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[Wired] AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry

IAmRei

Member
As a visual artist my self, i really hate how people use AI... Ugh, people use AI to cut dev cost, its uglier truth just like cyberpunk fictions but now happens. And soon if this gonna gone too far, there will be no more new artist because AI take over their jobs, and there will be some situation where ai will left confused because no new art to be steal and it will stuck ai growth, then hopefully it will collapsed and bring new artist to rise again.

Its like rpg usual story:

The cycle might start from our era, the darkness (capitalist replacing artist to cut budget to maximize profit) vs bands of travelers (artist) who someday can defeat it but in not so far future, the darkness will rise again (after gaining new human art to generate)...

wheeew...what a life to be living...
 
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mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Eeesh. Storyboards, character designs, rendering, animations, dialog, music... There is little that AI won't touch.

I'm not happy about this, although I understand the rationale (cost-cutting, "good enough"). AI isn't creative, it's just "here's an amalgam of what other people have done." On the other hand, we already get a lot of design-by-committee in the AAA space, which isn't that much different.

So if the bolded is true, why keep hiring humans for 10x the cost?
 

ReyBrujo

Gold Member
Inevitable. When high-earning jobs start getting replaced in the next 2 years, then people will be much louder. That for sure will create unrest and lots of protests.

"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
 

CLW

Member
Plotting The Simpsons GIF


The world of owning nothing and being completely dependent on your government overlords is coming along nicely
 
I don't think it is a big deal. After all nobody is complaining that you don't need 3-4 people to deal with punch cards anymore. Or that you don't need a full blown orchestra to produce music more often than not.

Same with art - drawing barrels, faces, environments and waifus does not require a lot of artists. Most of them are drawing the same thing anyway.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
AAA game industry as it exists today is untenable. Games take way too long to make and screching blue hairs want 100k a year to work from home and watch netflix all day. I knew this would happen the moment I started screwing around with text prompt to image generators. Judging by how good my Jessica Alba in lingerie pics have gotten in Stable Diffusion over the past year or so I would say we are a year or 2 away from all those paychecks for nothing going away. Good riddance imo.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I don't think it is a big deal. After all nobody is complaining that you don't need 3-4 people to deal with punch cards anymore. Or that you don't need a full blown orchestra to produce music more often than not.

Same with art - drawing barrels, faces, environments and waifus does not require a lot of artists. Most of them are drawing the same thing anyway.
Yup.

The difference is that most other jobs and career fields replaced by tech are either blue collar jobs or ones that require lots of manual labour. So it’s tech taking over non-tech so nobody cares.

This time it’s tech taking over tech workers which sounds kind of weird because people would assume high paying tech jobs need skilled people to do all the programming and digital art. Turns out AI is focusing on techie jobs.
 

hyperbertha

Member
I'm not buying it. The massive tech industry layoffs are a result of overhiring from 2020-2022, not AI.

In fact, it seems like this article is undercutting the premise of the article. Riot tried to put AI in their pipeline and they realized it sucks. A lot of people are realizing that. People are already starting to say that AI isn't goingto be the world changer they claimed it was going to be six months ago.
The way ai works now, ie a mass averaging machine from vast amounts of data, just produces the most painfully generic art I think. You don't get companies like riot and fromsoft with generic design
 

Z O N E

Member
I mean, AI is bound to be implemented into MORE studios.

AAA games are taking way too long to create and are costing way too much.

Also, this will help smaller and independent studios push out games quicker and cheaper.
 

simpatico

Gold Member
Pretty based tbh. Hopefully this frees up some labor budget to retain the truly good talent. This is going to be apocalyptic for the people with make-work jobs.
 

Rockman33

Member
Sucks that people are losing their jobs. But unfortunately and fortunately at the same time this is what happens in any industry when new viable tech gets introduced that can reduce spending and increase speed of production.
 
This time it’s tech taking over tech workers which sounds kind of weird because people would assume high paying tech jobs need skilled people to do all the programming and digital art. Turns out AI is focusing on techie jobs.
I would just say with modern media mining clicks it sounds worse than it is in really. I remember (I don't) days when luddites were burning machines :messenger_tears_of_joy: Now we will have luddites burning their seats 🤣

I think eventually - the notable people will stay and will do a lot of work - and movie and voice acting will have the same voices and actors over generation.
 
