This is doing the rounds, so I do want to re-iterate with as much emphasis as I can, nothing kills my interest in a game faster than seeing AI generated content. And not just because I object to AI on an ethical level, I see it as a huge red flag. Do *ANYTHING* else, draw placeholder MS Paint art.
Using AI means the Devs didn't give a shit about part of the game they used it on. And that means they didn't give a shit about the game in general, and it's just product to sell for a quick buck to them
There are so many stone cold classic and influential games that look like, with all the affection in the world, absolute ass... Vampire Survivors, Astlibra: Revision, and Dream Quest. AI art is the poser models of the modern era.
Placeholder MS Paint art has so much charm like come on people. Do it.
Yeah, like, you don't even want to put work into creating your stuff, why should I be interested in it then?
AI would never have given us Meegah Mem 1 or 2.
Played a bit of a game recently that I was having a decent time with but then I realized that a huge chunk of environmental art (like posters and stuff) including stuff that's story related is blatant AI shit and man that kills it so fast for me
There are so many HIGHLY effective ways to use AI, like data analytics, tracking trends, social media moderation, traffic management, and surely a host of (carefully supervised) medical applications. It's sad they want to waste it on artistic envy, and spite.
That's what bugs me with people using the tech. These useful algorithms are being lumped under the catchall buzzword of AI, even though most of them were under completely different names two years ago. I try specify to people that I mean GenAI when I express my refusal to engage with it.
I actually had fun playing a $2 game with ms-paint art because the guy who made it was GOOD AT MAKING A GAME even if his art was just OK and it was like a revelation. Like, I can just make a game with any dumb art i can draw as long as the game is fun. Holy shit.
There's a game I *really* enjoyed but cannot recommend because I noticed about 8 hours in that it had a note about AI art for the character portraits and I was like, "ah damn it" now, it did say that those are placeholders, so if they're replaced, I can recommend it, but...it hasn't happened yet
these were the placeholder arts for upcoming Total Warhammer units and the community fell in love with them so much that people sometimes ask for them to be the standard
Was the Root Trees? IIRC there was a note saying it was going to remove AI art for the full release. Don't know if it did.
Nah, it was Annihilate the Spance
Tiresome having to hang all these swords of Damocles.
was it kaiserpunk lol
No. Wasn't particularly interested in that one.
#BlueskyIsFreeOfAI
Slay the Spire has a feature that lets you replace cards final art with poorly drawn concept art once you beat the final boss with a character. It’s one of my favorite features in the entire game. It would be completely nullified if they were ai placeholders instead of human doodles
Agreed and the "vampire survivors" levels of copypaste AI games that i am seeing lately make me more angry now. Fuck IA, they're itch.io packs for EVERYTHING. USE THEM!!!! They are on sales or bundles half of the time.
What is especially awful is that I'm aware of instances where developers contracted out to artists who have slipped some AI art in unbeknownst to them, and it's a staggeringly terrible situation to put someone else in.
Like selling someone stolen goods without their knowledge 😞
Any AI generated anything is now anti-advertising to many. The second you see it, your brain attempts to dump all knowledge of the product.
If youre truly passionate about gamedev then you can at least learn how to make assets for it. Did i like art? No, i hated it, but i sucked it up and learned for the sake of starting to make games. My initial art wasnt that good, but id still play a game with that artstyle rather than an AI one.
How hard can it be to find some free stock photos and use that instead of AI art? Shoutout to Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs for using stock photos
Seriously. I've spent a non-insubstantial amount of time playing Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic and was loving it. But I kept noticing something feeling "off" about the advisor pictures. Lot of other people have as well, and the consensus is that they're AI gen Which fucking sucks dude!
For fucks sake, the game uses actual digitized photos from the old USSR in loading screens! And they're the best part! They could have hired anyone to do "Soviet education official" in the style of Socialist Realism to fit the game. But now it just feels cheap It's really dampened my desire to play
Hell, take a few of your dev buddies to the thrift/mil-sup store and have a fun photoshoot day! It'd be infinitely more charming and better for the end product as a whole. Using GenAI will always feel cheap, souless, and anti-fun /Old man rant
Biggest hangup I have about the game, it really sucks
education minister's ear rings, lack of hands on that soviet statue for the secret police advisor
SERIOUSLY Makes me so suspect of a product that you felt the need to use AI to fill in the gaps and now you're forever tainted. MS Paint gives you that scrappy charm instead.
