My opinions, don't care who disagrees, I am not here to make any friends. I express this as I wonder how many newer devs have silently left the community and never looked back.
I see a lot of hostility around this issue:
First off: The black&white "AI" issue. If you see a new dev who has only ever released 1 game, who's account was only created in May (at the official Launch), it would be nice to cut the guy a little slack while he's trying to learn instead of becoming incensed from your personal issues with AI.
Here's what I said in the official Discord:
"I think people lack nuance... I hate big companies firing workers due to AI, but for the little Solo dev trying to put something together by himself it's an empowering thing... but like i said, it is what it is and i dont expect it to change. I am a newbie trying to learn".
Response from someone to that:
"Big companies and investors have absolutely butchered the concept for the next 100 years probably. This was a natural, inevitable progression of existing technology, but the entire thing being labeled under the broad term "AI" while a bunch of greedy, sociopathic CEOs abuse it horrifically, has made the average person completely unable to see nuance in it"
^ I agree with this and seems very level-headed. Unfortunately it is most often not this way.
Image below was ironically cited by your typical "Zero AI tolerance" Discorder, he said "This was by a FACEPUNCH member":
I see a lot of hostility around this issue:
First off: The black&white "AI" issue. If you see a new dev who has only ever released 1 game, who's account was only created in May (at the official Launch), it would be nice to cut the guy a little slack while he's trying to learn instead of becoming incensed from your personal issues with AI.
Here's what I said in the official Discord:
"I think people lack nuance... I hate big companies firing workers due to AI, but for the little Solo dev trying to put something together by himself it's an empowering thing... but like i said, it is what it is and i dont expect it to change. I am a newbie trying to learn".
Response from someone to that:
"Big companies and investors have absolutely butchered the concept for the next 100 years probably. This was a natural, inevitable progression of existing technology, but the entire thing being labeled under the broad term "AI" while a bunch of greedy, sociopathic CEOs abuse it horrifically, has made the average person completely unable to see nuance in it"
^ I agree with this and seems very level-headed. Unfortunately it is most often not this way.
Image below was ironically cited by your typical "Zero AI tolerance" Discorder, he said "This was by a FACEPUNCH member":
^ I circled the part that he missed... matt still gave it a positive review. He was able to express himself without dumping on the dev, and maybe he did consider the age of the account, I am not sure. I wish we had more of this in this community.
Secondly, *nobody* has to like my game, I am totally fine with honest opinions. The only problem I have is when the AI-hate skews someone's view so bad that I can never trust it to be unmarred by their biases against it. And I am not expecting anything to change with this. It is what it is and I am simply venting the POV as a newcomer.
" First off it uses AI generated images, might be placeholders but it's not said or specified and they just look ugly and clash with each other. In terms of gameplay there's not much to say, the permanent upgrades are so miniscule that it makes you wonder if the dev would even play the game long enough to max out one of them. All bots just start aiming at me and trying to kill me! Possibly because I have the most coins? They should not be able to take a shot at me regardless if they don't have any coins left, or if they miss they should be killed instead, why am I the only one risking it by shooting my head to get coins!? So you just have all the bots aiming and shooting at me with no penalty, eventually someone manages to kill me, that's just no fun! "
^They tried to cite this as an example of "integrity". I don't think it's integrity to call the 1 aspect of art that's generated a "Major Flaw" and then miss the point of the game and try to say "Why THIS not THAT" (like it's your design, that's just hating) instead of understanding the way it's made. You are not their target for 1, and 2 if it were a Bots game why not just fill the whole thing with them? Those are open seats for a reason that's why it has the Party Game label. So it comes off as "I hate AI but let me try to make it look like that's not the reason why I hate it". These are my observations, as I said. Shortly thereafter another person from this group labeled it "AI slop".
AI slop- The only art in the whole thing that was AI was the User Interface because I asked for help in the Discord and was ignored- so I did all I could to get the game functional. You have no idea how much effort it was for me to get all of these custom models, FX, animations and everything in to a functional, playable state. So no, this is not "AI slop". It is a very hardworking newbie who has not been here for 5-7 years like others who seem to hate it the most.
So if you're going to label something "AI slop" while ignoring all the real art and effort (from people of all different skill/experience levels), OR give a half-hearted attempt to understand it so that you can cleanly wipe your hands and stamp it as AI-Gen bologna, I do not think that's integrity or fairness. I'm not asking you to like something you don't. But then why would it be okay for you to express things you don't like, yet when someone else does it to your "hard work" it's 'retaliation'? It's just Turnabout, which is fair play (not foul play). Rip on the art you don't like, and I can rip on the art I don't like (There are a LOT of bad animations out there, which I would simply ignore as I tried to find the things I liked about something but that's just me).