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proandrad

Member
I mean what should they do? Purposely handicap their business and technological progress? Should we have never used the cotton gin because it would cost jobs? AI is coming for most of our jobs, everyone is going to have to adjust.
 

hyperbertha

Member
I totally agree.

It will bad for some people and excellent for others. For example in my role a big chunk of my time includes drafting written content, using generative AI to do the first draft means that I can get things done sometimes in 20% of the time, the result is that I get through a lot more work and I spend much less time on mundane, low value add tasks.

Unfortunately in many industries there are plodders who do mundane low value-add stuff day in day out, their roles will largely be eliminated
So you're essentially saying people who do high value work have nothing to fear from ai?
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The way ai works now, ie a mass averaging machine from vast amounts of data, just produces the most painfully generic art I think. You don't get companies like riot and fromsoft with generic design
Maybe but depends. I remember those chatAI threads in OT way back and people posting awesome pics.

Also for gaming, great games that sell don’t need the most Uber hand crafted best graphics content either. It’s just needs to be good gaming as a whole.

It’s no different than anything else in life. The best selling products arent necessisarily the highest quality products. And for gaming, most games are meh anyway. So it’s not like the quality threshold AI is competing against has an incredibly high bar to begin with. If good AI queries can produce slick stuff in 20 seconds that’s great. Good stuff fast and efficient.
 
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hyperbertha

Member
Maybe but depends. I remember those chatAI threads in OT way back and people posting awesome pics.

Also for gaming, great games that sell don’t need the most Uber hand crafted best graphics content either. It’s just needs to be good gaming as a whole.

It’s no different than anything else in life. The best selling products arent necessisarily the highest quality products. And for gaming, most games are meh anyway. So it’s not like the quality threshold AI is competing against has an incredibly high bar to begin with. If good AI queries can produce slick stuff in 20 seconds that’s great. Good stuff fast and efficient.
The top selling stuff isn't what enthusiasts care about though. Nobody in this board cares about call of duty. We care about bloodborne. It's not surprise that Activision will likely try to replace workers no matter how bad their games end up looking.
 

Eiknarf

Banned
As an artist, even I use AI to whip up some shit real quick for fun (not sale)- and I’m the guy who gets a thrill out of creating stuff from scratch with pencil to paper —

But sometimes I’m just not in a fucking mood to spend two hours doodling
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Riot is failing, but Microsoft/Activision is already doing it and releasing AI-generated content that's actually selling.

I think we are heading into a very unknown future, and as is the case with most tech innovations, the true cost will reveal itself later.
Eh. By definition AI produces soulless generic slop and while it may give companies a useful leg up now, if every company is producing soulless generic slop then the ones who don’t will gain an advantage.

I could see how it is useful for quick demos or mock ups but again, one I think that this guy is connecting two trends that as of now are not completely related, and two, AI isn’t what the hype people were saying it would be.
 

MujkicHaris

Member
I am a solo developer and I wouldn't put another human's art in my game let alone that generic AI stuff.

Making art is one of the greatest feelings in the world.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Eh. By definition AI produces soulless generic slop and while it may give companies a useful leg up now, if every company is producing soulless generic slop then the ones who don’t will gain an advantage.

I could see how it is useful for quick demos or mock ups but again, one I think that this guy is connecting two trends that as of now are not completely related, and two, AI isn’t what the hype people were saying it would be.
Like any job where tech makes a big impact, the key is to adapt and take it beyond. The computer tool spat out some stuff or automatically processed some data but the key is having people go above and beyond.

Who knows. Maybe AI churns out tons of images and ideas. Then the programmers and artists use that and spend their time animating and doing physics or lip syncing. I think it’s got to a point most games have pretty good texture quality. It’s the often lousy animation or physics that ruins it. Great looking in pictures. Bad in motion.

For me doing finance, I can’t even image how archaic it was way back before PCs. You either did it old school with paper and calculators or the company was big enough to have those ugly Unix green screens. If I had to trudge through that crap I’d have no time to do real value stuff. But windows, oracle, SAP etc… handle all that admin stuff for me.
 
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A.Romero

Member
That article is a bit disingenous. I mean, yes, thousands of positions have been cut last year and this year but it obeys to different stuff other than AI. I'm sure there is an impact but it is not even close to the numbers due to games not performing well enough.

