I mean, some looter shooters are successful. Division retains some popularity, Borderlands 2 was well loved.

I can believe that scattered around, there were cool ideas in Anthem’s development if they could just retain focus/planning. I think in that time, we were just seeing way too much meddling in development based on trends.

I avoided that game based on the name, but from what I gather, it was misleading; pretty much every sect of that school is full of jerks (sadly including the nerds, who often cater to their own victim complex), and your character is just facing the larger of them.

I’m curious if a dev that carefully manages placeholders could at least garner interest from artists this way. Clair Obscur’s debacle with their Indie Award demonstrates how horrible this can turn out if they miss even one asset; but sadly, I empathize coming from a position where I devoted my studies into learning coding and writing techniques, not artistry.

My space game was cubes and cylinders colliding.

As long as people are able to stay civil, I’m definitely happy to dive into this subject, because it interests me a lot and I’m eager to see if anyone feels they learn something from it.

if the creator wants his characters to look a specific way then so what?

Valid sentiment, but it gets weird when “the creator” is not just one auteur, but a big network of interconnected developers. One may “really want a hot springs scene with detailed looks at the female lead’s boobs”, while much of the rest of the devs are uncomfortable with it, think it will hurt narrative pacing, or even think it could hurt sales.

I do think it’s hard to argue that sex un-sells, but there’s at least some slight data to suggest it. Two games come to mind. One is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the other is Nier Automata. Both games sold well and had dedicated fans - but both also had a decently large number of players that saw what they viewed as “cringey anime hornbait” and decided to ignore it - even if the game would’ve readily contained other features they might have enjoyed - intricate JRPG mechanics and DMC combat. I don’t even view that audience as “prude” - they just generally held the sentiment that the sexiness was so out of place, it was distracting from the core themes of those games. In N:A’s case, it was a much smaller minority, but you could see in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 it kind of toned sexualization back.

if you’re upset that there’s an unrealistically attractive male or female in a game, respectfully, go fuck yourself. There’s millions of video games that you can also enjoy without your weird preconceived notions that video game characters need to be as attractive or less attractive than you personally are. Video games are a fantasy for a reason.

THIS, I think, is the biggest misconception. Although this is hard to cite with data, I feel reasonably confident in positing a theorem: Aside from an absolutely tiny, vanishingly small base, many of whom don’t even play games, I don’t think anyone * is upset at game characters being “too attractive”*. I watch quite a few female streamers, and by and large, they’re happy and eager to play games with gorgeous women in them. On many occasions, they don’t even care too much about sexualized outfits.

Where I think there’s the most silent sensitivity, and perhaps game publishers haven’t quite parsed this thought, is in objectification. captainlezbian kind of covered the thought - how sex should be humanizing and treat the sexy characters as people, with agency. When an attractive character is an “award”, or never speaks, or their decisions/actions have no effect on any story events, that can go from losing people’s attention to even making them feel uncomfortable - like their gender is “not allowed” in the medium.

Dead or Alive: Sexy, not always quite objectifying. The large-breasted characters range from master assassins on missions, to secret weapon projects, to girlboss CEOs bent on world control.
Bayonetta: Quite the opposite of objectifying. Bayonetta’s domineering personality, even when she’s stripping nude, evokes control over the characters and space around her.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: VERY objectifying - would be even if Pyra had smaller breasts. Pyra is cute, but she’s incredibly subservient, and basically relies on Rex, the male lead, to take charge as leader and protect her. She’s constantly oblivious to the more pervy characters in the cast. A lot of classic anime at least skirted the latter issue by having female leads highly aware, and beat up the lechers near them (even if the viewer benefited from their exploits). I don’t mind saying this was too much for even me. Again: Agency.

get some massive bodonhonkaroos in there, give that guy a massive bulge and a 18 pack, who fucking cares it’s a video game.

I think where this can get confusing is that, by and large, women aren’t quite seeking the same overtly excessive appearances in games as men. If you want some examples, search on Steam for what “Otome” games look like, and picture your male leads in a superhero game looking like that - complete with open button shirts and pensive, slightly-girly attitudes. Uncomfortable? Yeah - that shows what you said, about how not everything will appeal to everyone.

