It seems like every single company has revealed that they use some form of Generative AI. Whether it was Square Enix or well Google, it has been an utter shit show. Now to re-iterate from yesterday’s post, generative AI trains on already existing artwork or features and tries to make an image out of it. Which usually takes from different artists and sources without it being asked of those artists.
Just to give another example using another bit of my older artwork. (Because I’m a glutton for punishment also maybe I can break at least one generative ai program with my art.)
Take that, put it into the prompt for the ai and then you get this result. Now the things to note is that AI isn’t perfect by any means neccessary. The hands are always off and you’re always having to put in 100 hundred prompts just to get it to fine tune itself. Which honestly for me I’d rather either just improve on my drawing or just hire an artist to draw whatever characters I have when it comes to roleplaying.
And the result with some tweaking would be this:
Again not even close to what the original product was which is hilarious and it trying to give a background when there wasn’t one to begin with. Like I said it’s not perfect and isn’t going to have a 1-1 scale.
Now the thing that has people concerned or even upset was that last year Larian Studios went on record saying that they wouldn’t use generative AI on Baldur’s Gate III.
Larian says that nothing AI-generated will appear in its games, and that it does not "develop concept art" with AI tools.
Now there were comments made earlier in the year that went unnoticed and resurfaced when Larian announced that they were doing a Divinity game and said that they were using AI to make placeholder levels and then go back over with human developers.
As someone that’s an artist (not a great one) and someone that has been wanting to work in the game industry since they were 13, I’m going to say that this isn’t a good look. I don’t care if it’s supposed to be in the ideation stage or brainstorming stage or whatever but it honestly takes away from the purpose of what the developers and artists are supposed to already do.
Maybe I’m just old school but I like drawing different people and concepts for characters. They don’t have names or anything but they have different hairstyles and outfits. Maybe I’ll use them for a book, maybe I won’t. But I just like to draw and that’s been a thing I’ve been doing since I was a kid and could draw.
Brainstorming is what makes us so creative and it’s apart of the process for a developer, artists and writers. It’s important. So for Larian and Expedition 33 to use generative AI as a placeholder is kind of I don’t know shitty. Like it shouldn’t be hard to come up with an idea as a placeholder. Like a lorem ipsum kind of thing.
Though I suppose there’s good news since the Independent Game Awards decided to revoke two awards for Expedition 33 that it was considered for because they used Generative AI.
I just hope that maybe game developers will learn from this lesson and understand that if your player base is important to you then maybe don’t use Generative AI.
Just a thought.
What did you think of this? Do you think game studios should use generative AI as a placeholder for their games? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments below. Like this post? Don’t forget to share it with your friends. Want to keep up with the latest? Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Want to support the blog? Check out my tip jar!
Until next time!
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