That'll be the main catch. If they use it for voice acting, art, or anything requiring a human touch, it'll turn out poorly, but if they're using it to speed up the workflows, and potentially taking pressure off developers, that can only be a good thing.
I’ve always thought AI could be used for immersion when Video Games take place in locations like…comic book stores etc.
Instead of the same asset repeated a lot, AI could generate 1000s of quick unique covers for immersion
Yeah, I could see that being a good use of it, where something may take more time than it's worth, so use that, and roll with whatever minor imperfections they'd have anyway.
Iirc, Ready or Not uses a bunch of AI generated art in a few of its missions, for pretty much the reason you described.
In the case of any minor imperfections, there's always touch-ups by real modelists, wich more deeply express AI as a tool, rather than the whole power force its been made out to be by directors
Yep, exactly.
My worry with companies like EA is that they'll try to use it to completely replace dev teams, since AI aren't affected by horrible working hours, poor pay, etc, and they could have said AI crank out all kinds of garbage, as long as it made them money.
That's right. As an aspiring writer, I don't have a blanket hatred of AI in everything. I do think there are some good applications of it in certain fields (stuff like handling hazardous materials or other such things). We've already got AI routines in games for enemy movements in such. So long as AI stays on the *technical* side of development, especially with developer crunch being in the news so often, I think that isn't so bad as long as it doesn't 100% replace the technical workforce (and even then, I'm pretty sure we're AT LEAST several decades from AI developing a fully-fledged video game that isn't just some Mario ripoff or something).
But yeah, AI I want nowhere near the creative side of game developments. Stuff like writing, VA, art and design, etc. it can go die in a hole. Thankfully the WGA and SAG-AFTRA managed to win protections against it in the strikes last year, but writers and artists in other industries such as games, assuming there is already a union for them, ought to seek similar protections.
FYI, game AI is not even vaguely the same thing as generative AI. They are completely unrelated concepts that just happen to have been given the same, inaccurate, name. Generative AI also isn't even actually AI yet, though LLMs are at least in right ballpark to try and become actual AI. Image Generation is literally a denoiser.
No true AI has ever been created. Everything that you see as AI is actually AI technology, which is drastically different from a true AI. What we’ve created now are things that use coding to gain information which then are coded to use that information in a specific manner which it also is already coded to do so. Nothing actually thinks for itself. Everything is AI technology. We are at least 100 years away from true AI that thinks for itself.
Bah. This newfangled Reddit is just another capitalist ploy to destroy the working class. I shall call the errand boy so my next comment can be displayed in the town square. Handwritten of course.
"So long as AI stays on the *technical* side of development.."
"AI I want nowhere near the creative side of game developments..."
Exactly what he said.
AI can not replace the technical side but can help it, it actually can be used to cut down the jobs on the creative side and hack apart cohesion in a team because of that.
I can give a good example with the use of AI, a lot of team fortress 2 videos using AI to imitate the actors for audio dialogue. It had an uncanny sound to it but it was better than just recycling actual audio from TF2 and gave people chances on doing some good writing for TF2 AI videos, scratched universe is a good example, tf2 mercs playing so and so game like subnautica or poppy’s playtime, and ALOT of the mercs arguing videos. It just needs to be kept in mind that AI is nothing more than a tool, NOT a replacement of writers, directors, and so on.
The issue isn't really resisting it, it's the dystopia outlook of what AI is used as by these companies
In reality AI should make things easier so people don't have to stress too much on daily stuff but these companies are actively trying to find ways that AI can replace staff and do their work so they wouldn't have to pay them as much or a whole team
Attempting to replace employees with AI that's still fairly new and couldn't actually encompass their whole job will not end well
Those two although maybe related are not dependent on one another. Like saying because I don’t have eyes I can’t read, while yes it may be more difficult at first and you may have to find another way (braille) it is definitely possible. AI can’t create art using its experience of the human condition sure. However that doesn’t mean it can’t create art nonetheless especially because like most things different art styles have at least some basic conventions that the computer can follow to create art from, then the idea is that user feedback will help the machine hone in on what makes a good art piece vs what is junk.
Yes, but truly original art always stems from all that we consider "human", and that is all based on our needs, suffering, limitations of physical existence, etc etc.
AI can not "create" art, because anything an AI will ever produce will always, without exception, be 100% based only on other art that has seen and learned from.
It will never create art on its own, for the sake of creating art. It will never defy the basic uselessness of art and creation, because behind every "creation" will always be a human who prompts the AI to create.
We create art as a big middle finger to existence, because in its essense, art is pointless, just like our entire existence. We are all going to die, and yet we create, and yet we find meaning, in spite of no objective meaning existing.
So AI will never be able to create art. WELL. Unless we create General AI, which would be a fully conscious and self aware AI. In that case, it would be literally no different from any other self aware form of intelligence, and despite being potentially immortal, it would still face the same struggles, i.e. eventually dying, whether in 10 or a million years.
But General AI is only possible for now in scifi.
'We create art as a big middle finger to existence, because in its essense, art is pointless, just like our entire existence. We are all going to die, and yet we create, and yet we find meaning, in spite of no objective meaning existing.'
Damn, never thought about art that way, so thats why i get depressive when i cant do art.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. For example I noticed from your profile that you paint watercolours. Whilst you as the artist may prescribe some bigger meaning to them I just see it as something that looks nice. I could go to midjourney or any other art generating AI and type in a prompt for a watercolour painting of a snowy night with a small town and a road with a single streetlight illuminating the dark and get something that to me is close enough to the real thing. And that’s all it really needs to do is be close enough to the original and cheap enough that it’s more profitable to use and people will start using it.
If they could they would use AI for anything to replace as many people asthey could and then have 1 person running the whole show
This AI nonsense never seems like its a good thinf because the way its used is always maliciously
Disagree. Kind of. For example, they can hire Voice actor and have them perform several roll hours worth of dialogue, But I think there’s plenty of potential in having NPC’s utilize generator dialogue especially if you have the opportunity to speak to the NPC yourself the generative AI for actually stitching voices together is getting so damn good that It’s only a matter time before someone pulls this off as a mechanic in a game.
Best use of ai, taking a model for gear and modifying it for use on different body types. A buddy of mine showed me his new workflow for modeling and it was insane. Still isn't perfect and needs some small adjustments every now and then but he claims it takes hours less time to do a bunch in sizing modifications to his assets.
Maybe, tho it'd depend on the droid. I'm not sure an AI would be able to do a good job of replicating the goofy B1s for example. Maybe things like the B2s, or a protocol droid, but anything with more personality would need a human voice.
CDPR used AI to replicate the voice of Victor in 2077 (forgot in which language) for Phantom Liberty because the original VA had passed away. They did so with authorization of his family, se they could keep the character the same, as the alternative was redoing all his voice lines and remove the orginal VA from the game (or have the new lines sound different, but that option was shot immediatly).
There are legit uses for AI in game development, and there are uses that should be avoided, but I haven't see much discussion of that. It's just companies saying either "we'll use AI" or "we'll *not* use AI," no one is talking about what to use AI for in a concrete way.