We’re lucky in that women generally are not sorely offended by women in games having breasts (Le Gasp!) but there’s neat ways of making them attractive for all players that don’t instantly produce an “ICK” from a sizable number of players.

The real silver bullet I’ve seen is customization, which is often a win-win. I often point to Stellar Blade as a good example; the default outfit for Eve fits the sci-fi fantasy very well. Then, you unlock a LOT of extremely sexualized, even objectifying, outfits, as well as other “cute, functional” outfits. I don’t mind saying I dived into the former, while many people less interested in sexualization enjoyed the latter. Generally, all parties involved appreciate Eve’s attractive figure and long hair.

In a world with a bit more trust, I feel like this is what blockchain/certificates would be for. Basically someone would make a signed statement from a lawyer or witness that “This user with email address xyz is over the age of 18.” Contains no other data, and the notary would be trusted not to collect any more than needed. Then, websites could verify the signature against a public key from the firm.

Instead we get this Orwellian mess.

Something I’d really like a group to be brave enough to address is the fallacy that “DEI” or “Diversity” initiatives stand in direct opposition to games featuring “Adult” or “Sexy” content, or that they encourage censorship.

We’ve had a wave of pretty bad games from AAA spaces recently, many of which have been uninteresting to anyone. Some people sadly latch onto these themes, and the fact that some of these developers promoted diverse spaces, to suggest that it’s a deliberate worsening of the media space.

In fact, tons of indie devs, as well as LGBT game devs, specifically hope to make adult content. They can suggest new ways of making characters attractive in ways that can still be inclusive; those devs even get harmed by censorship actions. Yet so much of the male-isolated booby-go-boing crowd has been cowed into a simple understanding of battle lines, wherein everything related to diversity and fairness stands against their fetishized hobby.

The example I gave was more around “context” than “model” - data related to the question, not their learning history. I would ask the AI to design a system that interacts with XYZ, and it would be thoroughly confused and have no idea what to do. Then I would ask again, linking it to the project’s documentation page, as well as granting it explicit access to fetch relevant webpages, and it would give a detailed response. That suggests to me it’s only working off of the documentation.

That said, AIs are not strictly honest, so I think you have a point that the original model training may have grabbed data like that at some point regardless. If most AI models don’t track/cite the details on each source used for generation, be it artwork on Deviantart or licensed Github repos, I think it’s fair to say any of those models should become legally liable; moreso if there’s ways of demonstrating “copying-like” actions from the original.

If the models are in fact reading code that’s GPL licensed, I think that’s a fair concern. Lots of code on sites like Stack Overflow is shared with the default assumption that their rights are not protected (that varies for some coding sites). That’s helpful if the whole point is for people to copy paste those solutions into large enterprise apps, especially if there’s no feasible way to write it a different way.

The main reason I don’t pursue that issue is that with so much public documentation, it becomes very hard to prove what was generated from code theft. I’ve worked with AI models that were able to make very functioning apps just off a project’s documentation, without even seeing examples.

I doubt it’s a common cause, but my impetus for boycotting Nintendo was Garry’s Mod. They sent their lawyers after animators, who actually get people more interested in their games. Their litigious nonsense caught up with them that time.

Many artists do starve, and many others succeed. Not sure what your point is, or why you want to shift the needle more in the former direction.

AI can’t compete with artists if they are not generating content to serve for the model. Even if the models could achieve consistent art, it would mean we get no new themes or ideas. People who would normally invent those new styles will start by repeating what’s existing, and will be paid for that.

Many nations provide grants for art, because they recognize it’s a world that doesn’t always generate immediate, quantifiable monetary return, but in the long run proves valuable. The base expectation is that companies recognize that value and uniqueness in fostered talent as well, rather than the immediacy of AI prompts giving them “good enough” visuals.

I still haven’t seen anything neat from any models that were certified following only legally permitted content. That said, to my knowledge there’s very few of that variety.

Training off of the work of current artists serves to starve them by negating the chance companies hire them on, and results in circumstances where AI trains off of other AIs, creating terrible work and a complete lack of innovation.

People suggest a brilliant future where no one has to work and AI does everything, but current generations of executives are so cut-throat and greedy to maximize revenue at the top, that will never happen without extreme, rapid political and commercial reform.

I need to admit that in the past day, I asked an AI to write unit tests for a feature I’d just added. I didn’t trust it to write the feature, and I had to fix the tests afterwards, but it did save time.