I mean, we have enthusiasts here. People that truly love games and even among us, I bet a large percentage of people didn't shell out for something like Hi-Fi Rush, so you can bet the market at large doesn't care as long as they get the CoD and their soccer fix.

The issue is more complex. It's a big market but also games people like are expensive and repetitive. To get in and be successful can even feel like a coin toss. AI won't change that. AI will probable make large corporations reduce their teams but it will also allow smaller studios viable because the price of entry will be lower.

Still, all of this is just a transition. AI is here to stay and every single industry (dare I say humanity) will have to adapt. We can't stop it and, IMO, would be stupid to do so even if we could. Long term the benefits will be out of this world.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
That article is a bit disingenous. I mean, yes, thousands of positions have been cut last year and this year but it obeys to different stuff other than AI. I'm sure there is an impact but it is not even close to the numbers due to games not performing well enough.

I mean, we have enthusiasts here. People that truly love games and even among us, I bet a large percentage of people didn't shell out for something like Hi-Fi Rush, so you can bet the market at large doesn't care as long as they get the CoD and their soccer fix.

The issue is more complex. It's a big market but also games people like are expensive and repetitive. To get in and be successful can even feel like a coin toss. AI won't change that. AI will probable make large corporations reduce their teams but it will also allow smaller studios viable because the price of entry will be lower.

Still, all of this is just a transition. AI is here to stay and every single industry (dare I say humanity) will have to adapt. We can't stop it and, IMO, would be stupid to do so even if we could. Long term the benefits will be out of this world.
Anything to do with job losses will always be a big article. That’s because it’s easy to pinpoint as often a layoff report says company x fired 1000 people. But not once will you ever see people promote hey it’s great tech companies hired 100,000 or whatever extra tech workers from 2016-2022. They only hear the splashy news that a company fired 5000. What about the incremental 95,000?

Yet over the course of time, people still have jobs. So it’s not like Skynet has taken over the pasts 50 years leaving only 1 person on earth with a job controlling everything (Skynet). Heck, unemployment rates are super low again. So jobs are there and wages going up. It comes down to which people get canned, but holistically the pie still expands.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Like any job where tech makes a big impact, the key is to adapt and take it beyond. The computer tool spat out some stuff or automatically processed some data but the key is having people go above and beyond.

Who knows. Maybe AI churns out tons of images and ideas. Then the programmers and artists use that and spend their time animating and doing physics or lip syncing. I think it’s got to a point most games have pretty good texture quality. It’s the often lousy animation or physics that ruins it. Great looking in pictures. Bad in motion.

For me doing finance, I can’t even image how archaic it was way back before PCs. You either did it old school with paper and calculators or the company was big enough to have those ugly Unix green screens. If I had to trudge through that crap I’d have no time to do real value stuff. But windows, oracle, SAP etc… handle all that admin stuff for me.
Sure. Computers do a lot of work. Yet any company in these white collar industries have way more people doing way more work than they did in 1965. The work might be different, but it’s not that different. I bet there were articles talking about the mass layoffs coming from the invention of the computer because 5 people could now do the work of 1.

The author of this article is just being very disingenuous by tying an obvious correction in the labor market that everyone knew was coming to fearmongering over AI.
 
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StereoVsn

Member
I totally agree.

It will bad for some people and excellent for others. For example in my role a big chunk of my time includes drafting written content, using generative AI to do the first draft means that I can get things done sometimes in 20% of the time, the result is that I get through a lot more work and I spend much less time on mundane, low value add tasks.

Unfortunately in many industries there are plodders who do mundane low value-add stuff day in day out, their roles will largely be eliminated
The issue is that “the plodders” or junior roles are like 80% of the people. So then what?

I mean yeah, I use copilot for code help and other AI tools to help with document generation (help is keyword, not create whole thing from scratch), but it’s going to affect tremendous numbers of people as things are going.

Already my team didn’t hire couple of junior positions and a tech writer essentially. And I don’t run that big of a team, but couldn’t justify the roles to upper management.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
The issue is that “the plodders” or junior roles are like 80% of the people. So then what?
We got the rust belt in the north when manufacturing died. Whole cities hollowed out by poverty, addiction, crime. Slowly rebuilt with more of a focus on much lower paying customer service jobs, then the following generation moving to other career paths. Could have the rusty tech belt I guess in California and Austin.
 