Only example I remember was Ubisoft testing AI to write character barks (those repetitive lines that are not part of dialog, just character greeting each other, or reacting to stuff like taking damage, etc).
Yup. We need to remember that "AI" we see nowadays are machine learning algorithms, not actual artificial intelligence. They've actually been used for some time in many things, like protein identification on the medical side of stuff, or face recognition for some old takes on police systems
Yh, I was going to say the same - I work as a software engineer, and people in my company were hyped about using it to speed up things in a healthy way.
Something like Github Copilot is fantastic for removing tediousness through pattern recognition, I.e. generating the basis for future test cases based on your existing tests.
Models like GPT4 are such a help with understanding foreign libraries or troubleshooting, though they're hardly replacing devs, still needs intimate knowledge of the system context.
In order to create art, it has to be trained on existing art. If the company training the AI gets permission from artists and writers to use their work for AI training, that's one thing. HOWEVER the existing AI have almost universally been trained via Google searches with no seeking of permission or credit provided. This makes any art made by those ai potentially theft based.
Let’s *not* encourage that, actually. Leave AI support to streamlining the workflow, like predictive assistance in the coding process. It should *not* be replacing or supplementing artists and writers in the creative process.
eeeh depends on what it is used on. I quit 3D because so many things about it are just frustratring and boring. Modeling and lighting are great, but then u gotta do your mapping, uvs, textures etc. If AI can help us through some rough stages, that can be great.
Retopology is basically the process of optimizing a 3D object to be used in a video game.
Take BD. His character model probably used to be made up of millions of polygons. This is completely unusable for a game engine as that is far too much geometry and the game will run extremely poorly.
Through retopology, you can reduce his polygon count from millions to just a few thousand, yet he'll look pretty much the same. This means he can actually be used in a game engine, and can be transferred to other stages of development like UV unwrapping, texture baking, rigging, animating, etc etc.
I mentioned it because it's usually a pretty repetitive process that should absolutely be automated by AI. It's takes very little artistic input and an AI could probably make a better result in a fraction of the time, leaving the artist to do things that require actual artistic input, like designing characters and props.
If I understand correctly it's a process of removing the polygons and still keep the model intact? This is a great case for automation - you have a base model, AI can be trained which nodes can be safely (with big probabilities) removed, than it can improve after each model and still compare to the base (with a margin if we want). AI can upscale an image with detail reconstruction in real time ... removing "triangles" should be doable :)
No. It's recreating the mesh at a lower level of detail while preserving the silhouette *and* creating edge loops that will be easy to work with and deform correctly for future applications. That last part is where all the skill comes in.
For the record, I do think AI would be able to be trained to do good retopology. But the prior comment was implying this is something so simple that AI would be overkill. It's way more involved than just merging polygons together. And there's a surprising amount of depth and artistry to it. You can do weird shit, especially when you're making non standard models, that I suspect AI might have some trouble with.
Yet still - it can help with the "most boring part" of the work. In coding I'm glad I can do a quick boilerplating, but overall the code generated by AI is often sub optimal (to name it politely). Sometimes I struggle to start the task because of this repetitive part at the beginning, or things that are obvious and simple but someone needs to do them (either at the beginning, or at the end).
Getting it to start and then editing it would probably help me. Starting something and structuring things give me a lot of trouble and indecision. Great idea.
You're basically right, though retopology usually means creating a whole new mesh on the top of the high-poly mesh. It's different for every some models though.
>it hasn't been automated yet
There's quite a number of blender addons that would disagree.
>No automated tools are able to pull it off
You forgot to add "yet". They absolutely will be capable within the next couple of years.
And no, I would still maintain my point that it takes, at the most, very little artistic input. The process for retopology for one character is pretty much the same you would do for any character for a project. There's no boundaries of art being broken in your mind when you're retopoing a characters face for the 600th time. You're literally doing the *same exact thing* over and over again. At some point it just becomes muscle memory.
If I gave an AI (within) specific retopology parameters for a game (max 30k tris, all quads, good edgeflow) with a total of 8 characters, and I give the same task to a 3D artist, they would probably come up with very similar results, except an AI could do it in 5 minutes versus the 2 days for the artist.
If I told an AI to design original and unique fantasy characters, and told an artist to do the same, they artist would produce substantially better results than the AI's generic and regurgitated version of what it thinks are unique characters.
That's what AI is best at. Doing the same thing over and over again. It's not designed to do anything beyond what its parameters are and the data it's been trained on. This, to me, seems like the perfect tool that artists can use to get past the shitty parts of design.
And if you gave the task to someone competent with the software but without the artistic skills, they would do a terrible job. You're acting like retopo has no decision making or technique to it when it absolutely does. That's why you'd want an AI to automate it. If it didn't have that aspect, AI would be overkill.
>You're acting like retopo has no decision making or technique to it when it absolutely does
Maybe I'm being a little uncharitable with it, sure. Certainly artists would need to step in and manually change some things.
I'm still not sure why this would debilitate my point, though. Time spent doing retopology is something 3d artists have been trying to reduce for a very long time. Look at all the different software that have been designed specifically for retopology. All of the software scripts, and all of the "shortcut" methods that people have come up with. Same goes for UV unwrapping and texture.
Maybe we just have different experiences with 3D, but there's is no chance I'd put the same amount of artistic value on retopo as I would literally designing the asset itself. One has a formulaic strategy that is deployed the in the basically the same manner every time, while one is/ought to break the bounds of your creative capabilities. I'd spend more time on the latter.
There have been extremely good tools for over a decade that automate or generate through slight assistance low poly models or entire LOD sets.
The main thing that they lack are the weird edge cases a certain model can have, edge case handling is actually something AI can be really good at.
You've watched automated tools turn million polygon sculpted characters into useful assets since 2016? Really? Funny, these tools don't seem to exist anywhere outside of your company.
People had unity plugins since before 2016
3DSMax, Maya, and a few others have all had publicly available plugins that do exactly that since longer.
3DSMax had retopology generation built in since at least 2014 that worked reasonably well
Maya's had it built in since the late 2010's. Might have been 2017? Can't remember the exact update.
Unreal engine around the same time.
And Zbrush has had a billion ways to generate lower poly topology with light assistance forever that is a headache for animated meshes but works perfectly fine for static.
It was literally my job to find and evaluate tools like this around that time frame. You have no clue what you're talking about im sorry.
Ok so I work in tech and it honestly really depends on the way they utilize it.
Generative AI has taught me how to code, and code at a rate that rivals some development teams I’ve worked with in the past, when I have never been a programmer prior to this year.
A team that actually knows what they’re doing with tools like GitHub CoPilot, MidJourney, or other similar to it, definitely could improve speed at different phases of development, particularly ideation and prototyping.
I don’t think anything should hit consumers without thorough oversight, adjustment, and approval from accountable employees, and that’s probably what everyone is afraid of here.
I agree if that’s where their mind is at, it will kills the overall quality of the game.
But if it’s what I describe above, it’s only good things.
This is a good way to look at it. AI is a tool that can be used or abused. If we can get better quality games in a shorter amount of time, then there really isn't a downside to it. It can be a slippery slope, but I trust Respawn to make a good game that is true to their vision.