I really don’t see any usefulness or good intent in the art world though. Sooo much of those models has been put together through copyright theft of people’s work. Disney made a pretty good case against them, before deciding to team up for a shitty service feature.

It’s sad Clair Obscur lost that indie award, but hopefully the game dev world can take that as a bit of a lesson.

The only thing I’d ever want analyzed in gaming is the messages that developers convey. And, there should be no “overbearing head agency” be it the government or publisher, that controls that message. Take it just as a suggestion between artists:

We should encourage good morals and themes in the messages our games convey. I know it’s typical for gamers to say they don’t care about story or premise in games, but even if one isn’t laden with cutscenes, they often communicate a concept even just with level and character design, providing objectives like rescuing hostages, collecting loot, or getting stronger.

I don’t necessarily think violence, on its own, makes a message. Showing scenes of World War 2 can convey a lot of things. It can tell you that war is horrible, or it can erroneously tell you it’s fun. I think if you’re expecting maturity from your audience, you can acknowledge that while the game is fun, it’s not trying to foster that feeling in players.

The main thing that leads to violence in the real world is anger. Media can teach us violence is a form of communication, a tool, but anyone using it has a message, one rooted in a lot of hatred. I might even argue there’s some cases where that anger is both deserved and needed, but potentially misdirected; and other cases where both the anger and the action - violence - is 100% needed. A Ukrainian soldier fighting Russian invaders that are trying to kill innocent people does not need to be taught that “violence is bad”.

We at Xbox can’t wait to show you all the fantastic games we have planned for cancellation.

There’s a bit of merit to that. After a purchase, a lot of people are wary, and likely to magnify any changes that happen immediately. They need a period of stabilization to dissuade fears, and assure that “nothing will change in the long run”. Even this article is highlighting what happened around a month ago over a period of time, because it wasn’t apparent in the moment.

I’m pretty stuck on this one. https://cluesbysam.com/s/help/01c315cae125?state=bEzQ-AAAAAAA%3D The hint has me pointed towards C5, but only based on a hint about edges. There are 5 unknown people on the edges, not counting two in the left corner of which one is innocent and one is guilty. So I have no idea what its clues are trying to say matters here.

The wording at the top level was “No one’s saying anything about any of it, which feels like that’s on advice from their legal counsel.” It seems like the main confusion was on the implication of the term “No one”. I inferred from the reference to legal counsel, they’re mainly talking about storefronts, not gamers, being silent. As such, I’m guessing you were eager to show how loud people (gamers) are on the issue; but that probably wasn’t the intended meaning.

In fact, I took the initial claim to mean the opposite; with Github taking action against Adult games in the same form as an attack that took place on Steam, it’s suggesting a common perpetrator. But I could safely assume most commenters here know Steam is not owned by Microsoft; hence that blame automatically goes outside of that domain.

Even if you didn’t take that implication, you can just look at the simple statements made; “Hey, this is like that other thing that happened. What’s in common here?”

None of that negates anything I said. Everyone is aware of the context of that debacle, you were replying to someone that wasn’t even drawing a conclusion from it.

You’re inventing further wording than what’s written. The game is hosted on Steam, and that’s the entity that sent the takedown notice - those are just the facts. Plenty of people blame Visa more than Valve for those actions.

Sorry, let me try.

This smells suspiciously similar to the stuff affecting adult content on Visa, like Horses.

Oh. No, wait, you don’t sell games on Visa. Let’s try again.

Actually, what you call Linux is really GNU/Linux-

Dammit! Stupid pedantry setting!

Right, but if you try to follow a more strict definition that mostly follows 2D games developed by a single person, even their publishing framework ends up encompassing dozens if not hundreds of people. It’s become hard to make that definition strict. At the very least, very few notable games are made by the really big labels: Ubisoft, 2K, EA, etc.

I mean, when they work indie, they don’t need to unionize.

We probably won’t see unions; just a collapse of AAA. The Game Awards this year was a joke with only about 3 big contenders, and most were regarded as “indie”.

Code Violet looks so cool in concept and screenshots. I’m just sad I get a vague impression the studio is biting off more than they can chew, with things like floaty animations and descriptions of potential feature creep. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Huh. Never thought I’d see a path of consequences that punishes companies disloyal to their employees.

