Epic Games Delays Disney Project, Asks Developers To Use More AI (yahoo.com) 54
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Epic Games delayed the release of an upcoming video-game collaboration with Walt Disney and told its developers to use more artificial intelligence tools to finish the game, according to people familiar with the project. The title had been slated for release in March, but is now delayed with no new date communicated, said the people familiar, who asked to not be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.
Developers on the game, a shooter featuring characters from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, were instructed to implement an "AI first" production model using tools such as Anthropic's Claude. Humans will then manage and guide that work. "No more hand-written code," one of the game's directors told staff in an internal message reviewed by Bloomberg. The director added that all art for the game would be "generated with full AI workflows."
Even before this announcement, the maker of the popular Fortnite game had been pushing hard for the use of AI across all of its divisions. But this is the first time a major video-game company has attempted to build a title primarily with AI. "We're embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do," said Jake Jones, communications director at Epic Games, in a statement to Bloomberg News.
Developers on the game, a shooter featuring characters from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, were instructed to implement an "AI first" production model using tools such as Anthropic's Claude. Humans will then manage and guide that work. "No more hand-written code," one of the game's directors told staff in an internal message reviewed by Bloomberg. The director added that all art for the game would be "generated with full AI workflows."
Even before this announcement, the maker of the popular Fortnite game had been pushing hard for the use of AI across all of its divisions. But this is the first time a major video-game company has attempted to build a title primarily with AI. "We're embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do," said Jake Jones, communications director at Epic Games, in a statement to Bloomberg News.
So it's full speed ahead on AI-slop then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I see no reason to give human-generated earnings to a company that does not value human programmers and artists.
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There will be a future with a machine and a human economy. We need to do our part to support the human economy.
Individual action won't work here (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't something the free market can solve. It is a fundamental shift in human society and culture. Rugged individualism can only take you so far. And it turns out you can't actually pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. That used to be a joke but we took i
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But I'm not sure how many years this will continue to be a major factor.
Voter suppression works (Score:2)
Paxton is so hated and has so many scandals there's a microscopic chance that talerico will beat him becau
Re:So it's full speed ahead on AI-slop then? (Score:4, Insightful)
> There will be a future with a machine and a human economy.
Is the human economy something like a duracell battery?
In all seriousness: Anyone who uses AI is being used BY AI, to train it to do their job, so that it can in future replace them.
AI's energy thirst is already competing with humans' need for food and warmth..
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Anyone who uses AI is being used BY AI, to train it to do their job
Knowledge and skill are two different things. There's no point in using AI if it doesn't have the knowledge already, and asking it for knowledge does not give it skill. AI is trained to do basics, and can't supplement the human creative process.
If your job was so easily replaced that it was learned by someone whom you asked questions, then you didn't have a job worth keeping, you were just a placeholder for future automation.
Re: So it's full speed ahead on AI-slop then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Centering our lives around "economy" ia thw actual problem here.
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Alternatively you could hunt and gather and produce everything you need by hand within a small group of people... except wait, you'd need a few billion dollars worth of land to support a few people, and there isn't enough available land for that.
If you have to rely on other people for necessities your life is centered around an economy. Even if the propaganda of your social group includes anti-establishment hyperbole.
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The field of economics in general feels like taking Goodhart's Law to the extreme. They're more concerned with the well being of the economic indicators than people's actual well being.
Re:So it's full speed ahead on AI-slop then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then I see no reason to give human-generated earnings to a company that does not value human programmers and artists.
It's a game company. Odds are, they never valued programmers or artists.
Are the original founders still in charge? (Score:1)
It's a game company. Odds are, they never valued programmers or artists.
There is little mystery in such things, just check to see if the original founders are still in charge.
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At least that's the goal anyway. Remember the problem AI is designed to solve as you. Your wages. That is the problem AI is designed to solve.
No matter how little you have it's still too much for Elon Musk and other members of the Epstein class. And
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Re:So it's full speed ahead on AI-slop then? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good thing they just admitted that this game is going to be ineligible for copyright then.
And since it's ineligible, the DMCA doesn't apply when it's cracked.
Re:So it's full speed ahead on AI-slop then? (Score:4, Funny)
The increased AI use might be testing not coding (Score:2)
So it's full speed ahead on AI-slop then?
Not necessarily The increased AI usage might be for testing and not coding game functionality.
Yeah, that is an optimistic interpretation given we are still in fantasy land regarding AI coding assistants. We will repeat mistakes similar to past mistakes. In the past if behind schedule just add programmers. Today if behind schedule just add AI coding assistants. The latter will likely just slow things down and the former did.
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According to the story, they underestimated how many people it would take to make the game that they agreed to make for Disney, so they're way behind schedule and one of the game directors told developers, "No more hand-written code" and all art will be "generated with full AI workflows." A PR person told Bloomberg, "We're embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do."