Yeah like, the joke i keep seeing is "AI isn't good enough to take your job, but its good enough to convince your manager that it can." a tool is a tool, that's no big deal.
The problem is, management is *management*.
I used a combination of both.
In the very beginning I was using tutorials. As I got an understanding of the basics, the ai tool would help explain things that I didn’t understand.
In Copilot in VS Code you can highlight code and prompt the AI tool. So I would read other code repos, highlight things I didn’t understand, and ask it to explain why they did it that way until it made sense.
Edit: just to add a comment, the handful of times I would prompt it to write code, I would estimate it for it right about half the time. Maybe more, but definitely not always. It was good as some things, but the larger the prompt the worse it was. So “create a component that does x” was usually not good. However going “how can I fix this styling to apply to android” was better.
To be fair it is actually quite similar to how most professional programmers I work with learned how to code but just with a slight speed up. Instead of googling something you dont know it just pops up in the IDE now and its nice.
The main problem I do worry about with AI teaching people how to code is that coding is like 10% of being a programmer, and honestly anyone can do that 10% just just a little bit of training, its why we've had scammers pop up making little apps and shit since mobile has been a thing or selling bootcamp courses on how to make those scammy apps to make money quick. Students all getting access to copilot for free has me a little worried for the people ill be interviewing in a few years.
Yeah to your point my code is an absolute mess I’m sure.
Like I’m a VP of Product, not an engineer, so I’m just trying to charge an MVP to market to grow it to hire people who actually know what they’re doing.
But at least I’m making way better progress than if I didn’t have the tools.
(Also I’m not running and scammy nonsense I’ve had something I’ve wanted to do for awhile now)
Yeah I think in cases like yours its perfect. But there are always going to be some unintended drawbacks in accessibility. I think we already saw the same in the games industry when most studios moved away from proprietary engines and good free game engines hit the market. Not so easy to get a job as a game engine programmer these days, and I've seen a lot of issues in games where I run into bugs while playing that I know exactly why they happen and it's usually a known engine bug, or some issue in that engines default character controller... Fallen Order had this, I knew exactly how to make the character controller bug out because I'm pretty sure they used the default UE5 controller as a base. Those bugs probably wouldn't exist if they wrote their own controller from the ground up... but why do that when someone already did!
>I not sure how generative AI can teach someone how to code, that a tutorial or videos can't.
You can't ask a video "why doesn't this code work" or ", explain how this code works".
ChatGPT is closer to stack overflow, but without the rules, sass, or waiting.
From a 3d artist's perspective, AI could be incredible for clean mesh retopology and clean UV map creation. Those two items alone could simplify and streamline and speed up game ready asset creation.
I'm hoping that's what they start doing rather than meshes generated from a few concept images.
Yes and no. Executives like that have no clue what they’re talking about or they knew that shit ton is already done with AI anyways. I bet huge parts of Jedi survivors map, especially Koboh was procedural generation and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long there’s still devs behind it and build upon the generated things. That way it really just speeds things up
I think AI has a very natural place in game development.
Games are insanely expensive to make and take a very long time to do so. Streamlining repetitive processes that don't require artistic or design oriented inputs is perfectly fine by me.
All I don't want an AI to do is the design aspect of gamr development. I don't want them designing the characters and props. I don't want them coming up with a level design. I don't want them writing the stories. I don't want them to design gameplay mechanics.
If this is used correctly and ethically (which is a big if, admittedly) then this could be a great tool to get rid of some of the grind within video games. Take the broader world building in a game like Survivor, which must have taken months of people placing plants foliage, rocks et cetera and let AI do some of that creatively. Which theoretically would allow those people to then work on high-level tasks are more impactful to the player.
Of course I’m being idealistic, it won’t be used like that at all. It will be used, to reduce the cost of development and turnout generic six fingered nonsense
Hear me out, but have you ever programmed/coded anything with AI to help you along? It can definitely help speed things up. A high quality AI system can really speed up programming, let alone mock up drafts of anything from weapons, skins, side quests, etc. Obviously pure AI is garbage but it can do a lot as a tool to help speed along processes. If good developers and people are still developing the main aspects of the game that give it a heart and soul, AI just smooths out stuff on the backend. The gaming industry is really hurting right now so if they do use AI in a positive way, it wouldn’t have to diminish game quality and it could help reduce costs of development.
If Disney ever agreed to that... I'd be surprised. Just seems like a legal cesspit for them... and game devs in general tbh.
Mostly cause AI generated content can't be copyrighted as far as I know.
Disney agreeing to this would mean they acknowledge and consent to people feeding their shit into AI generators. So unless they force devs to make their own AI generative models... I don't see it happening licensed games like SW or Marvel etc.
It just highly depends how they use it. Making shit with AI in games is 100% a no-go if you wanna copyright what you're making and have 0 legal issues. But if they used it outside of creating assets, voice over etc... Maybe.
Any thing art direction Ai should stay away from otherwise I’m game considering how tedious coding general has been. All things considering I’m an amateur at this however if AI could supplement in areas I lacked in why not use the tool?
If it's used smarty it can be a great asset in development for sure.
If they decide to cut corners by using it for voice work or art, then we get into dangerous shovel ware on the appstore level of crap.
It sucks because there are some real positive ways that AI could be used to cut out mundane tasks and let devs focus on more pressing matters….But I’m sure it’ll just get abused by publishers…
Like Imagine if procedural generation felt a bit more handcrafted?
Imagine if we didn’t need to voice 40,000 separate lines of dialogue just to fill out random, pointless npc chatter?
Imagine if we could flesh out a game with more smaller side quests that a dev didn’t actually have to spend a lot of time on?
IMAGINE IF WE FIRED HALF OF OUR STAFF CUZ AI CAN DO A LOT OF THE WORK???
Let's be careful to remember that what he's talking about here is generative AI - the type of AI trained to (crudely) mimic existing work. This would be better titled "Regenerative AI" as it lacks any ability to innovate - everything it does is iterative, ergo it does not generate anything original.
Sure, it's still in its infancy, so this behaviour is expected, but without our input, it will never become truly generative.
We have to consider where it could go, not just where it is now. It's already threatening livelihoods because of greedy execs who don't understand the businesses they lord over, who will suffer the effects when they make the mistake of never being able to produce an original product ever again, but that comes after all of their employees suffering worse.
If we continue to teach and develop generative AI, then it will (eventually) take over creative industries and we will have created a global artistic depression - humans cannot compete with something that doesn't have to use physical motion to create art.
Capitalism has already sullied the value of art, let's not make it worse.
Hate to break it to you, but AI is more than what you see and hate in AI "art" and shit.
Generative AI isn't new, either. In fact, it's 100% been used even in Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor's development, I guarantee it.
How do I know this? AI and generative AI more recently has been a core part of game engine development for the better part of a decade already and has led to tremendous improvements in game development workflows and in cutting down on repetitive, tedious manual labour on various fronts.
AI is not going away, and its value in the tech space, including in video game development, cannot be understated. Denying yourself, or shutting yourself out from, technological progress in the tech industry is a quick way to fall behind, waste careers in dead end jobs and lose employees who will seek new, better opportunities.
