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

mrqs

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

I completely understand that I'm going to be replace and in 25 years cognitive jobs will be mostly useless. I'm all in for it. Everyone should take care of themselves the best they can. It's going to be a wild ride.
 

ReBurn

Gold 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.
What we're calling AI has the capability to lead to the Industrial Revolution of the digital world. It's certainly going to jeopardize some jobs but it's going to create different ones. Things people have had to do by hand, like write code and create digital art/music, is the new low hanging fruit for automation.

Coders and digital artists have been the modern blacksmiths and their creations are like the hand-pounded iron products of that age. The thing is that iron products from automated factories are cheaper to produce and, while not as good as handmade, are good enough. The same is becoming true for digital creations. What made blacksmiths largely obsolete is going to do the same for people who create digital works to be sold at scale. Code, digital art, and digital music created by robots may certainly not be as good as what people can make but it is certainly good enough for video games. Genres and art styles have solidified to the point where they've created templates that are possible for robots to emulate and the robots are continually getting better at it.

Now is the time when digital artists working for corporations need to evolve and master the tools that will make them obsolete. Technology is now able to take the manual work out of digital creation so they need to learn to use those tools if they want to keep doing the work they're doing.
 

Zathalus

Member
AI is a fucking joke when it comes to coding, oh it’s good at spotting syntax errors and looking up code examples from documentation but it frequently gets things wrong and god forbid you ask about anything that is poorly documented. Also thinking outside of the box or even try and be slightly creative and it completely fails.

It works as a supplemental tool but it’s not going to replace engineers anytime soon.
 

GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
Plotting The Simpsons GIF


The world of owning nothing and being completely dependent on your government overlords is coming along nicely
they-took-our-jobs-daryl-weathers.gif


giggling-bender.gif
 

Hari Seldon

Member
Like others have said this will be a massive boon to Indy and AA development. I'm excited for it for that reason alone. Reading that article there seems to already be companies making easy to use tools to automate massive amounts of game creation. I wonder when this will bleed into the mainstream game engines. Seems like it would be something awesome for Valve to put out with their next source engine release.
 

Portugeezer

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.
That is more of a problem with their expectations. AI is the big thing these days and shareholders love to chase trends.

But without a doubt, it will be a "world changer" in many ways, it just can't do things some clueless CEO probably dreams about... Yet.
 

Varteras

Member
That is more of a problem with their expectations. AI is the big thing these days and shareholders love to chase trends.

But without a doubt, it will be a "world changer" in many ways, it just can't do things some clueless CEO probably dreams about... Yet.
Exactly. A 6-month timeframe for expecting tremendous results is silly. Most people I've spoken with or listened to are expecting big things out of AI between 5 to 10 years. Not mere months.

As someone already pointed out, we've seen great improvement in AI generated video clips in just a year. Where the videos went from being nightmare fuel to being quite believable to an untrained eye.

By 2035, people doubting AI now will look sillier than those teachers who told us we won't always have a calculator available.
 

MacReady13

Member
Thank goodness for Steam and their indie game devs and Nintendo, who still take their time making (mostly) quality games.
 
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hyperbertha

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.
This logic is always stupid. Sure, it's a tool at the current level of capability. People aren't afraid of current ai.
 
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Rawker

Member
AI can definitely help the game industry, there are so many ways that it can allow creative developers who don't have the capital to develop the games they dream up.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
AI def ain't taking jobs in my field. Some guy used AI to write a few powershell and MS SQL scripts. Caused a huge outage because of course. Dude only retained his job because he has connections.

Don't use AI people. It sucks Kong. Just do your work the regular way.
 

sendit

Member
AI def ain't taking jobs in my field. Some guy used AI to write a few powershell and MS SQL scripts. Caused a huge outage because of course. Dude only retained his job because he has connections.

Don't use AI people. It sucks Kong. Just do your work the regular way.
Quit fear mongering nerd. What does AI have to do with what seems to be system permissions that "some guy" already had/has? Unless your field completely neglects safe guards (2PR, peer/code reviews, permissions, safe deployment mechanisms, change management, etc..). If that's the case, that isn't an AI issue. Your company's processes just suck and I would not want to be a customer.
 
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EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
smh, come on now, why would EA or Ubisoft want to save money and use Ai instead of human works? Like be for real, use your brain folks /s
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Quit fear mongering nerd. What does AI have to do with what seems to be system permissions that "some guy" already had/has? Unless your field completely neglects safe guards (2PR, peer/code reviews, permissions, safe deployment mechanisms, change management, etc..). If that's the case, that isn't an AI issue. Your company's processes just suck and I would not want to be a customer.

