AI Mistakes Are Infuriating Gamers as Developers Seek Savings

The $200 billion video game industry is caught between studios eager to cut ballooning development costs through AI and a player base that has grown openly hostile to the technology after a string of visible blunders.

As Bloomberg News reports, Arc Raiders, a surprise hit from Stockholm-based Embark Studios that sold 12 million copies in three months, was briefly vilified online for its robotic-sounding auto-generated voices -- even as CEO Patrick Soderlund insists AI was only used for non-essential elements. EA's Battlefield 6 and Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 both drew gamer anger this winter over thematically mismatched or poorly generated graphics, and Valve's Steam has added labels to flag games made using AI.

Some 47% of developers polled by research house Omdia said they expect generative AI to reduce game quality, and PC gamers -- now facing inflated hardware prices from AI-driven demand for graphics chips -- have turned reflexively antagonistic.

WTF do you mean the customer gets a say?!

[ebunga]

You mean we can't shit down their throats and demand they pay us $70 for the disservice?

Re: WTF do you mean the customer gets a say?!

[easyTree]

It's in the gaaaayme.

Re:

[codebase7]

So you're the person that was left in that dumpster [ifunny.co]..... /s

Re:WTF do you mean the customer gets a say?!

[backslashdot]

Most don't give a shit, most are OK with the quality hit. CEOs know that. The cost saving from AI is too compelling. Decades ago, my friend worked at a textile plant in North Carolina. They shut down that plant in the 90s. They were selling good quality fabric at $20 an hour. The Chinese offered slightly inferior fabric at $4. Clothes makers/ chose the $4 fabric, because ultimately the consumer was OK with replacing their clothes more often. Don't blame the clothes makers, definitely don't blame China. Blame the consumer. Don't shift the blame, ultimately it was the choice and attitude of the consumer. They knew the whole time too.

Re:

[backslashdot]

Type: $20 a pound I meant.

Re:

[2TecTom]

yah, prices are insanely excessive given how poor the quality is

sadly most free to play public games are overun by cheaters

Re:

[codebase7]

sadly most free to play public games are overun by cheaters

Well if the damn game publishers would produce a dedicated server program. Allowing players to build their own separate communities that exclude the cheaters. Instead of having the cheater's own device calling the shots against a captive audience. Things might improve.

Of course, that would "require" them to "spend" more of the money they made from charging you for multiplayer access.

Re:

[2TecTom]

i couldn't agree more

or they could easily create a public site to list accounts banned or suspended and make an honest effort to identify cheaters in the real world and bring either attention to them or charges against them and all the cheat producers

instead they pretend to act while they rake in millions from cheaters and the cheated

this is exactly what irresponsibility and greed looks like

Re:

[2TecTom]

online casinos are explitation in action , you're post looks like advertising to me

greedy people are so easily manipulated

So you want to use AI

[Iamthecheese]

If you're a gaming studio and you want to use AI there are two things you should be using it for. The first thing to use it for it first pass only creation of whatever small modules you have. Treat it like code written by a first year intern. The second thing to use it for is automating code reduction and efficiency efforts where those efforts are bounded and tested out the wazoo. Use it to count library calls, identify wasteful algorithms and reduce layers. NOT to fix the issues it finds.

A bit more maybe

[JBMcB]

I'm even OK with using AI to do minimal graphics work. Some nonsense playing on a TV in the background of a bar. Graffiti in an alleyway. Grunt work stuff not important to the game itself, but makes the world feel a little more lived-in. Not character design, or voices, or the layout of a level, or clothes, etc...

Re:

[Calydor]

I've seen a case of a placeholder voice having been generated by AI, but since it was for an ingame AI the fans actually preferred it to what the 'real' lines ended up sounding like, and the company went back to the generated voice. That's a very specific usecase, though.

Re:So you want to use AI

[drinkypoo]

There's a ton of other places LLMs can do work to support game development. They're good at making seamless textures, for example. They seem to be pretty good at doing things like simplifying 3d models. The only absolute law of AI in development is that a qualified person has to check its work every time because it might do something completely bananas.

Re:

[gweihir]

Yes. But there is a second aspect: Make sure you are not spending much more overall on creating good quality. So far, even really good results seem to only get you 5-10% efficiency increase and there are strong indicators that for many things, AI use makes you slower.

Hence use AI, but do not ever expect it to do your job for you or "transform" things. It cannot do that.

Re:

[gweihir]

There is actually more: Better mock-ups and experiments. None of which should ever make it in production.

Authenticity

[scumdamn]

It's hard for some people to believe but authenticity really is important sometimes. If I'm engaging in an artistic product I want it to be authentic. If I'm communicating with someone at work, I want it to be authentic. If I'm having to sit through a presentation, authentic. I don't care what a clanker has to say about anything. I want connection and communication from a real live person.

Re:

[backslashdot]

How is AI any less authentic than a game? Both are simulations of reality.

Re:

[backslashdot]

* than a game coded algorithmically or drawn by a designer

Re: Authenticity

[xgerrit]

How is AI any less authentic than a game? Both are simulations of reality.

A recording of a singer is a "simulation of reality", but it started out with a real person. Knowing that is part of the recording's power. If you replace the singer with something generated by technology and a listener knows it, it's much harder to create the same emotional connection, even when it "sounds good". People want to feel there's a connection with other people. Why would games be so different?

just terrible

[bloodhawk]

I mean this is disgracefui, up until AI games were released in a perfect state with no bugs, graphics glitches or crashes. how can this be acceptable.

Don't blame the tool...

[Fly Swatter]

...for the 'game artists' using it wrong. If things are mismatched, that is on the HUMAN that accepted the output from the AI tool. In fact it should be easy to re-frame the prompt to get things to match better. These are not artists using the AI they are monkeys that can't do art in the first place.

Re:

[bloodhawk]

Yep exactly. AI is a tool, using it incorrectly is not the fault of the tool. Games have declined in quality long before AI became a thing, hopefully AI once they start using it correctly will increase the appalling quality in gaming where waht you buy has basically been pre beta for many years now.

Old games are the way to go

[devslash0]

As I grew older and realised the value of my time, I got to appreciate the good, old, DRM-free games.

- You play when you want, or when you have time.
- At your own pace, without having to compete with anyone.
- Offline.
- No loot boxes or pay-to-win microtransactions..
- Complete story, from start to finish.
- You can complete them in a week, or in a lifetime.
- Timeless masterpieces. Great stories. It's like being a part of a book.
- No unexpected updates and destructive changes in the name of money.
- No DRM.

These are the games that are worth playing. Not this modern crap.

I currently have around 250 of them stashed away in my cloud storage, waiting for their turn. Enough to last a lifetime.

One day when I retire, the devil is going to put a condition on my life that I wouldn't be allowed to die until I complete them all.

Re:

[fleeped]

That's the "fun" part with commercial video game development - as a developer, you have to compete with decades worth of a catalog of amazing games, with the only benefit is ... improved UI and some QoL stuff, maybe?

Re:

[kbrannen]

I like the idea, but I've found there there are time limits on this. Some games (or programs in general) want certain features available, which is normally expressed by "needs XYZ OS" (where XYZ can be anywhere from Win98 to Win10 depending on how old the game is). If you don't have that OS available, you aren't going to play the game. Sometimes there are work-arounds, but not always. So I hope you have various machines on the different OS's those games require. If the games are not too graphic oriented, VM

Re:

[antdude]

Also, old games will run nicely on your modern PCs assuming they are compatible.