Comment by captainclam
16 hours ago
> movies are going to become video games and video games are going to become something unimaginably better
God what an annoying thing to say. Suggesting that movies will essentially become games, or that future video games will be unimaginably better (presumably because they are driven by generative world models) betrays such a surface level appreciation for what makes art and culture and all this humanity so beautiful as it is.
The entire point of movies is the deliberate choices of the filmmakers! Movies will not be improved by our ability to choose what the main character looks like or add a style filter. Super Mario 64 is great because it is an expression of the very hardware that constrains it. Inevitable future versions where anything can happen because someone hooked the ROM up to a generative world model won't be better for it.
I agree that this technology is absolutely world changing, and am cautiously eager to see what comes of it, but it just bums me out, perhaps needlessly, that the people at the helm can be so artless, unreflective. Whatever.
yeah some friends of mine in game dev are a bit doom and gloom about all this and I need to keep reminding them that the hard work is making the million decisions that communicate the vision, the code/assets were never really what people were buying your game for. Even assuming an AI could do literally every technical part of game dev someone (for now) needs to sit there and go "nah this part doesn't feel right" and "that boss 2nd phase opener attack is too long" etc. until AI can also answer those questions and intuit what is good and bad taste there's still stuff for game devs to do. "minecraft in skyrim" is cool for about 10 seconds till you think about actually sitting down to play it.
They're getting surprisingly good at identifying why things don't seem right. I came back to an old game project that I had shelved due to the core game loop not feeling right and I decided to just ask Astra to analyze the gameplay and figure out what was wrong and it was able to provide a good direction to take it that also works well with the game mechanics that were already in place.
The new Terra 6.1 is pretty good at doing user testing as well via computer use, going through all the features and noting any bugs or inconsistencies.
It feels like we might be on a trajectory that takes us to a place where someone can just say "I'm bored, make me a new game" and then provide minimal feedback like "this isn't fun, make it better" and get an entertaining game without a lot of iteration. Of course we'll still have games that come from human ideas as well but vibe games seem like they're here to stay.
I'm not so sure, I've made an autobattler and even recently using Astra to come up with new mechanics or cards they're usually always bad as if it doesn't "get it" even if I feed it all the current cards in game and say "like this, these are good because of x and y." When brainstorming, I usually get it to generate 20 ideas and then I come up with something entirely new based on bad stuff it responded with. I've never been able to actually use its ideas verbatim.
I'm not sure if this is a limitation of the tech or whether it will eventually have "taste" in such nebulous domains as "what is fun." They still can't write funny jokes despite trillions of dollars of training because even though there's plenty of funny material and discussions on what funny is, I guess it's still kind of a human thing.
> not feeling right
That came from you. And it’s a deep thing.
Yes, Opus 5.5 can build out quite a bit on its own that is super impressive when you first look at it. But spending just a couple minutes will make you realize dozens of things that are off.
Sam had OpenAI start the Ghibli style image-gen (movies that are specifically loved for their artisanal quality). The man has patternly failed to read the room around culture.
Why? Customers lave the Ghibli style image-gen.
You don't understand, the important room is the tiny one in back not that big arena with ticket sales in front. /s
the Ghibli stuff was awesome, and I agree with him on video games
> I agree that this technology is absolutely world changing, and am cautiously eager to see what comes of it, but it just bums me out, perhaps needlessly, that the people at the helm can be so artless, unreflective. Whatever.
This is something your average person can play around with. The filmmakers have been fumbling the ball a lot lately (not all the time, though) and I can't wait to see what rises out of the average populous. Lots of crap expected, for sure, but there will be gems in there that I'm willing to bet will blow away what we've seen in the industry. Kind of how indie game companies are eating AAA's lunch lately.
Exactly, if anything these tools will give people options for more self expression, not less.
Make something beautiful, with or without the new tech. You and the rest of us will be better for it. And the investors are damn desperate for something to really resonate with the people who experience it.
This. Do instead of consume and we all get a little better off.
We've been living in a world of videogame-like FX movie slop for at least 20 years now, without the help of AI. Try to find insightful reflection of humanity and truth in a Marvel movie... God help you. It's as boring as, well, watching someone else play a video game.