El

Oh El

Don't use AI people
 

Robb

Gold Member
People are the most expensive part of any business, of course they’ll try to replace you any chance they get if they think they can.

I’m assuming corporations will tend to be a bit too trigger happy now in the beginning though and things will adjust over time. It’s still early days. But I assume some jobs will definitely disappear for good.
 

Principal

Member
That’s a possibility. Unlikely though. AI is only getting better by the day.

I guess I don’t feel bad because it not affecting me and my industry yet.


Absolutely spot on. I think what a lot of people need to realize is, what you want to do in life is not what you will end up doing to pay the bills. I would like to welcome them to the real world.

You think those being being a host/hostess at Denny’s are living their dream jobs?
So, because you failed to achieve your dreams like tge Denny's workers, you live in reality while the rest of us are living a dream? Fascinating, don't you think that speaks more about you?
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
So, because you failed to achieve your dreams like tge Denny's workers, you live in reality while the rest of us are living a dream? Fascinating, don't you think that speaks more about you?
I’m fine with my lot in life. I never had a dream job myself, so no failure over here. I’m ok with having a job until I retire in a few years. I’m only saying that people think they deserve more than what’s coming to them. But life isn’t about deserves or earning anything. I’m sure there are people that work 3x harder than I do, and probably make half as much as I do. Do they deserve that? Did I earn that? Nah.

And now with the next step in technological evolution, more jobs will go away and likely never filled again. Either adapt, or move on. This is not a fight “workers” can win.
 

Principal

Member
True. And to continue on the AI problem, as a creative person I don’t even understand how we’ve ended up with AI art and music and so on. I would never ever get the idea to have a system automate anything I enjoy doing. That idea must originate from people who can’t create shit.

And what’s the next step, AI that can play through games for us? Aim-bots is stupid enough. We point and shoot, let AI point so we just have to shoot. One single win button on the controller is all that is needed, the rest is taken care of with AI. Pretty cool, right?
I think you hit it right in the head! I seriously can't fathom why anyone would create something that removes joy from people? Art and Music have been the source of joy for centuries, why would some computer Wiz do this to the world? Unless they can't create shit and therefore they rob people of their joy for money.
 

Principal

Member
I’m fine with my lot in life. I never had a dream job myself, so no failure over here. I’m ok with having a job until I retire in a few years. I’m only saying that people think they deserve more than what’s coming to them. But life isn’t about deserves or earning anything. I’m sure there are people that work 3x harder than I do, and probably make half as much as I do. Do they deserve that? Did I earn that? Nah.

And now with the next step in technological evolution, more jobs will go away and likely never filled again. Either adapt, or move on. This is not a fight “workers” can win.
I sometimes forget this isn't Insta and all other social media, I half expected arguments but instead was myself humbled. Yes, you are right, but I think we the consumers have power here. We could theoretically stand behind the developers and NOT buy the games that have AI in them to send them a message. :messenger_open_mouth:
 

Principal

Member
If you can be easily replaced were you ever even necessary?
Let's try that logic but with a different industry. If say, an AI nurse program is created, would you be fine with having a Robot come and deliver cold news but 1000% accurate or have a human touch next to you and hold your hand while you are given tragic news? Because according CEO's and whatnot if they can save money, why not?
 
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FoxMcChief

Gold Member
I think you hit it right in the head! I seriously can't fathom why anyone would create something that removes joy from people? Art and Music have been the source of joy for centuries, why would some computer Wiz do this to the world? Unless they can't create shit and therefore they rob people of their joy for money.
It seems like you’re taking it way too personally. It’s just business. Game development does need to change, especially AAA. Maybe this will help.
 

Principal

Member
It seems like you’re taking it way too personally. It’s just business. Game development does need to change, especially AAA. Maybe this will help.
Bro, I am talking about going into other peoples business and wrecking them. Beat makers are suffering, musicians are suffering, and we aren't getting anything of value in return. People are so confused they don't even know if Drakes Delilah remix was real or not. It's bonkers man.
 

TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
New technology disrupts job market.
More news at 11.
This has never been any different - what do you think happened with a ton of jobs when electricity came about?

You can cry and rage about it, or try to fight the inevitable.
But the much more reasonable stance is to make sure you are personally prepared for a world where your current occupation might in the future not be as "easy" to find a job with, so it would be wise to pivot, check alternatives or - in this case - learn to use AI to your advantage so you won't be the one being left behind by progress.