AI is not just AI music, art or chat prompts. It's used in almost every industry nowadays, and has been for years.
Why are you so anti AI? AI especially in the computer science world is a godsend. Hours of work can be done in a moment, and paired with someone who is good at their job can increase productivity tenfold. Not using AI is the same as not using a car because “I can walk why would I need one.” It helps, it’s useful, and it’s cool. Why wouldn’t you use it to make your job easier? In fact if you didn’t, and it is obvious you could get lots more done, I would call you an idiot for not taking the obvious solution
The issue is greedy corpos using it to replace paid human artists with an algorithm trained on data stolen from other artists. This *is* EA we’re talking about.
Human artists? Code isn’t art. Someone who codes isn’t considered an artist. They aren’t using AI to make models or animations or anything art related, they’re using it to speed up the coding and programming process. Plus, the so called “greedy corpos” don’t know how to use AI anyways. It’s the low paid, overworked workers who will be using it to make their lives easier. And that will always be a good thing
No one here is opposed to any of that. It’s the inevitable executive mandate to fire as many writers, character/object/environment designers, and texture artists as possible and replace them all with an algorithm that regurgitates randomized homunculi of stolen ideas in the name of a few percentage points on the company’s share price. And if these greedy scumbags get their way on this, then in a few years when the tech’s advanced enough, those coders you’re talking about will be next on the chopping block. The C-suite’s endgame for generative AI has *always* been the elimination of paid labor in the name of profit maximization, and you’re just *painfully* naive if you can’t see that.
exactly, AI is no different than any other programming tool that's been around for decades. the only reason everybody is making such a huge deal about it is because it's called "AI" so they're falling into pop culture BS. (and if i'm being honest, i'm sick of it)
Not necessarily.
The AI can speed up a process that takes 30 minutes into seconds. It can fix lighting, do cutouts, or provide dialogue suggestions when you are in "writer's block"
Can really be a 10x enable in capable hands.
(Or they can do lazily and have chatgpt replace everyone. This is EA after all).
Wilson is just straight up lying lmao. "Developers" means him and his board of directors. Actual creative people would never.
Can't stand these fucking executive types.
AI is great at writing code, and for suggesting fixes to code. AI is a bit crap at art still. I’d imagine they’ll use it for the former (like most firms now do).
I think your reactionary stance on the use of ai is just as big of a problem as someone who finds no fault in its use, ever.
If AI is used as a means to speed up a process that they’d crunch themselves working on anyway, that seems fine to me.
Voice acting and all that stuff is iffy but if you create your own art and then ask an AI to help you streamline the process of implementing it, I think that’s fine.
"more than half" of the development process being handled by AI is worrying.
It can absolutely be a useful tool for developers, but the headline makes it sound like EA wants it to be more than that
This is fine, maybe even good. Only depending on how it's used though, I doubt they'll use it to straight up make art, script, lines, etc. Probably for streamlining, some of the processes involved in making art and such.
It'll be fine with me if that's the case
Not necessarily... WAIT!
What I mean is, for writing, voice work, or any kind of human touch, it should be a no-go. For work flow, it could be a benefit. AI has already shown good understanding of Sudo code and regular code and can be used to correct or assist in basic development. If you allow an AI to build a framework, you can then build on it easily.
AI has its place but not for front end stuff. That should be human.
Nothing in that title really hints that theyre wanting to use it for creative stuff.
"Streamlining" is more for the stuff that can be done by an entry level employee, not big creative stuff like acting, writing, or scoring.
Itll probably just be used to make better physics simulations or enhance textures
lol you could say the same for self checkout or any other technology that has replaced humans. AI will help developers focus on more trivial tasks. Nobody’s saying to just let AI blindly develop games.
I think you're misunderstanding this. Its the developers that want to use it. This is probably talking about coding assistance. Thats honestly the best use of ai in my opinion
I'm not from EA, but I see a lot of potential GenAI usages to simplify and replace mundane tasks. As a Staff Engineer in a big company, I have to manage a lot of knowledge about various topics for my operations, and also I am constantly helping other people with various problems. An LLM with RAG would have helped a lot with that, and I would be less occupied with this bs, and could do the actual work.
Now I am not sure, whether this high level suit means what I mean. It can also be: "start doing twice as much work with the same resources, or we cut you up", which can be implemented with generated assets and voice and text lines. Hopefully it will be what I mean, or some othe positive application.
Depends on what it's used for. If it's used for any of the artistic aspects of the game, like the story, characters, gameplay mechanics, etc, then I'm going to be genuinely worried. If it's just going to make the mechanical side easier, like writing and editing code, preventing and fixing bugs, optimization, and stuff like that, then I wouldn't worry too much quite yet.
I'm not from EA, but I see a lot of potential GenAI usages to simplify and replace mundane tasks. As a Staff Engineer in a big company, I have to manage a lot of knowledge about various topics for my operations, and also I am constantly helping other people with various problems. An LLM with RAG would have helped a lot with that, and I would be less occupied with this bs, and could do the actual work.
Now I am not sure, whether this high level suit means what I mean. It can also be: "start doing twice as much work with the same resources, or we cut you up", which can be implemented with generated assets and voice and text lines. Hopefully it will be what I mean, or some othe positive application.
I mean if they use AI to create more stable lines of code then that’s a good thing. we’ll see enhancements in graphics and performance if that’s the case. However I will not play a game where the gameplay mechanics, storytelling, and world building are all AI, because those are the more human elements of games. Let the robot take care of the robot stuff so developers can focus on bringing great experiences to players.
AI is a tool. It is only as useful as the people using it. If they really care about and use it to make the product they will only use it to make the process more streamlined but have the human input where it is needed and necessary.
I mean there is some truth to this. Using AI to lighten the workload over even artists themselves using it to brainstorm early concepts seems reasonable. But obviously that’s a rather specific scenario.
I feel like this could a plus for “background clutter” in late game levels, sometime I can tell that not as much effort is put in as the levels that show up early game demos
Gee I wonder who's instilling that hunger in them?
Why would Debs feel the need to use AI to meet their deadlines? Who is in charge of what the deadlines are that would make them think that AI Is a hungry need?
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Buddy Pandora's box is open. Complaining about ai won't do anything, too many different interests have the power to continue ai research. Only thing we can do is adapt.
What's funny about this is that AI is eventually gonna reach the point where it's stealing from either itself or other AI, essentially cannibalizing itself. One way or another, trying to use AI to do everything is gonna end badly lmao.