StereoVsn

Member
We got the rust belt in the north when manufacturing died. Whole cities hollowed out by poverty, addiction, crime. Slowly rebuilt with more of a focus on much lower paying customer service jobs, then the following generation moving to other career paths. Could have the rusty tech belt I guess in California and Austin.
But that’s not a good thing. We should have never let the shit fly with our manufacturing and now we are repeating issues further.

It’s not just tech jobs either. There is a restaurant not far from me that sends food out to tables via robots. Ordering can be done by QR codes or you can flag a waiter. And we will see same thing happening with other industries.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
But that’s not a good thing. We should have never let the shit fly with our manufacturing and now we are repeating issues further.

It’s not just tech jobs either. There is a restaurant not far from me that sends food out to tables via robots. Ordering can be done by QR codes or you can flag a waiter. And we will see same thing happening with other industries.
It's a terrible thing. I'm only pointing out it already happened on a massive scale. If you want to get political, the obvious answer to harnessing the creative destruction of capitalism humanely is to have a robust and thorough safety net with subsidized retraining. But that's apparently too liberal. Half the country thinks it best to just let people fall into unemployment, poverty, and decline and concentrate all that wealth into as few hands as possible. That's the history of the last 40 years. This is why Andrew Yang was trying to bring up UBI years ago.
 

SNG32

Member
People look too much at the negative things with A.I. I get it yes it will jeopardize industries but at the same time it will help individuals be able to start there own projects and businesses easier and become more independent. Your Creativity will be able to flourish if you have the vision. A.I can be a tool to help achieve it.
 
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StereoVsn

Member
It's a terrible thing. I'm only pointing out it already happened on a massive scale. If you want to get political, the obvious answer to harnessing the creative destruction of capitalism humanely is to have a robust and thorough safety net with subsidized retraining. But that's apparently too liberal. Half the country thinks it best to just let people fall into unemployment, poverty, and decline and concentrate all that wealth into as few hands as possible. That's the history of the last 40 years. This is why Andrew Yang was trying to bring up UBI years ago.
Yang had other issue, but yeah, his take on UBI and healthcare was reasonable.

And yes, I don’t see things getting better considering US political system with cheaply bought politicians and even Supreme Court justices.
 

StereoVsn

Member
People look too much at the negative things with A.I. I get it yes it will jeopardize industries but at the same time it will help individuals be able to start there own projects and businesses easier and become more independent. Your Creativity will be able to flourish if you have the vision. A.I can be a tool to help achieve it.
Did ChatGPT right this paragraph? What creativity are you talking about without reliable income and safety net?
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
As a software engineer, I don't feel threaten by A.I. I just see it as another technology that help me be more productive. Like every new disruptive technology, there will be casualties, but at the end people will adapt to it. I don't see it like a replacement of humans, but a tool to help us, not different from a calculator, computer or the internet.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Yang had other issue, but yeah, his take on UBI and healthcare was reasonable.

And yes, I don’t see things getting better considering US political system with cheaply bought politicians and even Supreme Court justices.
Yeah, I'm not a Yang fan but he was asking some of the right questions at least. Eventually, this delicate balance we have where people manage to adapt and find a new job will in theory collapse. If robots are able to do more and more, less and less work will eventually be available. Then most people will just be stuck in permanent unemployment with a government check for basic subsistence, and the ambitious ones will have to take jobs mining asteroids in space like The Expanse.
 

SNG32

Member
Did ChatGPT right this paragraph? What creativity are you talking about without reliable income and safety net?

People will be able to indivually create their own video games easier with A.I. Clothing designers who are just starting to get ideas and cant afford models and a photographer can use A.I to get there ideas out there. There’s pros and cons to A.I like everything. It wipe industries but create new ones.

People thought almost the same way when computers started to be in the office more.
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
Also of you glance at the thread title you could read it at " Weird AL is taking video game jobs". 🤣
 
Shitty.. I'm sure it's not just the videogame/arts industries too. We are headed in such a terrible direction right now.
anecdote: over the last 2-3 months, my wife & i have read at least a half dozen news stories from different relatively established news sources that all had 1 thing in common: when describing someone dead/injured/whatever who was lying on the ground, they all instead reported them as 'lying on the floor'. it's something that a human writer would never do. it's creepy, & it's also disturbing just how stupid the 'ai' is (i mean, 'outdoors = ground, indoors = floor' isn't exactly rocket science)...
 
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