Comment by bodge5000
2 days ago
By your own admission its not irrelevant, there are a small group of people who do care about that kind of thing on either side. For an indie dev, that matters. AAA studios can pretty much guarantee at least a few thousand sales, indie devs, especially the less established ones, have far less. For first timers, there'll be none at all.
The thing is though, appealing to the pro-AI crowd is much more difficult. They want a game thats a shining example of what AI can be in gaming. The anti-AI crowd doesn't need that, they've got examples of that for decades. A few AI generated voice lines won't do much to appeal to the pro-AI crowd.
Nobody is trying to appeal to "pro-AI crowd" (whatever the fuck that even means) when they use AI tools.
If an indie (or even less of an indie) is using AI generation, they are doing so to save costs or work around their very limited budget. Or using it to work around some limitations where voicecasting every line would be infeasible, etc.
And losing the small portion of the miniscule-vocal-always-complaining crowd (who odds are - wasnt part of their audience to begin with), to be able to use AI-gen is not a loss at all.
Data on Steam is telling, these tools are becoming increasingly prevalent.
> Nobody is trying to appeal to "pro-AI crowd"
Oh yes they are, there's a lot of games (or at least, promises of future games) that promise to be 100% vibe-coded or that make heavy use of AI in a way thats very prominent to the player. There was an example just last week:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3730100/Whispers_from_the...
> And losing the small portion of the vocal-always-complaining crowd (who odds are, wasnt part of their audience to begin with), is not a loss at all.
That seems like a very different crowd to me. I've been around the industry long enough to see the signs of that, and I don't see that much from the anti-ai crowd, or at least not in any more significant numbers. See: the project zomboid AI art issue
But like I say, for an indie, yes losing a small audience can still be a big loss.
It seems like you're way too bought into warring internet-weirdo tribe dynamics.
If you use or don't use a tool (your choice), it doesn't make you pro or an anti. It's basic pragmatism, if a tools is useful to you, you use it, if it isn't, you don't.
The consumer base mostly doesn't care, nor should they. They care about end result. Or else nobody would buy iphones, nikes and what not.
The moment you bring up "pros and antis" and tribe dynamics, I smell a brainrot from a mile away. You do you I guess.