It’s one of those things that’s so bad it makes me go ‘You know at least asset flips used things made by human beings’
i saw Playstation release a trailer for something called 'Little droid' and the thumbnail was AI generated
I mean Kirby's design was originally a placeholder and his design is iconic now. More reason to not use AI even as a placeholder
I've been informed that MS Paint has GenAI built in now :(
Hell if you don't want to do a silly little doodle just get royalty free stock photos. ANYTHING but *that*.
AGREED! Beastieball, a game currently in early access, has several Beasties who's models are *literally just sketch drawings* and I am *10000% fine with this* because it's humans with a vision making this art in progress.
Yeah happened to me recently when Sins of a Solar Empire 2 stealth dropped. I was so excited to see my favourite game from my childhood get a sequel, then saw that assets were ai generated and honestly, I would have preferred nothing over that.
Oh, holy fuck, they did that with Sins 2? I _loved_ the first one, breaks my heart to hear they sold their sold on what would have been an inevitably successful sequel. What need did they have to cut corners?
Yeah, a whole bunch of the UI assets were AI generated. They claim that's all, but I don't know. If they're cutting corners there with AI, I fully expect that they're doing it elsewhere in the game as well.
Well FUCK.
Yep. Once I see AIGen stuff, even for something innocuous, my mind immediately goes to "Well, what ELSE was generated?", and suddenly the whole thing just falls apart.
what else was genAI? what other slimy, underhanded practices are in use here? who isn't being paid for their work? who is being verbally, physically, or sexually abused? whose time and money is being stolen? All these things go hand-in-hand, if they're willing to do one, they'll do the others too
Yeah, as soeone who plays a lot of Visual Novels, I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt at first. Like ok, you don't think you're enough artist to draw for your game, that means you're gonna focus on great righting right? RIGHT? Nope, bad AI so far 100% means everything else is shit too.
Do what they did for Cuphead I beg of y'all
100% agree There's so many reasons to be anti AI (or at least the current definition of it) but one of the best easy ones I've heard expressed was by Mandalore gaming's bone totem review As if you know the art may be AI, it no longer means anything story wise
I curate a list of upcoming games for a small community of online players, and anything with AI generated artwork is rejected outright.
I'm trying to think of good games that use AI placeholders and off the top of my head I can think of like, one.
This game is super fun and creative and is essentially MS paint stick figures - I MEAN THAT WITH MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF LOVE!!! It's a perfect example of creativity and fun over fancy graphics. store.steampowered.com/app/597220/W...
Naaaah, the saga of loathing is a very conscious, well thought, comedic design decision. They are also Hilarious games.
I also think Slay the Spire can be considered MS paint placeholder art, since I think it literally had that in early access, but everyone (hopefully) knows about it so, have this! Very clean and charming artstyle, fun and simple to play! store.steampowered.com/app/861540/D...
Whats funny, see thumbnail of it, I know of that game right off the bat because of its funky stick figures.
Yeah ironically very iconic like XKCD despite the simple style ^^ Just goes to prove the point about AI that Casey made.
stock images and stock footage, you could do a little ed wood and string a bunch of stock footage together as a placeholder
I would rather see awful human-made art than "beautiful" AI "art." Bad art still has charm if there's passion behind it.
I never thought I'd say this, but...you know how that one picture frame in The Room has a stock photo of a spoon in it? Somehow that one minor detail that I always miss during a watch has more soul to it than AI content.
Nothing mysterious about it. It was a decision made by a human being. There's a story about where that photo came from, somebody intentionally framed it and put it on the set. Whether because they thought it looked good or because they were frazzled and rushed, that's ALSO part of the story.
Another layer of mystique to an already strange and entertaining passion project.