Yeah, the rest I can understand, Arc Raiders is anything but innovative.

There’s differences in playthroughs, if you choose, but it is linear. The game ultimately railroads you to the same endings.

Steam Awards is a popularity contest.

Get a Steam Deck? You can hook it up like a PC, use it sat around. Though its not a powerhouse. Wait and see how the Steam Machine fairs? There’s still a good second hand market for parts too.

Its a shitty time at the moment with scumbag companies and AI, so consumers are completely fucked.

Also: Fuck subscriptions.
Plus the game pass versions of games are complete dogshit compared to the Steam versions most of the time.

The guy isnt a publicly traded business though.

Good thing to get away from CD Projekt, to be honest. I hope GOG thrives more in the future!

The argument for it boils to “im lazy”. Which is why they are struggling to come up with anything else that justifies the negatives.

Cute.

It’s not indie, it had the full support of a publisher. Indie is a handful of people making a game with their own money, not getting a millions of dollars in investment from a publisher.

They want to argue for AI, they just don’t know how. Says it all.

Exactly, they can’t be angry if we don’t pay anymore.

Predictable deflection and going in circles again.

They are spending money on AI, more than the cost of a texture :^)

The major rub of Gen AI art is profiting off of others work. If you’re never displaying it and don’t ever want it shown then who cares?

This doesnt even make sense, you just answered your own question. The major rub is exactly why we care.

There’s no red tape. From the site I provided, the license allows them to use it privately or commercially. It’s placeholder and from all the options out there they could have found something.

There’s also all the environmental problems with AI.

Why go through the effort of AI then for them? It’s the same amount of work, well less even, you’ll get a full pack of textures at different resolutions with UV maps and all, versus AI where you then have to check it and potentially do more.

It says it all, when purchasing a texture is now “stupid busywork”. You literally type in what you want, get hundreds of results, buy one, put in the game. They used UE5, Epic Games have Fab and it’s integrated into the engine, they even give away lots of free assets there (granted that is probably going to fill with AI slop soon). There’s loads of other options out there too.

This argument of “its placeholder textures” is null.

Why are you being obtuse? If the in-house designers didn’t want to make some placeholder textures, they could have used a marketplace instead of AI. Are you just going to keep going in circles?

It’s been proven time and time again that a game doesnt need to compare to AA and AAA shit to be successful. You dont need a big game with a big world. There’s an endless list of simple indie games that had a captivating charm that are crazy successful, all without a single bit of AI used.

Of course not, big games were ruined before the AI craze, but that doesnt mean they are getting a pass of any kind.

Yes, so they can buy some cheap marketplace textures instead of paying to use stolen content. What are we not understanding here?

Did you even read my short comment? They can buy a brick texture from one of many marketplaces. Giving an artist money directly. Instead of giving money to use stolen assets. So that argument doesnt hold up.

Yawn. I dont think AI should be used at all and obviously an unintentional use of it appearing in a search result isnt the same as giving money to an AI company to generate textures derived from stolen artwork.

They could have just bought some textures from the large supply there is out there.

Why didnt they just buy placeholder textures?

Cool, dont accept awards then. Its not the be all and end all.

No, that’s not the same thing in the slightest.

“make a dirt texture”

How have we all forgotten that games were made perfectly fine for decades without AI? Better games even.

I’d rather give an award to a “worse” game that didnt use AI, than to a game that did.

Devs can lie, but the truth always comes out eventually.

That part is, the next part is who is it going to replace? Which artist isnt going to be hired because they just made something with AI instead? Thats some pure creativity just lost from the world.

You have to draw the line somewhere, saying any game cant use AI is much simpler than an arbitrary definition of what slop is. Also means we reward real artistry everytime.

In any game, not just indies.

So instead of “Did you pirate this game?”, the question should be “Did you pirate this game, responsibly?”

AI isnt needed at all, we didnt need it in the past to create art. And with all the tools and knowledge available online, for free, theres even less reason we need it these days.

I’ve never pirated a game, but if developers are going to use pirated content to make a game, they cant be mad when we pirate their game.

So instead of buying the textures they didnt want to create, they paid for AI to generate derived versions from stolen art??

Whats the point? Just give the artists the money directly.

Who made the textures or took the photos that them AI generated ones were derived from, do they get a cut? That justification is even more bizarre now, considering the tools we have to photoscan.

Trained on stolen art of people who actually spent time making that brick texture?

Games are an artform, AI shouldnt be used at all.

Yeah, it’s ridiculous now. I think it was a combination of trying to give less skilled players more of a chance and trying to give any controller user a chance versus keyboard and mouse, with the crossplay craze. Ended up being a disaster, it’s hard to take it away too, because people are used to it.

Aim assist just lowers the sensitivity when you are aiming on an enemy. Games now have auto aim (called aim assist for some reason) that aim for you, snap on and follow the player around without even giving more input.

Because using tricks is just much better right now. Realistic reflections and lighting can also have negative effects on the overall look of a game. It can make it look uncanny.

Stay focused on raster performance please! Don’t waste time with all this ML shit!

Ignoring all the problems, sure. You could get through it, but there were lots of bugs and inconsistencies. I played again recently after all the patches and while it was much better, it still had it’s fair share of issues. The overall game, lore and story is very good, though I think DOS combat is far superior for a video game than DnD.

Nah, Larian will jump the gun, release too early and have another bug infested game. They need to reduce their scope, actually take their time and make a great RPG. BG3 was too much for them, a smaller more refined experience would have been amazing.

Not exactly no, they are directly involved in the process. They pick which outlets can vote, so you immediately have conflict of interest.

As a fair awards show, its fucking awful, but as we know, thats just the facade to selling people new products. It’s just advertising, hyped up.

Also media publications are often biased anyway as their entire business relies on exposure, which is infinitely harder to get if you are critical of games. Nobody is gonna slap a 5/10 on their product.

Not to mention its always games with money behind them, there’s lots of actual quality games released that never get a mention, let alone a nomination, because they simply werent published by a big company. They have fucking DLC nominated instead of games if the big guys didnt release anything that year.