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Been playing through The Messenger again. Still an amazing game.
Also picked up No Man’s Sky again to build the Corvette class ships, build up some settlements, and collect some of the newer cosmetic building items. It’s impressive how much love has gone into that game, and it gives me a chuckle that it now has basically everything Star Citizen has (ships with walkable interiors, food, planet exploration, space combat, main quests, etc.).
Nothing of what you suggested is particularly difficult with real dev work. You basically just said, “I want to vibe code it all.” It’s trivially easy to set up pseudorandom generators; deciding where enemies and objects go should not be left up to chance through some black-box algorithmic “magic.” Game theory exists for a reason, and AI doesn’t “know” about it, because it’s just a complex pattern generator at the end of the day.
Also, what happens when the model generates an environment that can’t be traversed? What if it places invisible walls in weird places? What about an environment that’s rife with bugs? What if the code is plain wrong? Now you have to go into the code, learn how it works, and debug it manually. Thank god you saved yourself some time by vibe coding. /s
I can see we won’t agree, so you’re welcome to get the last word, but I won’t reply afterwards.
LLMs and other machine learning are just algorithms. That’s all procedural world generation is, and this insistence by the Tech Bros that we need their models to “boost creativity” is a farce.
My opinion? The people that wish they could use AI to “see what they get out of it” are lazy ass fucks who don’t want to put in the extra work to actually get good at game dev.
This survey was conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of Google Cloud from June 20, 2025 - July 9, 2025 among 615 adults aged 18+ working in game development in the United States, South Korea, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
So, it’s a voluntary poll. That’s a great way to get a biased sample.
Also, some of the responses sound like Google is playing fast and loose with the term “AI.” Is procedural world generation AI? Google seems to think so, despite it existing long before LLMs we’re a thing.
This whole thing reads like “research” designed to promote AI. I wonder why Google might want that? /s
I want to be clear that I used to have a similar mindset; I came around to the idea that if I’m a game dev (or any other type of creativity), and I’m looking for speedy shortcuts, I’m doing myself a disservice in two ways:
- I’m not learning the necessary skills to improve my craft. It’s vibe coding in a different shirt, and skipping the struggle is skipping the parts that make me better.
- I’m missing the forest for the trees. Extra details don’t make something better, and just because AI can do what I don’t want to do doesn’t mean that thing is worth doing. If I’m so disinterested in creating <insert thing>, why am I outsourcing it to a robot that doesn’t actually understand my art? Out of everyone, a dev should be the most interested in the details, and if it’s so unimportant that a robot can put in whatever, the end user likely wouldn’t have cared in the first place.
I agree that it’s a tool, and I agree that we aren’t likely to see eye to eye on this, but at the end of the day, I am wholly convinced that this tool is being used in the wrong place and in the wrong way. It doesn’t belong in creative endeavors.
I’m cool with you saying your final word on the matter, but I think we’ve beat this topic to death. You’ve been very courteous, and I appreciate that. Take care.
I think you’re getting caught up on the “thing.” My point wasn’t whether it should be glyphs or letters. Devs should be asking, at that point, why it’s necessary at all. Does it need to exist? If you’re considering AI just to generate “background noise,” is that noise really necessary in the first place? This step often happens naturally in human-derived work when we consider the work involved, but it must happen intentionally when you throw garbage-generators into the mix.
And no, I don’t think making glyphs via AI is okay, because now we’re in the realm of AI image generation, and that’s a giant unethical miasma. You ask what the difference is between a dev making their own script to general glyphs versus an AI, and that’s like asking what difference exists between a solar calculator and a data center run by Google. Both can tell you what 2+2 equals, but one is unnecessarily complex.
And then there’s the ethical considerations. Where did that AI model come from? How was it trained and developed? Whose work was used to derive that model? Who benefits from its public use?
AI simply does not belong in creative endeavors. People may have their own reasons for where they’ve drawn their lines, but that does not mean it is a mere matter of subjectivity, like choosing broccoli instead of carrots, or that they have a good basis for that decision.
At that point, the question a dev should be asking is, “Is it necessary to have filler text?” Taking your “background text that flashes onscreen” concept, if its just background noise anyway, why does it need to specifically be text? What do letters or characters add that couldn’t be achieved with glyphs or scribbles?
People often see AI as some shiny new tool to bring their visions to life, but the game design and storytelling techniques we’ve collectively learned over the past decades still apply. More ≠ better, and if it’s not meant to be consciously and overtly experienced by the player, what need is there to include it at all, AI-generated or otherwise?
