Comment by FredrikNoren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FredrikNoren | Hacker News Reader

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So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time. "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!". Well we went from no one being able to write to almost everyone being able to. But just because everyone can technically write, it doesn't mean that everyone is a _writer_.

I believe that the same goes for AI tools for games. Yes, more people will technically be able to produce games. But I think that will shift the focus; it won't be enough with an impressive tech demo in the future, instead you have to connect to the human side of people when you build games.

We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them? In that world, why would we want to gate keep game creation to only people that have time and money to go to a game school or equivalent? You might think "well everyone can learn on their free time", but that's not necessarily true.

I think we will see more human, and more personal experiences that touch us deeper, because they no longer can just be about the technology (since the technology will be commoditized). That's what I'm personally excited about and why I think it makes sense to work on this.

I do agree thought that it can feel overwhelming to look at all this in aggregate. There are already hundreds of thousands of games, why do we need more? But maybe looking at things in aggregate is not the right way to look at it. There have been countless conversations between people throughout history. Does that mean that a conversation is meaningless? I don't think so, and I think (some types of) games will move into this space too; something more personal, something we don't count in aggregate, something that is between maybe smaller groups of people, but more meaningful to those groups of people. At least that's something I'd be excited to see.

> So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time.

I mean, you say that as though it is not increasingly year over year more and more difficult on balance to make your living as a writer. That it hasn't been a famously difficult thing to do since like... I mean good god, I remember writers complaining about this when I was a kid on forums back in the early 2000's and at that time it was old fucking news how hard it was to make it as a writer.

And like:

> "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!"

Many people say we have! Except writers didn't really do it, so much as grifters did it, paying gig-economy workers shit tier wages to crank out boring a repetitive e-books to sell to communities that are typically hostile to proper sources of information. You know, people entirely divested from writing as a profession did it, because they fundamentally don't care about writing and simply saw it as an avenue in which they could spam poorly crafted garbage to uncritical audiences.

Sound familiar at all?

> We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them?

I mean, I'm not arguing for or against the existence of accessible toolsets. If you want my opinion on that, they already exist. Games have famously been made by all kinds of people with all kinds of circumstances that make it notable said people were able to make said games. Various disabilities, physical and intellectual, all manner of life circumstances, on and on. Tons of people make games. None of those people (yet) have used an AI game builder, they used the same tools, combined with accessibility addons for computers, and recruited help for the parts they couldn't have.

I don't know where you get this notion you have to go to game school. Tons of amateurs make games. I think a lot of them (smartly) bring on actual software and game developers to fill in the gaps their lack of expertise cannot, just like they bring on musicians if they aren't musically inclined, or designers if they aren't graphically inclined, and there's nothing wrong with that either and tons of people do all of that for free right now, because plot twist, humans in general enjoy making things for other humans. It's kind of... core to our being in a lot of ways.

I don't see creatives benefiting from AI. I see the management/consultant vampires benefiting from it. The type of people who say things like "make the logo pop" and get annoyed when creatives roll their eyes at them.

You come across as being extremely condescending. And I’m sure you make some good points, but I can’t find them behind the tone. It’s a shame because again, I’m sure you make good points.

On the internet, no one hears you being subtle. (Torvalds)

I'll add my own view: when you watch a movie, read a book, listen to a song, play a game... you CONNECT with the mind of the person who made it. When there is no mind, or the source is a dead, statistical amalgamation of countless fragments of other minds, there is nothing you'll want to connect to, nothing you'll want to squander precious hours of your life on.

And while you may be curious to see, once maybe, a movie such an imaginary AGI-LLM has created from your prompt, no one else will have the slightest interest in seeing it. And vice versa. Which means there would be absolutely NO MONEY in that market. There would be no market.

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