It turns out, some people like that. A lot of people like it, presumably because it's fast and stimulating, and everyone's a sucker for wowing FX even as movie FX have gotten worse and more or less converged with video games.
What's lacking in these movies isn't so much plot, it's character and thoughtfulness. They tell us nothing about ourselves.
From an art history class, long ago, I remember the explanation of how classical Greek culture degraded into depictions if "pathos", visible in changes in the sculpture, and how that heralded more or less the decline of the civilization. It seems obvious to me that we've undergone a similar transition. And the thing is, it's not the technology itself, which could be used to produce meaningful art. It's the lack of thought on the part of the creators and the audience.
So on point. I rewatched Spielberg's AI from 2001 yesterday. All the visual effects were solid, but it wasn't anything about the scale or the beauty of the scenes that makes that movie touching.
It's the universal themes of love, longing, caring. That's what's missing in today's slopfest sequelities of modern movie making.
I hope new tech lowers the cost of production so much it allows those with taste, vision and care to topple the mess of modern 'storytelling'. We are getting the technology, let's hope we can have the imagination.
> Try to find insightful reflection of humanity and truth in a Marvel movie... God help you. It's as boring as, well, watching someone else play a video game.
It’s so true. The only time I watch one of these movies is when I’m stressed and exhausted and want something so dumb I’ll fall asleep in 20 minutes.
When it comes to these “worlds” that are generated, there’s no there there. I’ve tried various of these and after three minutes I close the browser. Walking around my neighborhood is a million times more interesting. Whereas the creator-constrained and -designed experiences (GTA comes to mind) actually deliver something engaging.
> And the thing is, it's not the technology itself, which could be used to produce meaningful art.
Exactly. I am not de-facto against the use of AI in art. But artful use of the medium is sparse at the moment.
> Try to find insightful reflection of humanity and truth in a Marvel movie...
Why would you look for that in any standard action movie?
Not every movie needs to awaken your soul to some big revelation about the universe.
The industry is called "the entertainment industry" for a reason. People are able to be entertained without deep philosophical introspection.
That would be a gotcha if anything else was making its way into theaters/ mass consciousness now. What are the highly anticipated movies? Spider-Man and a remake of some supposed epic from a while back.
And then look into all the good movies in Cannes every year. Or subgenres even in us such as horror. Very far away from slop...
This. There is amazing art everywhere right now but somehow it's all slop. Nothing but anecdotes. Meanwhile some friends are in a bedroom studio as we speak creating Aja.
That’s what led me back to books. Character, plot, ideas, coherence. I also love great prose.
You occasionally see thoughtful movies. Many of them are unsurprisingly based on books. The horror genre has become this weird eddy of creativity too with interesting characters and plots and some surprisingly good acting. Of course you’ve historically had innovation in that genre, often ignored because it’s horror and thus low brow by definition.
My take on horror being creative is that it’s like old school punk, pulp novels, zines, underground music. The key there is that these are genres and styles that give you permission to suck, and therefore permission to try stuff.
If it must be high art or it must gross nine figures, you can’t suck. So you can’t innovate.
>Try to find insightful reflection of humanity and truth in a Marvel movie...
I can name several, as well as something profound to be discovered in the execution of the MCU as a whole, but perhaps more salient is why so many people feel the need to tear down the straw man version of Marvel that they have in their minds.
...Oh, fine, I'll give you one:
How is it a strawman if I've seen plenty Marvel movies and report on my experiences?
Radio -> Silent Movies -> Talkies -> Movies -> Video Games -> ? Why is this annoying? We are moving toward greater immersion through technology.
Those are just five separate things. Putting arrows between them in the order that an immersion-seeker might rank them doesn’t mean that it’s actually one thing that became each of the five things, it just means your ability to appreciate those things is limited to “how much can this technology immerse me (or someone else whose money I want)”. This is annoying and artless and leads to claims of “no appreciation for the thing”.
They are all capable of art. Sam Altman saying how things will be in the future of two mediums he doesn’t work in says something very loudly. You just have to choose which thing it is.