No clue if he was joking, but last year, Charlie Brooker said Balatro was super addictive, that everybody was going to fall prey to its charms, and it would tank global productivity.
Balatro showing up in Black Mirror tracks, because he’s apparently a big fan of the game, and either it’s a thank you to a dev he likes, or he genuinely thinks it’s a (fun) digital trap for humans.
Honestly, that’s probably where GOG fits in. They grant you a license to download the full game without DRM. I don’t know if they already do this, but if a game is planned to be delisted, they could warn players and allow them to download a final copy that should work whether the listing exists or not.
In that way, you have a coexisting license and ownership of what you pay for.
It’s a blast! The devs listen to and are involved in the community, you can go back and play earlier season content at your discretion, and all the paid content is optional cosmetics that exist primarily as an additional revenue stream for the devs, so no pay to win or praying to RNGesus to get that one ultra rare drop everyone needs.
Are boycotts really the best solution to stop this epidemic in gaming?
Yes, but not if you don’t convince others to join you.
How can we best prevent these gambling grey markets and the gaming to gambling addiction pipeline?
Educate people on the dangers. Show them why it’s gambling, because there’s a lot of apologetics out there to trick people into thinking it’s not. Point out the same slot-machine-tactics they use to get people hooked.
And then convince them to boycott. The CEOs that put this shit in games know how to read sales numbers, and if sales start dropping (or player counts), they’ll soon figure out that it’s because of their lootbox/gacha systems.
Lastly, give people alternatives. I usually point people to Deep Rock Galactic, but there may be others that are better suited to people’s tastes. “Just leave” isn’t really effective if they don’t know where to go.
Cool, and you think Nintendo is spending the resources to develop their own model from scratch? Because if not, the existing models were built and refined upon other people’s art (written, drawn, etc.)
I don’t think they are, because that would be costly; it’s much easier to just enter a licensing agreement.
You missed the point. I’m not talking about just giving a model their library of artwork, which they are within their rights to do.
That model that can parse their artwork had to be developed and refined upon other work. Unless Nintendo is building their own upon their artwork—which I seriously doubt, because that would be a costly undertaking—they’ll be using existing models licensed from somewhere, all of which were developed by stealing from legitimate artists. If they’re using it for idea generation (like an LLM), that text generator was built upon stolen writing.
I’m merely pointing out that it’s ironic for a company that takes such a harsh stance with its fans for “stealing” its IP to be okay with AI.
Amid the furore around the $449.99 price of the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World’s $79.99 price tag, there is shock at Nintendo’s decision to charge for the console’s tutorial game, Welcome Tour.
You can spend about the same amount for a Steam Deck, and you can play Aperture Desk Job for free. Speaks volumes how Nintendo views their fans.
It was, imo, the founder of the Vania part of Metroidvanias, so they didn’t have the benefit of standing upon many shoulders. Hollow Knight is a great spiritual successor to that endeavor, and I agree that they took much of what made SotN great and improved upon it.
It’s interesting watching people get so excited by HK, I have to wonder if that’s what it was like when SotN and successive games came out.
If you liked Hollow Knight, you should give Symphony of the Night a try sometime. The gameplay loop is similar, and like Hollow Night, there’s no hurry.
I think they’re both good, with the older one being the one that, imo, defined the Vania side of things. But being on the older side myself, I understand having limited time to take on new games!
The art style is great, and the ability to choose your loadout adds a unique twist to how Metroidvanias usually work. I had a good time playing it, and it reminded me a lot of when I played Symphony of the Night many years ago.
Many Metroidvanias are boring because they lack character that would motivate you to do Metroidvania levels of backtracking.
This is a good point, and likely why I’ve not gotten that into many of the more recent ones (with some exceptions). I suppose in that sense, it’s revolutionary next to many of its contemporaries.
Hollow Knight is clearly one of the best to ever do it in my opinion. It also totally transformed the landscape of metroidvanias, with subsequent games imitating it left and right.
Can you expand on this? I feel like there’s some interesting perspective in there.
And I will probably play Silksong eventually, too but I’m just trying to understand why people think it stands above the rest.
Heard a song from Wuthering Waves, and it caught me be surprise with how good it was, so I figured I’d give the game a try.
It feels a lot like Genshin Impact, but the world and story feel better, is not Mihoyo, and the voice acting includes the main character. For a F2P experience, it’s been fun going through the initial story. To its detriment, however, there’s three different gacha currencies. Definitely not worth bothering with beyond freebie pulls. Overall, I’d recommend it, but only the free stuff.