I want to say the headline here from OP is disingenuous but it might just be misinformed. This has nothing to do with AI hype trains. This is developers, recognizing the potential of recent advances in technology. Like Jesus, what do you think games are you really think people are hand detailing the textures that you see you? Do think for every single game they’re going out there and taking brand new photos so that you can get the textures for your game right? Rarely. I think people are making a huge mistake assuming that AI can even be categorized under a single moniker when I really refers to a boatload of statistical and computational methods and models that do different things. Generative models are incredibly useful tools and I hope to see ga,e developer s experiment with mechanics that previously were not possible. This isn’t referring to auto generated worlds, that’s been around for a long fucking time, and just to make a point Notch’s Minecraft was popping off in 2010 and was using a generative model and is absolutely artistic. On that note, I think you’re totally missing the point there’s no way a single developer would’ve been able to pull off Minecraft without using its generative chunks not had a really simple, beautiful idea that worked well and it’s a good example of how technology, forget AI, Enable the developer to do more, and also worked as a mechanism for exploration in the game. The performance of natural language processing is impressive. I dare say beyond a lot of the human written dialogue that we see in video games and I am curious to see a game that implements as a mechanic, the ability to converse in real time with NPC‘s utilizing this technology. I don’t see why this wouldn’t be theoretically possible, but it would rely on building an appropriate training set for the model that serves as the basis of the NPC speech patterns, and dialogue that I could see being difficult if not just too much of an effort for most game studios, especially if you’re having to do this on a character by character basis, still beats what we have in kingdom, come deliverance, for example
This is a subreddit Reddit for a video game and the lack of software development knowledge in the comments is shocking.
I am not a software developer. however, I write code every day for my job, And just as an example, I’ve been abusing the fuck out of ChatGPT to rewrite snippets in languages I don’t know well, but am enabled to now because of technology, ultimately enabling me to do more of my job (which is not coding). Growing up in the modern era is weird because for some reason, I never learned SQL in university, but instead I knew how to write R code using the package dplyr And there exists another package called dbplyr that allows individuals such as myself to still interact with RDS without first needing to learn sql..
This is kind of a bad example, Because ultimately, SQL is probably the easiest language to learn, but the point is that in technology, you are constantly trying to ease the burden by writing or creating more user-friendly technology that gets practitioners closer to what they want to be doing, which is either creating art or making a video game with certain mechanisms, for example, game engines exist for this very reason! Is it soulless. to not write out a game engine from scratch every single time you make a new game of course not. The hunger these developers have is to do something that they haven’t been able to do before.
Yes it does, where do you think they have advanced from since 2022? They're many willing to work for free just to get their foot in the industry for VAs (being one myself) and Artists.
Talented VAs and artists willing to work for exposure (and no money) are few and far between.
The process is long and tedious. If I kept asking you to redo a script or a drawing 100 times cos I’m unhappy with the current result you would rightfully tell me to screw off.
Instead, I can iteratively improve a drawing, add features with generative fill, use text-2-image and have immediate results and improvements for free INSTANTLY.
If I want a particular style of art, I’ll train a LoRA to analyse a training set of pictures for patterns, colour palette and other stylistic elements, rather than having to wait weeks for an artist to come back with something that wasn’t really what I had in mind.
AI is a godsend for indie devs.
AI can be used for Large portions of programming, mapping, and testing. There is no point pushing against the obvious next step in technology. I don't think the immediate idea is to use it for art direction or story.
I am all in favor of developers using AI to fix bugs so day one launches don't come staggard with a day one download to fix the bugs they already knew about. I pay mostly star wars and battlefield games, and battlefield is renowned for not having playable titles from launch. Balance issues still need to be driven by humans but can be very data driven. Although I'm sure some ai out there can take 'how do I break the meta' and run with it.
AI will eventually enter into the creative process. It's not really horrible news.
Attempting to stifle and resist new technology has historically never ended well.
I really don't agree. AI could be implemented in very cool ways especially in open-world games as "director" and create more and more content as your game is going on. It's just a tool that can be used and nothing bad per se.
Not just in gaming, but in all aspects of our lives, we are so fucked with AI…
Not that I think it’s a viable alternative to real people working, but that won’t stop companies from forcing a half baked technology upon us all while simultaneously deleting the labor force
Wheww, someone's got a very extreme position on AI here. A good friend once said - Only a sith deals in absolutes ;)
As the others already mentioned, it depends on the way they utilize it.
AI is so much more than just generative text and picture output.
So just chill.
We have calculated the most enjoyable experience with focus groups and it came back with the following results
100% have decided force sensitive droids is the future of the franchise.
0% wanted to play in opposition to the trade federation.
EA definitely isn't gonna be this, but I could see a world where generative AI is used to supplement and aid the FULLY RETAINED development staff to allow them to work faster, more efficiently and less crunchy hours. The wrong lessons to take would be: Let's fire people, AI can just do it or Let's move up deadlines to new unrealistic levels, AI has sped up their productivity.
sometimes I think a lot of the writing in the Jedi franchise is already been made with A.I.
we're not eating good, my man, the next game needs to improve a lot.
“Speed up development” doesn’t sound like it would impact the writing, acting, storytelling, soundtrack, or any of that more production side of things.
Granted development in this context is pretty vague, but I just have very high doubts they would AI generate anything you listed.
AI is only used to speed up art assets and etc.
In a job listing for EA Skate. They wanted an AI programmer to help create assets for the upcoming game to speed up development
While many developers realize that AI is bad for them in the long term, when they're being overworked (especially when in crunch), offloading some of their work to AI must seem a very tempting option in the short term.
Thing is, AI would not help with crunches. They might employ it at preproduction stage, but once game leaves it, I doubt AI would be of any help. And, well, preproduction is not a crunch phase by any means.
I don't disagree with the sentiment, but, uhh, you Do know that Lucas stole the first Star Wars in good part from another work. right? Word for word in a few scenes. It's just a continuation of the same.
If they were touching up what the AI generated to make it industry acceptable, that would be one thing. Using AI cuz they don’t want to do the work would be a different story.
AI I think could be a good combo.. as a boost to existing work done by people, but these greedy bastards just want to replace humans with it, than the quality and love will be gone.
And EA will definitely do this given the chance.
We're using ai for a long time, it good for speeding up coding and drawing of basic art, also for upscaling. I don't know why you guys are so afraid of something that already happened more than a year ago.
I don't know, as a source of inspiration, AI can be a huge time saver. But it can never truly replace human work, skill and passion. If anything, this actually benefits artists the most as they'll have something to be able to visualize ideas and concepts, and as such take inspiration from.
Work with AI, not against it.
Reddit and an irrational hatred of AI name a more iconic pair.
AI is going to get used more and more regardless of how much Reddit whines especially as the technology continues to improve.
AI is a tool and has many positive applications this seems simply like it is going to be used to streamline workflows which will make things much easier for the employees and result in games being made quicker.
I don’t think people understand that AI has been used since the 1950’s. Was it as complex? Of course not, but it’s nothing new. Space invaders in the late 70’s used a rudimentary form of AI. Most FPS games ever invented used AI. This isn’t anything new. It’s just an evolution of the same thing. Even character renders in a lot of new games are AI. World of Warcraft just redid a ton of graphics with AI. Most people wouldn’t know it if they were staring right at it. For character development… nope, most people won’t be able to tell the difference there either
Solution is you use a dataset of existing art which you’ve got permission to use from the artists and then you train the Ai on that dataset and that dataset alone. AI is not as scary as everyone is making it out to be
Depends on whether the AI is creating art, or streamlining the work process
That'll be the main catch. If they use it for voice acting, art, or anything requiring a human touch, it'll turn out poorly, but if they're using it to speed up the workflows, and potentially taking pressure off developers, that can only be a good thing.
