like a slight bug. Don't worry about Bassey Study yet. You need the clue in George Yard. One way to get it is say "Tell me more about Martha's wounds." (hmm, possibly this one was too hard)

For anyone interested in this topic, this is a good watch! The first hour of it at least. It's by someone with some expertise in copyright law. 
One thing I learned from it is that even current law doesn't treat indiscriminate data scraping as permissible if it includes data that is private or under copyright.  The big tech companies are on shakier footing than I thought.

You have not supplied a reason for why we should have copyright. To say "Copyright exists because it gives the right to copy" or "Copyright exists to monopolize copying things." is begging the question. It doesn't tell us why recognizing such a concept is desirable. Best you said is, "A thing like copyright is needed. Falsely attributing the creator is problematic" which is a good start and only that.

And this is really about intellectual property, which copyright is one type of. "Copyright is valuable because it restricts copies" is not a particularly useful observation in the age where authored works can be digital. The history of book printing can only guide us so far. Why should intellectual property be protected?

Yes, any answer to that question WILL be an opinion. There is no avoiding that. It is fine to shoot down others' opinions but can you give your own? 

Why should society care if false attribution is going on? That's just the author being arrogant enough to think their work is important enough to be setting standards, right? Why should society care if someone is upset that their ip is being used against their consent? Until you can answer that, you are still avoiding the question. 

Or should we abolish intellectual property? Would it be a better world if everywhere was like China?

Yes, we need not only new laws, but probably new terminology. Artists sometimes refer to their works being used in machine learning as "stealing" and "theft", which of course isn't accurate, yet there is a sense that something is being infringed upon that goes against the spirit of intellectual property that they are grasping to convey, which we perhaps need new words for.

You make plenty of valid points (I certainly agree that copyright claims can be abused), but it seems like you were avoiding mine. I asked us to consider what the reason copyright exists in the first place might be. Just now I tried googling "why do we need copyright" and this is literally the first link that came up (if you read other explanations they are similar):

https://iadt.libguides.com/copyright

Why is copyright important?

"The importance of copyright is an essential component of the modern educational experience. Copyright is important as it helps to protect the value of an author/academic/researchers work, by giving the originator of the work the ability to protect it from unlicensed or uncredited usage. This leads to the prevention of their work being copied to the degree where they cannot sell it effectively or receive credit for it.  In this way, copyright fosters intellectual creativity as it provides an incentive for a creator to work freely, allowing them to gain recognition for their work as well as protecting their livelihood."

There it is. It IS about incentives. If we didn't care about preserving incentives then why would we even have copyright or ip? We wouldn't. 

I still think that in the future, a clear standard for opting in or out of having a work consumed by training models is probably going to be the best way to address the interests of all. Sure, it's not going to stop the models from getting better and better. Slow them down for a short spell maybe, but it is important that we do this the right way.

Firstly, that's correct that we have to persuade those other than ourselves of what's ethical in order to get those other than ourselves to act upon it. That's why I take part in discussions like this. If I called for banning too quickly it was because it seemed as clear as day to me that the scraping of massive amounts of copyrighted data on the internet isn't ethical, but we can talk about it more....

"If I understood correctly, you think it is unethical because permission was not asked in creation of the tool used, and thus, the works made with said tool should be banned."

Not exactly what I said but close. It is unethical because it assumes it is okay to use authored works in a way not explicitly permitted by the authors. Were there a way for artists to opt-out of having their works scraped, then there would be no issue in my mind. There would be no need to assume. Would you agree clear opt-in/opt-outs  would be preferable to the current situation?

As for fan works and creations based off of existing ip, I would say it depends on how the original author feels about it. Though it may not be legal, I would guess (but could be wrong) that most are tolerant of fan works as long as it doesn't negatively affect their profitability. I mean, if you are receiving cease and desist orders then you know you are going too far...but if someone made a fan work of one of my ips, far from upset I would be flattered as long as it was in good faith. 

Let's consider the reason why we even care about plagiarism and copyright in the first place. Tell me if you disagree, but is it not about preserving incentives? If someone can plagiarize an artist's work then the incentive to create original work dissipates. Everyone loses. That is the point of ip, isn't it?

It's why the wishes of the artists matter. Person A says "Go ahead and use my work in your training sets" I take that to mean, "My incentive to create original work won't be affected if you do that." Person B says "Don't use my work in your training sets". I take that to mean, "My incentive to create original work would be hurt if you do that." So why not listen to them? I don't understand the argument *against* considering the wishes of artists. Educate me.  There is a way to go about this that balances the interests of both sides, for the technology to proceed along without stepping hard on (literally, because scraping is indiscriminate) everyone's toes. But I'm not seeing in what you've written indication that you are concerned about preserving the incentive for artists to create, which is the reason copyright and ip exists in the first place, am I wrong?