So when the POV from another member of that group literally is "We TRY to give bad review on AI slop games, but THEY get SO vindictive"... listen to how that sounds while you simultaneously ignore all the effort that newcomer made(who S&box was supposed to be for) just to try to get something playable. The animations, the effects, the setting, the new main character, those are all creative decisions that had nothing to do with AI at all. Just Click his Org and see his games... 1? 2? Okay, so he's new... S&box isn't appealing all the veterans of Unity or Unreal, they already have their workflows and know their engine(though some will never trust Unity again). It's appealing certain types- Spillover from Garrys mod (who already know much about the whole Source ecosystem), and new folks. That's exactly how Dreams(on PS4) was, for the first 1-2 years after release as people were trying to figure the whole thing out... Did you forget how much longer you've been here, or how many more games you've made? Do you even bother to click on the Org to see how old a persons account is or how many games are on their name?
Another guy said this and I appreciate it:
I just hope that if you're vehemently against any form of AI and insist to call out some gen cause you hate it, the at least give them an alternative to use. A tool, something and assume they didn't know any better instead of alienating a new member from the community. The Anti-AI crowd is by-far the majority and i thought that was summarily understood, as they are by far the most vocal and emotional about it. The true minority of people would be those that go "I don't use AI as much as possible, but I think for a Loading screen it's okay". But most of those get bullied out of that idea by the Anti-AI'ers... While I was making a Suno track(and expressed regret in the Discord about it), i literally didn't know about Pixabay or OpenGameArt, and then I switched over to that *because somebody told me about it after the others were done venting their rage toward AI*.
So, if you were conscientious enough care to notice a game is *MOSTLY* human-made, don't slap the AI-slop label. But if you feel you must call out some Gen, then at least recommend whatever you use, cause one without the other only comes off as Shaming which breeds Resentment, and it's not helpful to anyone in the community.
Like Gary said, "The huge majority of games are created by smart, dedicated humans. So when the games are dismissed as "AI slop" it's really an injustice to the work those developers have put in."
S&box is a fledgling community that naturally attracts newcomers, and it is everyone's collective responsibility to grow it in a positive way. Nobody asking for help should get ignored as the entire page continues scrolling down with people posting their own shit "Look at me! Fuck you, look at me!" and then dump on the guy when he uses Gen'd art because he couldn't figure something out. Shits not doing anything to grow the place and train up the newbies. This place as a WHOLE is competing with the other engines, so it's in everyone's best interest to get everyone else around here trained up instead of shaming them.
The point is that, No, it's not fair when your efforts get distilled down to the things that you hate the most. Not everyone needs to be on a chopping block that way (especially newcomers). Cause once you slap the "AI Slop" label on it, when there's only 5% AI in the whole thing, that just makes whatever you don't like as "Slop". I've already cited Dreams. There's a ton of "Slop" on there but none of it has ever been touched by AI... I never called anyone's game 'Slop' on there, it didn't affect me so why take a stance against it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtRanting/comments/1v8aa2w/why_do_some_artists_enjoy_attacking_each_other_so/
Or maybe somebody *Really* wants to make a Card battling game, but can't draw art like Hearthstone or MTG, but they know how to make a decent gameplay loop and throw the whole setting and stats together. So then its 80% human-made and 20% art that they didn't know how to make or knew it would never be good enough for what they wanted to do. Why get so hostile about it? Everyone in here with more experience than someone else needs to slip into a teaching role sometimes. Nobody should watch their questions disappear in to the sea of self promotion in a highly active Discord.
And We don't even have a coherent definition of what qualifies as 'AI slop' its a very emotional response. I've heard guys call the game Sloshed AI slop, yet if you actually looked at it while you were playing youd see there's clearly real art, models, color pallets, lighting choices, and animations in there. Who can claim they're truly making something original that's never been done before in Gaming? I tried to combine elements of things that I'd never seen before, and give it some character and some nice clean animations. I wish people could collectively come together and try to help those who know less out, instead of breaking people down, or seeing them as competition, or drawing a hard line in the sand and standing with your own cliques. This whole world is new to me. I don't love my UI, but I am proud of all the hard work I put in to every other aspect that I could dump my efforts in to. And then when I asked for help and nobody gave me any guidance, I just said fuck it. Guess I'm resorting to AI... you think I wanted to do that, as a first choice?
I woke up with a possible real insight on the deeper issue underlying a lot of this. It's like every previous generation has always been entitled to make their own "bad art", but now people are scared that'll be stripped away because of AI. Now they have to compete with a robot. So I have empathy for that. And I know it's true because even if AI art were much better there's still be a large group vehemently opposed to it for this reason. You'll have people forced to show time-lapsed video of themselves actually drawing or modelling it at 100x speed just to prove it's human authenticity.
Anyways, I want this community to do well and I hope it can understand who the people are who are using AI, as opposed to those who are farming AI out to do *everything* for them, there is a difference. The hostility and intolerance is not conducive to sustainable growth around here in my opinion.