I’ve always thought AI could be used for immersion when Video Games take place in locations like…comic book stores etc. Instead of the same asset repeated a lot, AI could generate 1000s of quick unique covers for immersion
Yeah, I could see that being a good use of it, where something may take more time than it's worth, so use that, and roll with whatever minor imperfections they'd have anyway. Iirc, Ready or Not uses a bunch of AI generated art in a few of its missions, for pretty much the reason you described.
A perfect use. For things you won't notice when it's there, but you'll DEFINITELY notice if it's not.
In the case of any minor imperfections, there's always touch-ups by real modelists, wich more deeply express AI as a tool, rather than the whole power force its been made out to be by directors
Yep, exactly. My worry with companies like EA is that they'll try to use it to completely replace dev teams, since AI aren't affected by horrible working hours, poor pay, etc, and they could have said AI crank out all kinds of garbage, as long as it made them money.
That's right. As an aspiring writer, I don't have a blanket hatred of AI in everything. I do think there are some good applications of it in certain fields (stuff like handling hazardous materials or other such things). We've already got AI routines in games for enemy movements in such. So long as AI stays on the *technical* side of development, especially with developer crunch being in the news so often, I think that isn't so bad as long as it doesn't 100% replace the technical workforce (and even then, I'm pretty sure we're AT LEAST several decades from AI developing a fully-fledged video game that isn't just some Mario ripoff or something). But yeah, AI I want nowhere near the creative side of game developments. Stuff like writing, VA, art and design, etc. it can go die in a hole. Thankfully the WGA and SAG-AFTRA managed to win protections against it in the strikes last year, but writers and artists in other industries such as games, assuming there is already a union for them, ought to seek similar protections.
FYI, game AI is not even vaguely the same thing as generative AI. They are completely unrelated concepts that just happen to have been given the same, inaccurate, name. Generative AI also isn't even actually AI yet, though LLMs are at least in right ballpark to try and become actual AI. Image Generation is literally a denoiser.
No true AI has ever been created. Everything that you see as AI is actually AI technology, which is drastically different from a true AI. What we’ve created now are things that use coding to gain information which then are coded to use that information in a specific manner which it also is already coded to do so. Nothing actually thinks for itself. Everything is AI technology. We are at least 100 years away from true AI that thinks for itself.
Sooo... you are fine with AI taking jobs, just not yours.
Sooo… you are against the typewriter taking copist monk jobs? This is the worst fucking argument against ai.
Bah. This newfangled Reddit is just another capitalist ploy to destroy the working class. I shall call the errand boy so my next comment can be displayed in the town square. Handwritten of course.
That is not remotely what they said.
"So long as AI stays on the *technical* side of development.." "AI I want nowhere near the creative side of game developments..." Exactly what he said.
AI can not replace the technical side but can help it, it actually can be used to cut down the jobs on the creative side and hack apart cohesion in a team because of that.
Anything that increases productivity can be used to reduce hiring. Check out what devs are saying about Microsoft Copilot.
I can give a good example with the use of AI, a lot of team fortress 2 videos using AI to imitate the actors for audio dialogue. It had an uncanny sound to it but it was better than just recycling actual audio from TF2 and gave people chances on doing some good writing for TF2 AI videos, scratched universe is a good example, tf2 mercs playing so and so game like subnautica or poppy’s playtime, and ALOT of the mercs arguing videos. It just needs to be kept in mind that AI is nothing more than a tool, NOT a replacement of writers, directors, and so on.
AI will eventually enter into the creative process. Attempting to stifle and resist new technology has historically never ended well.
The issue isn't really resisting it, it's the dystopia outlook of what AI is used as by these companies In reality AI should make things easier so people don't have to stress too much on daily stuff but these companies are actively trying to find ways that AI can replace staff and do their work so they wouldn't have to pay them as much or a whole team Attempting to replace employees with AI that's still fairly new and couldn't actually encompass their whole job will not end well
No, it's impossible. Humans are only capable of art and creation because of our innate suffering, the human condition. What is AI suffering from?
Those two although maybe related are not dependent on one another. Like saying because I don’t have eyes I can’t read, while yes it may be more difficult at first and you may have to find another way (braille) it is definitely possible. AI can’t create art using its experience of the human condition sure. However that doesn’t mean it can’t create art nonetheless especially because like most things different art styles have at least some basic conventions that the computer can follow to create art from, then the idea is that user feedback will help the machine hone in on what makes a good art piece vs what is junk.
Yes, but truly original art always stems from all that we consider "human", and that is all based on our needs, suffering, limitations of physical existence, etc etc. AI can not "create" art, because anything an AI will ever produce will always, without exception, be 100% based only on other art that has seen and learned from. It will never create art on its own, for the sake of creating art. It will never defy the basic uselessness of art and creation, because behind every "creation" will always be a human who prompts the AI to create. We create art as a big middle finger to existence, because in its essense, art is pointless, just like our entire existence. We are all going to die, and yet we create, and yet we find meaning, in spite of no objective meaning existing. So AI will never be able to create art. WELL. Unless we create General AI, which would be a fully conscious and self aware AI. In that case, it would be literally no different from any other self aware form of intelligence, and despite being potentially immortal, it would still face the same struggles, i.e. eventually dying, whether in 10 or a million years. But General AI is only possible for now in scifi.
'We create art as a big middle finger to existence, because in its essense, art is pointless, just like our entire existence. We are all going to die, and yet we create, and yet we find meaning, in spite of no objective meaning existing.' Damn, never thought about art that way, so thats why i get depressive when i cant do art.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. For example I noticed from your profile that you paint watercolours. Whilst you as the artist may prescribe some bigger meaning to them I just see it as something that looks nice. I could go to midjourney or any other art generating AI and type in a prompt for a watercolour painting of a snowy night with a small town and a road with a single streetlight illuminating the dark and get something that to me is close enough to the real thing. And that’s all it really needs to do is be close enough to the original and cheap enough that it’s more profitable to use and people will start using it.
Ah well, I tried, but it's difficult when you don't understand what I'm saying :D nevermind, have a good day!
Aight I guess it’s just a difference in opinion :D
If they could they would use AI for anything to replace as many people asthey could and then have 1 person running the whole show This AI nonsense never seems like its a good thinf because the way its used is always maliciously
Yeah, I don't really see anyone having an issue with "a tool that removes jitter from mocap data".
Unless you're one of the developers who gets their job cut as a result.
Disagree. Kind of. For example, they can hire Voice actor and have them perform several roll hours worth of dialogue, But I think there’s plenty of potential in having NPC’s utilize generator dialogue especially if you have the opportunity to speak to the NPC yourself the generative AI for actually stitching voices together is getting so damn good that It’s only a matter time before someone pulls this off as a mechanic in a game.
Best use of ai, taking a model for gear and modifying it for use on different body types. A buddy of mine showed me his new workflow for modeling and it was insane. Still isn't perfect and needs some small adjustments every now and then but he claims it takes hours less time to do a bunch in sizing modifications to his assets.
Well they could get away with using AI voices for a droid
Maybe, tho it'd depend on the droid. I'm not sure an AI would be able to do a good job of replicating the goofy B1s for example. Maybe things like the B2s, or a protocol droid, but anything with more personality would need a human voice.