Yes, ethics are fuzzy and the law can never perfectly represent them. That's all the more reason for platforms and individual persons to take their own stance. Legislators can be bought. Industries can be captured. Practicalities can also get in the way (such as how well a law can enforced). I'm not at all certain that artists, which are a disparate group lacking power compared to large tech companies, will see the law come down in their favor.  But I don't need them to in order to make up my own mind.

I would hope we could agree on what is one of the main tenets of legal positivism, that there is not necessarily any connection between how the law is and how it ought to be.

Why can't one boycott and ban any and all companies that engage in an activities one deems unethical? If you believe a company is behaving unethically then of course you can. You can and you should. I've been personally boycotting the entire meat and dairy industries for years.

If you were to use your camera in public to take a picture, that would generally be okay. If you were to sneak into someone's house and take a picture of whoeveris inside, that wouldn't be. Do you see the issue? This is about respecting the will of others. A blanket ban on all AI is not at all what we want, certainly not what I want, and misses the issue. Quite the opposite. I want AI tools that are respectful of artists to succeed!

Legalities aside, can we agree that using somebody's work in a way they don't consent to  in the very least goes against the spirit of that? Would you agree it is right and proper to respect the terms an artist lays forth on how they wish their work to be used?  If they say "use it for this" you would respect that.  If they say "don't use it for that" you would respect that. Wouldn't you? If they say for example "my art can be used in websites, games, non-commercial or educational projects etc, but not for training datasets of large profit-motivated corporations who are using my work in a way in a manner I don't agree with, etc" wouldn't you respect that? Regardless of whether they or right or wrong to think so.  Because they made the art and they are the ones to decide how it is used.  

Presumably, the bulk of the data that these tech companies have scraped to use as training data was on the net before generative AI technology even existed (or at least before it had been heard of) and no such wishes were conveyed one way or the other, because how could it have been. Yet OpenAI, Midjourney, and Stability AI went ahead and assumed that it was okay.  Clearly, at least some artists were NOT okay with that assumption as evidenced by the lawsuits.

I also think that "well they put it on the internet so they don't get to complain" is a douchey thing to say, and goes to explaining why the internet can't (or should I say won't) have nice things. (you didn't say those words but I've seen such comments made in other forums)

Drop the leftist bias and I will be with you. Some of us are sick of the leftist bias that the internet already has.
But I'm glad someone is trying to think of a solution to the formidable challenge of being a solo dev.

So will itch take a stand against this? As has already been said, the issue isn't the technology itself but rather that specific tools--notably those made by OpenAI, Midjourney, and Stability AI--acquired their training data by scraping the internet without a care whether that data is copyrighted or not, the authors of those works willing or not. So it seems to me that it should be straightforward that games making use specific tools be stigmatized and banned. Is it necessary to wait for a legal decision when the ethics are clear?

There have been a couple players who found and deciphered all the clues but got stuck trying to move the scrapbook off the shelf at Bassey Study.  For anyone who is stuck at that point, what you need to do is tell Cheree to use a specific kind of (fictional) energy that begins with a 'P'. Explicitly mention the word and something should happen. Yes, that section of the game was somewhat undertested due to few players ever getting that far, but should go more smoothly after the next update. If you can get past it you're almost at the climax of the story.

Oh, sorry that happened. Fortunately, your game is saved on the server and should not truly be lost. We can recover it. Do you remember the name you first chose?

You need to find the last of the first 4 clues. The one you're missing involves something she talked about at Lighthouse of Selsey. It's also possible that you said the right thing already but because of a timing issue (the auto-chat feature, for instance) she didn't "hear" what you said so just be persistent about it and it should trigger her memory. If for some reason it still doesn't work, let me know your username and I'll check your log. Thanks!

Hi, of course you can decipher a clue later. Simply click on Clues in the upper right-hand corner to bring up the list of clues. Any clue labeled "???" still need to be deciphered; just click on it. (also you can click on the Location title in the upper left-hand corner to bring up the list of locations, since going back to an old location is sometimes necessary)

Sorry about that. I wasn't sure if there was some protocol for when to publish it, but I published it now.

Nice solution! I suppose I might have to do the same for my Angular game.

It's unique and cute and I like being able to use a parser. Game as it exists does have way too much "guess the verb" but I assume you know that. Is there any reason not to have it understand common interactive fiction shortcuts? ('x' for "examine", 'e' for "go east", etc) I figured out that 's' is a short cut for "stop" so you're not against the principle.

There are some bugs such as "get block" making me walk to the clock. The game at one point told me the screwdriver was safe to pick up, then immediately after told me it wasn't.

Actually, I tried this game because I wanted to see a chatbot implemented in a game, but didn't find much of that. Communicating with the mushroom is hardly any different than in standard IF, huh?