Granted, these people are dooming their chances of working in the game industry again, but maybe at this point they’re okay with that burn.

It might be an option that doesn’t come up much, but older/lower-spec consoles are an option: The Playstation 4 and Xbox Series S. They’re not available for recent big AAA games, but that’s less and less of the big trends. There have still been many games coming out this year for the PS4.

That’s, of course, if you’re really on a low budget for hardware. Otherwise, a PC is a great investment for games on Steam sales.

I’ve used it for Epic and GOG, Lutris for Ubi/EA, but can either play MS UWP games? That seemed to be the one huge hurdle for any third party launcher in general.

Does Proton even work on Macs? It seems pretty clear at this point Linux is a far better gaming OS.

The last few days, I haven’t run into any players fighting each other. There may in fact be some matchmaking effects deciding this, based on my past behavior.

It helps in my case that I have a lot of upgrades and don’t feel bothered about losing really good gear anymore. Interestingly, I’ve often felt the good gear helps against ARC, but not much against committed players. A well executed blindside ambush can take down even a player with a heavy shield.

The main defense is the psychology. Fostering a sense of communal protection by shooting the wasps that are attacking someone else, bringing one defibrillator in case you find downed players, and in some very rare cases, acting as protector for someone who was wrongly downed. Eventually, some PVP-heavy players decide they have more to fear from attacking others than being passive.

A weird tip to try; when seeking some objective and worried for ambushes, play the Recorder. Some attackers are looking for the thrill of combat, not loot, and are dissuaded by an open musician. Other players are just fearful you’ll shoot first, which is less likely when you’re announcing yourself and taking your hand off your gun for the instrument.

I could be wrong, I think it’s a rare case of a game releasing with zero levels. The idea there was to let people take it and make their own levels for it (which, I’m sure, many did)

I remember back when I was more excited about getting into gamedev, learning C and C++ were some significant obstacles. Even understanding that I had to be responsible and direct about memory, the way they flub through so many template interfaces and spew out paragraph-sized errors made it impossible to contend with. I haven’t followed Rust, but I hope for a time that low-level code modernizes just a bit so we can stop abstracting our calculator apps with 4 GB of Electron framework.

It is extremely rare - I do it when I have some form of dedication to the developer, or their rare variety of ambitious game. I may not have even done it once this year.

So I think that matches the OP’s feelings of buying early in support. Largely, it doesn’t matter.

Ark seems to fit into the same niche that enjoys Roblox, Fortnite, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. That might make a statement about how much money they have.

Again: This is not a cake. This is a recipe book and an oven. Scenario’s demo reel showcases models they have finished training, and vouch that you can make one from scratch. I am asking you for a finished AI model you have ready to use.

Really? Can you share your fully realized and operational generative AI that exists, and only created its model from artwork you personally made or retain full legal reproduction rights to?

Answers Yes, or Sorry, I Lied.

Does sound like laziness. I get the impression it’s because some things change in the game depending on difficulty, like number of items, etc. So, it can’t exactly go back and turn the 3-ammo pile you picked up into 8 ammo.

Same way you’d celebrate a studio for “No workplace abuse.” People would have to come forward to testify about it, as concept art generation is very likely to arise from hiring fewer artists.

It’s also pretty easy if the credits list an abnormally low, or zero, number of concept artists.

Okay but first, will you admit that if my cancer curing Unicorn only dispenses 100 doses of its miracle medicine from its butt when I kill a homeless man, you’d agree killing the homeless is a moral good, right?

Or, you know, we could throw away silly fantasy scenarios.

A DBD creator I like made a video about this topic, and the degradation of the term.

Between this and the Divinity controversy, I think the gaming world needs some kind of Responsible AI seal, like the old Nintendo Seal of Quality. While Microsoft is shoving Copilot into Notepad, it can be really hard to guarantee every team member has never used an AI for anything.

Standards like “No generative AI” are a good one, and it turns out we’re also under debate whether AI for concept art - something absent from the game files - is okay. Many say not.

In some ways, I think we have to accept the early years of “8 indie games for $2!!!” is over. Inflation has hit, and indie devs have to buy their coffee too. If you really want a near-freebie, keep an eye out for bundles on Fanatical, where they’re sometimes $3 each game.