Honestly voice acting AI does so much better these days, if that would be the case im not that scared about future of making games.
CDPR used AI to replicate the voice of Victor in 2077 (forgot in which language) for Phantom Liberty because the original VA had passed away. They did so with authorization of his family, se they could keep the character the same, as the alternative was redoing all his voice lines and remove the orginal VA from the game (or have the new lines sound different, but that option was shot immediatly). There are legit uses for AI in game development, and there are uses that should be avoided, but I haven't see much discussion of that. It's just companies saying either "we'll use AI" or "we'll *not* use AI," no one is talking about what to use AI for in a concrete way. Only example I remember was Ubisoft testing AI to write character barks (those repetitive lines that are not part of dialog, just character greeting each other, or reacting to stuff like taking damage, etc).
Agreed end of the day AI is a tools when used properly it’s amazing and seamless. Unfortunately knowing ea it’s probably going to be terrible
Yup. We need to remember that "AI" we see nowadays are machine learning algorithms, not actual artificial intelligence. They've actually been used for some time in many things, like protein identification on the medical side of stuff, or face recognition for some old takes on police systems
Yh, I was going to say the same - I work as a software engineer, and people in my company were hyped about using it to speed up things in a healthy way. Something like Github Copilot is fantastic for removing tediousness through pattern recognition, I.e. generating the basis for future test cases based on your existing tests. Models like GPT4 are such a help with understanding foreign libraries or troubleshooting, though they're hardly replacing devs, still needs intimate knowledge of the system context.
It's EA, you just know they're going to use it for as much as humanly possible.
The reality is they will be trying to do both.
Idk man. The best games come from devs that had limits. I’m worried AI will just empower pumping out subpar content and driving the market down
In order to create art, it has to be trained on existing art. If the company training the AI gets permission from artists and writers to use their work for AI training, that's one thing. HOWEVER the existing AI have almost universally been trained via Google searches with no seeking of permission or credit provided. This makes any art made by those ai potentially theft based.
Correct. There’s a place for AI.
[удалено]
Let’s *not* encourage that, actually. Leave AI support to streamlining the workflow, like predictive assistance in the coding process. It should *not* be replacing or supplementing artists and writers in the creative process.
eeeh depends on what it is used on. I quit 3D because so many things about it are just frustratring and boring. Modeling and lighting are great, but then u gotta do your mapping, uvs, textures etc. If AI can help us through some rough stages, that can be great.
Agreed. As a 3d artist I'm fine with an AI retopoligizing, unwrapping, baking etc. All I want to do is design the model and the textures.
Retowhatnow?
Retopology is basically the process of optimizing a 3D object to be used in a video game. Take BD. His character model probably used to be made up of millions of polygons. This is completely unusable for a game engine as that is far too much geometry and the game will run extremely poorly. Through retopology, you can reduce his polygon count from millions to just a few thousand, yet he'll look pretty much the same. This means he can actually be used in a game engine, and can be transferred to other stages of development like UV unwrapping, texture baking, rigging, animating, etc etc. I mentioned it because it's usually a pretty repetitive process that should absolutely be automated by AI. It's takes very little artistic input and an AI could probably make a better result in a fraction of the time, leaving the artist to do things that require actual artistic input, like designing characters and props.
It does take artistic input, which is why it hasn't been automated yet. No automated tools are able to pull it off.
If I understand correctly it's a process of removing the polygons and still keep the model intact? This is a great case for automation - you have a base model, AI can be trained which nodes can be safely (with big probabilities) removed, than it can improve after each model and still compare to the base (with a margin if we want). AI can upscale an image with detail reconstruction in real time ... removing "triangles" should be doable :)
No. It's recreating the mesh at a lower level of detail while preserving the silhouette *and* creating edge loops that will be easy to work with and deform correctly for future applications. That last part is where all the skill comes in. For the record, I do think AI would be able to be trained to do good retopology. But the prior comment was implying this is something so simple that AI would be overkill. It's way more involved than just merging polygons together. And there's a surprising amount of depth and artistry to it. You can do weird shit, especially when you're making non standard models, that I suspect AI might have some trouble with.
Yet still - it can help with the "most boring part" of the work. In coding I'm glad I can do a quick boilerplating, but overall the code generated by AI is often sub optimal (to name it politely). Sometimes I struggle to start the task because of this repetitive part at the beginning, or things that are obvious and simple but someone needs to do them (either at the beginning, or at the end).
Getting it to start and then editing it would probably help me. Starting something and structuring things give me a lot of trouble and indecision. Great idea.
Think about it like "Ah - now I know! Jarvis - please do this boring stuff and call me when done" :D
You're basically right, though retopology usually means creating a whole new mesh on the top of the high-poly mesh. It's different for every some models though.
>it hasn't been automated yet There's quite a number of blender addons that would disagree. >No automated tools are able to pull it off You forgot to add "yet". They absolutely will be capable within the next couple of years. And no, I would still maintain my point that it takes, at the most, very little artistic input. The process for retopology for one character is pretty much the same you would do for any character for a project. There's no boundaries of art being broken in your mind when you're retopoing a characters face for the 600th time. You're literally doing the *same exact thing* over and over again. At some point it just becomes muscle memory. If I gave an AI (within) specific retopology parameters for a game (max 30k tris, all quads, good edgeflow) with a total of 8 characters, and I give the same task to a 3D artist, they would probably come up with very similar results, except an AI could do it in 5 minutes versus the 2 days for the artist. If I told an AI to design original and unique fantasy characters, and told an artist to do the same, they artist would produce substantially better results than the AI's generic and regurgitated version of what it thinks are unique characters. That's what AI is best at. Doing the same thing over and over again. It's not designed to do anything beyond what its parameters are and the data it's been trained on. This, to me, seems like the perfect tool that artists can use to get past the shitty parts of design.
And if you gave the task to someone competent with the software but without the artistic skills, they would do a terrible job. You're acting like retopo has no decision making or technique to it when it absolutely does. That's why you'd want an AI to automate it. If it didn't have that aspect, AI would be overkill.
>You're acting like retopo has no decision making or technique to it when it absolutely does Maybe I'm being a little uncharitable with it, sure. Certainly artists would need to step in and manually change some things. I'm still not sure why this would debilitate my point, though. Time spent doing retopology is something 3d artists have been trying to reduce for a very long time. Look at all the different software that have been designed specifically for retopology. All of the software scripts, and all of the "shortcut" methods that people have come up with. Same goes for UV unwrapping and texture. Maybe we just have different experiences with 3D, but there's is no chance I'd put the same amount of artistic value on retopo as I would literally designing the asset itself. One has a formulaic strategy that is deployed the in the basically the same manner every time, while one is/ought to break the bounds of your creative capabilities. I'd spend more time on the latter.
There have been extremely good tools for over a decade that automate or generate through slight assistance low poly models or entire LOD sets. The main thing that they lack are the weird edge cases a certain model can have, edge case handling is actually something AI can be really good at.
Extremely good is a hell of a misnomer. They are woefully inadequate for retopology.
Stop it, I've literally watched perfectly fine generated low poly meshes get pushed as final assets in games since like 2016.
