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Comment by royal__ | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of anti-AI warriors on Reddit in the game development space. I dislike lazy AI slop use in games as much as anyone else, but I also dislike the lack of nuance in these positions. They think it's gotta be all or nothing. It will become increasingly unrealistic to expect game developers to not use AI in some part of their process, especially code development, but such use does not automatically make it slop.

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I wonder if it’s a more western thing. Like the remake of Yo-kai Watch 2 was revealed a couple of weeks ago in the latest Nintendo Direct and the trailer is obviously gen AI yet… no one seems to care about that. Especially not on the japanese and asian social media https://youtu.be/76L1JKQWB8w

otoh I would put the Runescape community and people who play Yo-kai Watch games as far away as possible from each other

When I see something I consider sterile, infantile and shallow, the information that 1% or 99% of the people on the planet like it changes nothing about my assessment of it. Looking to see if this quote had been posted before, I found it in a comment that I generally agree with, that also happens to be on the subject of Gen-AI:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33869178

the more things change, and all that...

My completely biased take for which I will cite no sources is that the language barrier allowed Asian fan communities to avoid the corpo-led (Disney et al., surreptitiously through social media-based surrogates) astroturf campaign against genAI (that they don't control). Asian social media doesn't care because the normal human reaction is to not care, and the intense and overwrought negative reaction here was one that had to be specifically cultivated via bad-faith arguments put forward by people with conflicts of interest who leveraged their cults of personality to shut down and marginalize opposition.

Yes, there are no legitimate concerns about genAI, all opposition is just astroturfing that was artificially propped up by famous anti-AI companies like Disney (seen falling head over heels to partner with OpenAI less than a year ago). It has nothing to do with apocalyptic messaging that was fostered by AI companies themselves here in the West, or the culture that dictates that people are to be declared useless and discarded the moment the quality-per-dollar ratio of something made by automation surpasses theirs. It may not be good, but damn is it cheap compared to having a worker!

1) I said it was a completely biased take, you knew what you were getting into.

2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49956015

I'm well aware of the labor issues, and agree that the use of AI to displace workers is fraught at best, easily transcending to a sort of banal evil under common circumstances.

3) The problem isn't that people have reasonable, rational, and principled stands against how the AI industry has developed. It's that there are also irrational and unreasonable takes that end in, "Literally kill anyone tainted by genAI," and that the vociferous and zealous nature of this opposition is driven in part by fearmongers with links to corporate interests who happily use homespun AI (just don't call it that!); or who are, at the very least, protecting their own economic moat without being up-front that their opposition is largely self-interested (as was the case with anti-AI's direct antecedent, anti-crypto).

I've seen too many real artists crucified by "real artists" and their sycophants for experimenting with or working into their practice these tools.

It does not read as a principled stand, but a tantrum. You can compare the reaction of such artists to that of mathematicians, who were hit not merely with a nebulous sense that the big AI companies were doing them dirty, or enabling others to do so, but an actual verifiable instance of one platform stealing their work and attempting to publish it in official channels without attribution. They are angry, they are doing some soul-searching, but they are not excommunicating AI users or calling for their heads.

Conversely, I've been heartened by the rise of anti-data center activism, because it means that people are actually doing something productive towards the ends they profess a desire for, rather than just bitching and witch-hunting online.

But wait, how can someone who is defending AI usage be happy to see data center projects fail? Could there be actual nuance to their perspective? Life has many doors, Ed-boy.

Why is it unrealistic? We have decades that prove people can make games without AI. Is the unrealistic part just expecting people to be honest about whether they used it or not? We somehow manage to have the food industry mostly honest about what they put in.

The context is that the company posted a trailer video that was very obviously AI generated art (6 fingers, Nike shoes in a fantasy setting). The pushback is entirely focused on using the slop machine to make slop art and writing.

It is, but the statement goes further than that and says they use no gen ai at all in making their games. Which feels unnecessary, unless they mean just in the art and writing, which feels misleading

You're out of touch from the gaming space if you don't understand why game companies make strong claims about not using GenAI for art.

In particular, it would mean their software engineers are not allowed to use Claude/Codex etc, in contrast to common industry practice.

Which is fine. RuneScape has been in development since the early 2000s, long before GenAI even existed. They got along before GenAI and they can continue to not use it.

People may be forgetting the game has 20 years of content already, why do they need to make more faster with GenAI? Its already a massive piece of software.

Runescape is quite literally a dinner table name it is that famous. Their only true competition is probably World of Warcraft. The community is already huge. What competitive advantages are they going to lose? Likely none.

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