Comment by NitpickLawyer
2 days ago
I debated a bit about how to answer this, because I've seen this idea so much after stable diffusion came out. I have a serious answer, and a sarcastic one. I'll go with the serious one. The sarcastic bit was just replacing coders with artists in your text. You can imagine it, I guess :)
Why are "artists" special? Why did you feel the need to type these 4 thoughtful (but overdone imo) paragraphs, defending "artisans"? Why are they special, when compared to coders? Why do the artists get to use ever better tools designed to help them, but when the other side gets the same kinds of tools, it's suddenly faux pas? Is it just "AI hate" or is it something else? Can you at least see the double standards that you apply in your post, as I can see it from outside?
It used to be that games were coded by passionate people. People who knew how to code. They'd painstakingly find ways of making ascii characters do silly things on a screen that wasn't necessarily designed for what they were doing. Later, they started playing with pixels. But they were still coders. So they coded away until the pixels started doing funny things on the screen. You talk about "art"? Hah. THAT was art. The ability and tech knowledge to make those early systems do those things with pixels is something that we just don't see today. And we don't see it, in large, because coders did what coders do and made it simpler for anyone else to do those funny things with pixels on a screen.
At every step of the way coders built software to help other people. They built engines. Then they built harnesses for the designers, animators and so on. Then they built simplified engines. The endless RPG generators, and so on. Then they built "no-code" solutions. Here, friend, you take this piece of code, plug in your art and you have a game! And they were happy to do that, because it was enabling other people to do their thing. With code they wrote. And many of them free of charge!
But now, when suddenly coders have a tool that they can use themselves, to empower them with things that they couldn't previously do, now suddenly there's a problem? Why is one artist's output "art", even if the game code is shit, while the opposite isn't? Why can't a coder enjoy creating a game, with help from tools that do something they simply don't care about? They want to do the logic behind the things moving on the screen, and can't / won't spend time creating the art. Why should they be shunned? Why not enjoy the experience for what it is? Is it just AI hate? If so, perhaps you should disclose it. Dunno, this whole take of yours feels mighty high-horsey for my taste.
I honestly have not idea what you're on about.
First, the "by artists for coders" equivalent always existed! There's tons of free-for-commercial-use art packs and BGM tracks and sound effect packs out there, and more when you add cheaply priced stuff. Will you get hate for using those common assets in a commercial project? Only as much as you'll get for visibly running on RPG Maker!
Which leads into the second - those "no-code" solutions you refer to are a far cry from "just add art". They're really "slightly lower code", relying on heavy scripting to actually shape the faintest approximation of a personal vision out of it. They were never the "by coders for artists" gift you frame them as, any more than Godot or Unity was. They're essentially just a pack of libraries for well-trodden genre boilerplate, used by hobbyist game coders and artists alike.
Artists have always needed to learn to code in order to make their vision for a game into reality. They equally cannot "enjoy creating a game, with help from tools that do something they simply don't care about" unless you want them to - wait for it - AI vibe code the whole thing. Or do you think all the artists nominally against AI art are secretly vibe coding a new wave of games too? Do you even think a vibe-coded game will hew to your expectations for a good game? If not, why?
There's a spectrum of human involvement in producing a thing, and art is possibly the last thing I want to see automate.
In the end, art is about human connection. There's a difference between an print of some generated AI slop found online, a painting made in a Chinese factory for a big store, and the scribble your friend made when they went through depression.
You can make a game with all three process. They are not the same.
While I can see where your argument comes from (because up until about ten years ago, I would’ve written it verbatim myself), I must respectfully disagree with it. Some programmers build tools to help people, but most do not. They build tools for surveillance, engines for advertising, exploit human psychology with patterns and site designs that deliberately hinder users, not help them. Most programmers never contribute to Open Source, but instead go to work for tech conglomerates to make money, because that is what society demands of us and coding - until recently - was a solid path into Middle Class status.
I question the sincerity of this narrative that the AI companies are doing this to “help” us, when their actions say otherwise at every turn. I also question that diffusion models and LLMs “enable” programmers to somehow create things others could do with a pencil, paper, and practice. I question this notion that a human must be able to be entirely self-sufficient through technology rather than cooperative with their fellow man, or that every skill must be commoditized for maximum extraction of wealth instead of respected as expertise within a community. I do not hate AI because to do so would be to hate a hammer, or a screwdriver.
Where the hate in my heart lies are towards those who demand we reduce humanity, its chaos, its ephemeralness, its qualia, to a mathematical model devoid of entropy. I hate that because these people - not the tools themselves - deign themselves superior men who are somehow above or immune to the fundamental force of reality (entropy), devoid of responsibility or accountability for their actions or harms.
A true AI booster should be screaming angry that this compute capacity is being squandered on shitty image generation and chatbots that convince teenagers to commit suicide or psychologists that they’re discovering inter-dimensional communication. These vaunted tools should be used to balance the economy, uplift the populace, hold the powerful to account, mediate disputes, improve outcomes in quality and longevity of life.
They are emphatically not being used in this capacity, and their owners have made it abundantly clear through their repeated actions that said outcomes have never been, and never will be, their intent.
And that is the source of my personal hate.