I don't see artists of any occupation ever be fully replaced in the games industry, but I'm absolutely certain that those will have the best luck who learn how to become more efficient via use of AI without ending up with crap like those Age Of Mythology remaster portraits.
 
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Felessan

Member
Bro, I am talking about going into other peoples business and wrecking them. Beat makers are suffering, musicians are suffering, and we aren't getting anything of value in return. People are so confused they don't even know if Drakes Delilah remix was real or not. It's bonkers man.
We get products with cheaper production cost. That, given that market is competitive will drive prices lower or increase an amount we get for the same price
On every turn on technological advancement there will be people affected - horse riders were made obsolete by cars, accountants and document workers were hit hard by EDM and accounting software introduction, call centers greatly reduced by expert systems
Now its creative industry turn
Not all people will be replaced, but those who cant provide more value than machine are at risk.
On the global scale automatization (and AI is just another form of it) makes thing cheaper by replacing manual labor in simple tasks with much cheaper alternative
 

Principal

Member
There's always one of you people on the internet huh? Whenever people have genuine discussions here comes someone and has to poke and prod. Why? Iunno, I don't want to psychoanalyse someone I don't know, whatever it might be. I hope you are cured from it in the future :)
 

Principal

Member
We get products with cheaper production cost. That, given that market is competitive will drive prices lower or increase an amount we get for the same price
On every turn on technological advancement there will be people affected - horse riders were made obsolete by cars, accountants and document workers were hit hard by EDM and accounting software introduction, call centers greatly reduced by expert systems
Now its creative industry turn
Not all people will be replaced, but those who cant provide more value than machine are at risk.
On the global scale automatization (and AI is just another form of it) makes thing cheaper by replacing manual labor in simple tasks with much cheaper alternative
I am willing to bet on that you might be right but AI seems far more sinister than let's say the invention of automotives, because the cars didn't just out of the blue start replacing music and art you know? :) But there's mad validity in what you are saying.
 

Fess

Member
I think you hit it right in the head! I seriously can't fathom why anyone would create something that removes joy from people? Art and Music have been the source of joy for centuries, why would some computer Wiz do this to the world? Unless they can't create shit and therefore they rob people of their joy for money.
Money is secondary here, it all starts with a hobby because you think something is fun, then it becomes your profession.

And we all have different skills so we all lose something from the current wide AI trends. Coders will see coding job disappear and artists will se art job disappear. The winners are those who can’t do anything.

I keep my creativity as a hobby so I can simply choose to not use AI and keep doing what I do because I think it’s fun. For someone working in any field where AI is advancing there will be pressure from above to adapt to a new way of thinking because it’s faster, and fun work will go away. Sad but true.

It is quite possible that the market will hype up hand-crafted art and music if AI content becomes too wide-spread or generic. At that point real artists will likely earn more than before, but there will be less of them. Similar to how a hand-drawn 2D game gets more attention, but they’re rare, like Wonderboy Dragon’s Trap. But I think it’ll be a short-lived period. AI can be tuned to look like everything is hand-crafted.

And this whole post could’ve been done by AI, would’ve likely been better, more time to play games though so maybe even that is good!
 
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Hot5pur

Member
AI is not too different from us humans, we create based on stuff we see and combine together. Bird + lion = gryphon. If AI scans the Internet and comes up with stuff it's not too different from a person doing the same - so I don't buy the legal argument against it.

AI will replace massive amounts of jobs, mostly through efficiency improvements and it will hit workers that were classically considered to be "safe". I think people are worried about the scale at which it will do this, and will it create new jobs in the process - probably less so than any other automation tech in history relative to the displacement it will cause.

I think so far the sucky part about AI is most applications do not produce product improvement, just trying to improve efficiency. It can write code but it has to be cleaned up and optimized by a capable engineer. It can do art, but it also has to be cleaned up.

Also a huge downside is it targets many low level jobs that people need to advance in their career and gain experience. If AI can replace junior coders, where are junior coders supposed to get work experience.

And as far as tech layoffs, a lot of it was over hiring and fake growth, also free money. Now it's partly about still showing a profit so you cut salary expenditures. But also AI is replacing a lot of simpler jobs and likely a lead engineer with a team of 10 people can now get away with 5 + AI.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
The use of AI to replace 2D artists is definitely problematic and this sort of AI is little more than a plagiarism machine. AI writing as well, although AI writing is still too poor to be terribly useful in game development and is more of a threat to low level writing jobs like SEO writers for content mills, proofreaders, etc.

