YHK - yet another hacker news clone

RuneScape's Position on Gen AI

10 points cautiouscat 54 minutes ago 13 comments

royal__ 26 minutes ago | parent

There's a lot of anti-AI warriors on Reddit in the game development space. I dislike lazy AI slop use in games as much as anyone else, but I also dislike the lack of nuance in these positions. They think it's gotta be all or nothing. It will become increasingly unrealistic to expect game developers to not use AI in some part of their process, especially code development, but such use does not automatically make it slop.

rolosa 23 minutes ago | parent

The context is that the company posted a trailer video that was very obviously AI generated art (6 fingers, Nike shoes in a fantasy setting). The pushback is entirely focused on using the slop machine to make slop art and writing.

StevenWaterman 15 minutes ago | parent

It is, but the statement goes further than that and says they use no gen ai at all in making their games. Which feels unnecessary, unless they mean just in the art and writing, which feels misleading

cubefox 6 minutes ago | parent

In particular, it would mean their software engineers are not allowed to use Claude/Codex etc, in contrast to common industry practice.

haunter 9 minutes ago | parent

I wonder if it’s a more western thing. Like the remake of Yo-kai Watch 2 was revealed a couple of weeks ago in the latest Nintendo Direct and the trailer is obviously gen AI yet… no one seems to care about that. Especially not on the japanese and asian social media https://youtu.be/76L1JKQWB8w

otoh I would put the Runescape community and people who play Yo-kai Watch games as far away as possible from each other

CivBase 22 minutes ago | parent

Seems like a perfectly good response to me.

cautiouscat 16 minutes ago | parent

I agree. It does make me think these tools need an irrevocable signature on the files, if that’s even possible. You can ask someone you’re commissioning if they use AI, and they can just lie.

Now should have Jagex reviewed it? Of course. However, there’s just this mistrust in art now. I’ve commissioned two things from artists. I asked both, as for my work I want to fund actual artists. However as these tools get better, I’m concerned that trust won’t be good enough.

Fake edit: “Well if it’s so good you can’t tell the difference then why’s it matter” completely misses the point so let’s not bother with that.

retrac98 12 minutes ago | parent

I understand the sentiment, but I feel like not using AI for game dev isn’t going to be economically viable much longer, and I wonder why companies don’t just embrace it while it still gives them an edge.

fcarraldo 6 minutes ago | parent

I agree that blanket GenAI bans won't be viable much longer, as competition will move much faster.

But also, game development economics are very different from SaaS products. You can't spend a ton of money in tokens per month and expect that the gains from selling those features will support the cost of building them. Game dev margins are already slim-to-negative for most independent studios.

cautiouscat 5 minutes ago | parent

I think a lot of studios use it for code already, and I also don’t think that’s the contentious part.

Games are art, and the people who make them are by and large: artists. Why would artists want to use generative AI?