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slop it up, faster now (Score:2)
Slop machines to 11!
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It's off-topic, but it's actually a funny story.
In the olden days, all the guitar amplifiers were designed to have low distortion. When some rock-and-roll musicians found out that distortion could sound really cool, they started having their amps modified to increase the gain to give distortion. But this proved to be a big problem for touring musicians; when an amp died, was misplaced, or was stolen, not only did the replacement have to have been modified, but each modification produced different amounts of
Anyone wondering why Tim was upset... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the reason why Timmy had a child tantrum on twitter when Steam decided it would add an AI tag games containing AI allowing consumers to avoid this goopy turd like the cholera it contains.
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Epic management chose to sell out to incumbents rather than remain flexible - and relevant.
AI-first is a real engineering shift (Score:5, Interesting)
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Whose work are you using/stealing? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the AI model is trained on public-domain material or "commodity" material that doesn't contain real creative content along with creative content developed in-house or with the blessing/license from the creator/owner, that's fine.
But if it's importing creative and unique content from elsewhere without permission, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Probably lots of lawsuits.
Plus, a significant fraction of the game-buying public is looking to support creators financially, rather than just "buying a game."
Just one question, I've been away from my desk.... (Score:4, Funny)
Who is Al ?
The guy in the Paul Simon song?
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Yes.
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It's a letter I, as in ignoramus. Not an L, as in loser.
It means Actual Italian. It refers to Davie504. All the music in the game is going to be just bass.
Not any more! (Score:5, Insightful)
"We're embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,"
I would amend that to read "... led by Epic developers who used to be the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,".
If AI takes hold and is successful under the guidance of said visionaries, then it will replace those visionaries as soon as the models advance enough. That's the end game here - no pun intended.
get ready for memegames (Score:2)
AI can deliver turnaround times that humans can't.
That military operation that hit the headlines this morning? There'll be a AAA team shooter based on it available on Steam tonight.
Re: get ready for memegames (Score:2, Offtopic)
"AI can deliver turnaround times that humans can't.
That military operation that hit the headlines this morning?"
The one that blew up a bunch of little girls? Maybe turnaround time isn't the most important goal.
Re: get ready for memegames (Score:1)
You don't care about kids in Iran. If you did you wouldn't celebrate our blowing them up, or creating martyrs which ensures that the theocracy we boosted with our coup for oil will get to abuse more of them.
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Nobody's celebrating other than your friends the Ayatollahs. They're putting the blame where it belongs: on the regime. What you're doing is, as usual, rewarding and incentivizing war crimes. Also the Shah used his constitutional powers against Mossadegh, who was the one committing a coup d'etat, and he was ousted by an alliance of islamists and leftists. After taking power the islamists slaughtered the leftists. Same pattern currently happening in Europe, the UK, and the US right now.
Epic Sucks (Score:2)
Epic hasn't made a halfway decent game in over a decade and Unreal Engine 5 is buggy nightmare.
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I went over to wikipedia to see the list of their games to find out when the last time I played one was, and I discovered I've never played one. I don't think I've actually even seen one.
I've used Unreal Engine, though. It's better than Unity at a lot of things. So they may suck at games, but they're good at making game engines. "Buggy nightmare" seems a bit unrealistic, considering how many things it is used for (successfully).
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Well, it's either that the engine is buggy as hell or the developers using it don't fully understand it. Because I'd say about 75% of games that use it, I end up needing to mod corrections into the engine because of bad (or sometimes straight up invalid) settings. Some so glaringly, obviously bad I don't know how it passed any level of play testing.
"No more handwritten code." (Score:3)
What a total Wankstein. Sounds like a detached exec who's never written any code in his life.
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On the one hand, it sounds that way to me, too.
On the other hand, "slop it out the door" isn't guaranteed to be worse than "shove it out the door unfinished and we'll patch it later."
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What a total Wankstein.
I believer the term you were looking for was "Wankerchief". The wanker in charge, so to speak.
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AI slop games = AI slop prices (Score:3)
Nobody in their right minds should pay $70-$80 for a game made this way.
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heck i shouldn't be directly paying for something i only "lease" in the first place
you can have a rental fee and by god you should thank me for it, the concept of paying for a xerox with anything more a xerox of currency is already dubious
then yes, you add the slop layer where everyone is thinking "let's use the Thing Generator and get free money!" as though they weren't being increasingly surrounded by generators and Thing is supposed to still have scarcity (ie currency value) at least when you paid for so
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Prices are not set by the costs but by what you're willing to pay. Then the cost is decreased to the minimum amount of effort that still results in a product that you are willing to buy at that price.
Epic are the kings of slop (Score:3)
Our entire economic system is built on endless highly rapid growth to keep the Epstein class fed. Basically we're all running from the dragon hoping it eats The Hobbit before it eats us. And it's looking like it's done with all the hobbits and we're next on the menu...
more cheese wiz (Score:2)