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Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

So ... this is me as a 42 year old artist, a coder in many languages, an art director for some decent sized companies (probably overpaid while my illustrators are definitely underpaid), and Stable Diffusion enthusiast:

HIRE SOME ARTISTS.

[edit] if you feel like a long discussion of the cognitive failure of AI over human artists, bring it on; if you're too cheap to hire artists, I totally get it!!! Make your own art! Otherwise, take your brilliant idea and pay other people to execute the parts you're not capable of executing yourself! Don't expect someone else to hand you a robot/AI replacement for your lack of skill for free ;)

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He brings that up at the end of the article:

> Yes, I could pay an artist to make art for the game. But I’m not yet good enough at game marketing for this to make sense: The original, 1990s Myst had 2,500 images, which would cost me more than I expect to make this year. Also, it would take an absurd amount of time.

I spent 8 years developing all the art for my own game platform and another 4 years on the next... so .. "also, it would take an absurd amount of time" ? Yeah? Well while you search for shortcuts or hope for a free ride, you're not making the art you need or want. What constitutes an "absurd" amount of time is pretty relative. If you hope to make a sizeable amount off your game, maybe it will take what seems right now to be an absurd amount of effort. It only seems absurd because you haven't connected with the reality of spending your time 24/7 making things. i.e. putting out the effort to earn the acclaim you hope for.

Slightly a side story, so no one complains: In 1994 when I was 14, "Heart of China" came out and VideoSpigot came out and all I wanted for Xmas was a video camera and an interface to record short QuickTime movies in locations around my house, so I could string them together into a dark futuristic CD-ROM game. (in SuperCard, if you're wondering). That would have solved all my problems creating art!

It wouldn't have. Make your game as a sketch with whatever sketching tools you have...but don't expect technology to rescue you from needing other humans to make it good. AND DON'T UNDER-RATE OR UNDERPAY THOSE PEOPLE.

Because trust me, if you're disappointed that AI isn't giving you good enough art, you're no visionary. You haven't even tried people.

> If you hope to make a sizeable amount off your game

I don't think the author mentioned hoping to make money off his game. Most indie games don't make money.

>It wouldn't have. Make your game as a sketch with whatever sketching tools you have...but don't expect technology to rescue you from needing other humans to make it good. AND DON'T UNDER-RATE OR UNDERPAY THOSE PEOPLE.

>Because trust me, if you're disappointed that AI isn't giving you good enough art, you're no visionary. You haven't even tried people.

That's all well and good if you have a spare few million lying around and expect to make even more, but that's not the experience of the vast majority of indie game developers. They need to make the art themselves or find someone to make it for free

it only takes 1-2 years of study to draw at (what a layman would consider to be) a competent level. most single person indie games also exercise some level of compromise in their scope and art direction, very few have anywhere near the number of assets op seems to think they need to make a game, many adventure games made by professional studios would fall well below the 2500 image mark.

I find that artists and musicians are thrilled to put in time on projects for fair wages. You don't need to be a millionaire. Sweetening it with some share of future revenue is okay if you have a really good idea and (1) are genuinely willing to accept their input, and (2) happy to cut them in on the profit it there is any. I'd never ask anyone to work for free, but I have done a joint project with an artist where we had no budget whatsoever and split the profit 50/50 for code and art. Sometimes those can be the best.

Point being, never consider your idea or even your code more important to the game than artists or their input. You're also paying for their criticism about everything from backgrounds and colors to gameplay issues, which an AI can't give you.

You can't exactly generate a game and the fame from just your little inclination that to be considered a successful indie game developer would be nice. That's too easy.

The example is actually 2500 screenshots of a 3D rendered environment. An artist didn’t actually draw every single frame. Kinda misleading imo.

I would look for an artist to partner with. Build a demo of 1 to 10 levels. Find finance partners.

Shhhh, you're giving away our industry secrets!

No no, everyone hoping to make games should continue to spend years hunting for shortcuts. That one elusive art style which is easy to make and requires no art direction.

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