Because radio is not the ancestor of video games. Even if you wanted to make the case, it will be painting -> photography -> silent movies... not radio. You can't bunch two different disciplines as related to each other like this even if both of them are art forms.
We still have podcasts but you think radio led to video games?
In the sense that it's another medium for telling a story to a wide audience it did. On the technical side, radio communication contributed to the development of networked communications and is still in use in electronic communications so it also made video games possible. You could also do a deep dive on how mass media in general was influenced by techniques first developed for radio plays e.g. the use and creation of sound effects, changes to scriptwriting, adapting the idea of serialized publications to episodic shows, etc.
This is the trend of available technology, not a ranking of any particular entry. A great radio show will not automatically make a great movie, for instance.
As an example, while Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is available in at least 6 different forms of media, the movie is by far the worst.
Except that movies don’t replace video games. They’re entirely different mediums.
The Orville show explores this idea, before LLMs became a thing. Simulators become the replacement for movies, but the simulations are still designed by a person (or alien).
The concept feels more like a video game than a movie in the show, but presumably you could program the simulation to happen around you instead of you moving through it.
there was a TV commercial in the 1970s that suggested this would happen in the future. Knowing Seth MacFarlane, that's where he got the idea.
Do you think that Super Mario Odyssey is better than Super Mario Bros for the NES? Is Breath of the Wild better than the Legend of Zelda? I mean -- take off your nostalgia-covered glasses and imagine if you handed them both to a kid who had seen neither which one they might be more interested in. Why do you think that is?
Is your contention better graphics are implicitly better? Does this mean movies in color are better than any movie in black and white? Also, are kids an amorphous blob? How should I know what a kid might like better?
Maybe just imagine what one might think? How would you feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast?
Odyssey is better than SMB, but OOT-WW-TP are all better than BOTW (I consider it and TOTK to be the worst games in the series).
I understand but I wouldn't dismiss how consumer choices already contribute to this
Younger people I know, and market to sometimes, literally avoid "plot based media" in favor of brainrot. Akin to what my generation used to call "sooo random"
People catering to it earn a lot. They don't identify as directors, but they are. They don't identify as artists either. They identify as influencers and brands.
You will never be the generation they engage with. I don't expect to base any of my choices in following trends looking for opportunities to be contingent on your affinity for movies and first/third person games.
Even when it comes to spending, they are a powerhouse because parents nationwide and worldwide give them their weekly allowances in platform credits, with no further accountability on how it's spent. There is a large audience already, trends that are full economies within a few months instead of needing to wait an entire 12 to 20 year generation for the audience to have independent purchasing power.
That's what is happening and why someone with even greater perception than me would say things that seem out of touch, but are closer to reality than you'd realize.
“Plot based media” you actually heard someone say this? Like it was a bad thing?
GenZ is culturally destitute. It’s shocking and sad. Every time I think no I must just be old and I don’t know, I go and dig and… very little. There’s just not much there except brain rot and blather and music that’s absolutely derivative of previous music at best. At worst it’s musical brainrot, like “phonk” inspired stuff.
I fear GenA will largely be in the same boat.
It’s scrolling and algorithms. People blast weapons companies and stuff like Palantir or Flock or whatever here, and for rational reasons, but infinite scroll plus engagement algorithms has done more harm to humanity at scale than any of those.
> “Plot based media” you actually heard someone say this? Like it was a bad thing?
yes, and its Gen Alpha that says it. they're just young though, but they are in aggregate an independent spending powerhouse
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> GenZ is culturally destitute
And video killed the radio star. Kids these days, man.
Some movies and some games (or parts of games) really are just for fun. Eg a lot of Bethesda games would improve if you could do a randomly generated storyline on your 4th playthrough, and WoW has 0 storyline to their dailies. It could be kind of fun like a fortune cookie to get a random story. I don't expect art, but it'd be funny to see if it made up a meme-able story.
An awful lot of mainstream movies do have fairly trite plots, with a predictable film style. That's not entirely hate, sometimes I really want to see Michael Bay blow up half of LA. I don't think the next Fast and Furious movie would suffer horribly from AI writing, it's never really been an "art" kind of series anyways.
That reminds me, has anyone made Ow! My Balls! using AI video gen?