But people using it to speed up optimization and debugging and simple coding tasks? That's not going away. Nor is it really a bad thing, even if it reduces jobs by increasing productivity.

On the art side, too, I think AI is so powerful for vision boarding, like generating ideas and quickly iterating, that it's going to be hard to ignore, but not for final concept art let alone anything in game.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
This logic is always stupid. Sure, it's a tool at the current level of capability. People aren't afraid of current ai.
There is still a long way to go to A.I become truly intelligent, even the sophisticated LLM we see today still can compete with the human mind, it cannot think on its own, it needs prompts, since it is a language model.
I have no doubt that in the future, technology will be so advanced that human work will no longer be required for most things in society, but when we cross this road, society itself will need to chance to accommodate this new reality.
It is in some sense a philosophical question. Can we tax the machine work? How people will sustain themselves. If machines do all the work, who will consume that work? Do you believe that the majority of the population will watch their means of living being taking away from them peacefully?
I believe A.I. will continue to be a tool to do things that we humans suck at, but it will not substitute us completely, even if artificially forced just to keep the economy going. I'll give you an example:

Even though it's much cheaper and efficient to produce electronics in China, many companies have factories in Brazil. Why? Because Brazil taxes imports and to be competitive in our market they bring the production to Brazil, no doubt this increases the production cost, but it's necessary to have better price and sell the volumes they need to be profitable. Maybe in the future AI will be cheaper and more efficient than human work, but without consumers that will be meaningless to the economy.
 

Dutchy

Member
I'd like to see you guys' energy in 10 years when you can't find your Palword 6 cause it's buried underneath thousands of shitty AI shovelware games lol
 

Felessan

Member
I am willing to bet on that you might be right but AI seems far more sinister than let's say the invention of automotives, because the cars didn't just out of the blue start replacing music and art you know? :) But there's mad validity in what you are saying.
Cinema, electronic instruments and recording did heavily affected music and art existed before those was introduced
Theater and classic music considered now more niche entertainment that the ones produced by technology advancement

I wouldnt call it sinister, its just how civilization progress. Shit pit cleaners were replaced by centralized sewer system and I doubt many are unhappy about this

And its not like high profile jobs (creative, intellectual or with high focus on human interactions) have any protection about this. 20 years ago equity trading desks had hundreds of sophisticated and high-paid people - rise of internet and electronic trading devastated them all, desks now shrunk to something like 3-5 people from previous glory.
 

Principal

Member
Money is secondary here, it all starts with a hobby because you think something is fun, then it becomes your profession.

And we all have different skills so we all lose something from the current wide AI trends. Coders will see coding job disappear and artists will se art job disappear. The winners are those who can’t do anything.

I keep my creativity as a hobby so I can simply choose to not use AI and keep doing what I do because I think it’s fun. For someone working in any field where AI is advancing there will be pressure from above to adapt to a new way of thinking because it’s faster, and fun work will go away. Sad but true.

It is quite possible that the market will hype up hand-crafted art and music if AI content becomes too wide-spread or generic. At that point real artists will likely earn more than before, but there will be less of them. Similar to how a hand-drawn 2D game gets more attention, but they’re rare, like Wonderboy Dragon’s Trap. But I think it’ll be a short-lived period. AI can be tuned to look like everything is hand-crafted.

And this whole post could’ve been done by AI, would’ve likely been better, more time to play games though so maybe even that is good!
Perhaps, there's a lot of validity to the things you are saying. It's just sad you know?


Edit: Except the last part, by having AI write things for us too often we lose that skill too :O
 
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Principal

Member
Cinema, electronic instruments and recording did heavily affected music and art existed before those was introduced
Theater and classic music considered now more niche entertainment that the ones produced by technology advancement

I wouldnt call it sinister, its just how civilization progress. Shit pit cleaners were replaced by centralized sewer system and I doubt many are unhappy about this

And its not like high profile jobs (creative, intellectual or with high focus on human interactions) have any protection about this. 20 years ago equity trading desks had hundreds of sophisticated and high-paid people - rise of internet and electronic trading devastated them all, desks now shrunk to something like 3-5 people from previous glory.
You get that the more you write about this the worse it gets lol, you are continiously saying we are removing jobs due to innovations. Some of them valid, some not. Theather is not as niche as you think it is, nor is Classic music, it really depends on where you are on the world. But other than that, Iunno man. Less and less people working, they are basically going to force a basic income situation otherwise people will riot.
 
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