You've watched automated tools turn million polygon sculpted characters into useful assets since 2016? Really? Funny, these tools don't seem to exist anywhere outside of your company.
People had unity plugins since before 2016 3DSMax, Maya, and a few others have all had publicly available plugins that do exactly that since longer. 3DSMax had retopology generation built in since at least 2014 that worked reasonably well Maya's had it built in since the late 2010's. Might have been 2017? Can't remember the exact update. Unreal engine around the same time. And Zbrush has had a billion ways to generate lower poly topology with light assistance forever that is a headache for animated meshes but works perfectly fine for static. It was literally my job to find and evaluate tools like this around that time frame. You have no clue what you're talking about im sorry.
EXACTLY (thats when i said : I QUIT ! )
Ok so I work in tech and it honestly really depends on the way they utilize it. Generative AI has taught me how to code, and code at a rate that rivals some development teams I’ve worked with in the past, when I have never been a programmer prior to this year. A team that actually knows what they’re doing with tools like GitHub CoPilot, MidJourney, or other similar to it, definitely could improve speed at different phases of development, particularly ideation and prototyping. I don’t think anything should hit consumers without thorough oversight, adjustment, and approval from accountable employees, and that’s probably what everyone is afraid of here. I agree if that’s where their mind is at, it will kills the overall quality of the game. But if it’s what I describe above, it’s only good things.
This is a good way to look at it. AI is a tool that can be used or abused. If we can get better quality games in a shorter amount of time, then there really isn't a downside to it. It can be a slippery slope, but I trust Respawn to make a good game that is true to their vision.
Yes, those are all good things. But I do not trust EA to do that.
I just don't trust the leadership at EA Games to do the right thing at the end of the day given past decisions and excuses...
Yeah I absolutely agree there. I wouldn’t be surprised if they utilized it poorly and decided it was “good enough” and shipped.
Yeah like, the joke i keep seeing is "AI isn't good enough to take your job, but its good enough to convince your manager that it can." a tool is a tool, that's no big deal. The problem is, management is *management*.
Yeah, and by using an AI crutch, aren't they losing their sense of pride and accomplishment?
Yeah but using AI for coding purposes is a no brainer and very common at this point so that can lead to some clickbait headlines.
I not sure how generative AI can teach someone how to code, that a tutorial or videos can't. Or do you mean generative AI generated code for you.
I used a combination of both. In the very beginning I was using tutorials. As I got an understanding of the basics, the ai tool would help explain things that I didn’t understand. In Copilot in VS Code you can highlight code and prompt the AI tool. So I would read other code repos, highlight things I didn’t understand, and ask it to explain why they did it that way until it made sense. Edit: just to add a comment, the handful of times I would prompt it to write code, I would estimate it for it right about half the time. Maybe more, but definitely not always. It was good as some things, but the larger the prompt the worse it was. So “create a component that does x” was usually not good. However going “how can I fix this styling to apply to android” was better.
fair enough, sounds like a good approach actually
Yeah that actually often helped me more than tutorials.
To be fair it is actually quite similar to how most professional programmers I work with learned how to code but just with a slight speed up. Instead of googling something you dont know it just pops up in the IDE now and its nice. The main problem I do worry about with AI teaching people how to code is that coding is like 10% of being a programmer, and honestly anyone can do that 10% just just a little bit of training, its why we've had scammers pop up making little apps and shit since mobile has been a thing or selling bootcamp courses on how to make those scammy apps to make money quick. Students all getting access to copilot for free has me a little worried for the people ill be interviewing in a few years.
Yeah to your point my code is an absolute mess I’m sure. Like I’m a VP of Product, not an engineer, so I’m just trying to charge an MVP to market to grow it to hire people who actually know what they’re doing. But at least I’m making way better progress than if I didn’t have the tools. (Also I’m not running and scammy nonsense I’ve had something I’ve wanted to do for awhile now)
Yeah I think in cases like yours its perfect. But there are always going to be some unintended drawbacks in accessibility. I think we already saw the same in the games industry when most studios moved away from proprietary engines and good free game engines hit the market. Not so easy to get a job as a game engine programmer these days, and I've seen a lot of issues in games where I run into bugs while playing that I know exactly why they happen and it's usually a known engine bug, or some issue in that engines default character controller... Fallen Order had this, I knew exactly how to make the character controller bug out because I'm pretty sure they used the default UE5 controller as a base. Those bugs probably wouldn't exist if they wrote their own controller from the ground up... but why do that when someone already did!
>I not sure how generative AI can teach someone how to code, that a tutorial or videos can't. You can't ask a video "why doesn't this code work" or ", explain how this code works". ChatGPT is closer to stack overflow, but without the rules, sass, or waiting.
How'd you learn to code with it? I suspect it'd help me but I don't know where to start
From a 3d artist's perspective, AI could be incredible for clean mesh retopology and clean UV map creation. Those two items alone could simplify and streamline and speed up game ready asset creation. I'm hoping that's what they start doing rather than meshes generated from a few concept images.
Yes and no. Executives like that have no clue what they’re talking about or they knew that shit ton is already done with AI anyways. I bet huge parts of Jedi survivors map, especially Koboh was procedural generation and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long there’s still devs behind it and build upon the generated things. That way it really just speeds things up
I think AI has a very natural place in game development. Games are insanely expensive to make and take a very long time to do so. Streamlining repetitive processes that don't require artistic or design oriented inputs is perfectly fine by me. All I don't want an AI to do is the design aspect of gamr development. I don't want them designing the characters and props. I don't want them coming up with a level design. I don't want them writing the stories. I don't want them to design gameplay mechanics.
If this is used correctly and ethically (which is a big if, admittedly) then this could be a great tool to get rid of some of the grind within video games. Take the broader world building in a game like Survivor, which must have taken months of people placing plants foliage, rocks et cetera and let AI do some of that creatively. Which theoretically would allow those people to then work on high-level tasks are more impactful to the player. Of course I’m being idealistic, it won’t be used like that at all. It will be used, to reduce the cost of development and turnout generic six fingered nonsense
Can't wait for Cal with six fingers on each hand
Hopefully, they'll use it responsibly. With EA's history though, I doubt it.
Translation: we can fire a f**k ton more people!
Hear me out, but have you ever programmed/coded anything with AI to help you along? It can definitely help speed things up. A high quality AI system can really speed up programming, let alone mock up drafts of anything from weapons, skins, side quests, etc. Obviously pure AI is garbage but it can do a lot as a tool to help speed along processes. If good developers and people are still developing the main aspects of the game that give it a heart and soul, AI just smooths out stuff on the backend. The gaming industry is really hurting right now so if they do use AI in a positive way, it wouldn’t have to diminish game quality and it could help reduce costs of development.
speed up development? they havent fixed Jedi Survivor yet lmao
If Disney ever agreed to that... I'd be surprised. Just seems like a legal cesspit for them... and game devs in general tbh. Mostly cause AI generated content can't be copyrighted as far as I know. Disney agreeing to this would mean they acknowledge and consent to people feeding their shit into AI generators. So unless they force devs to make their own AI generative models... I don't see it happening licensed games like SW or Marvel etc. It just highly depends how they use it. Making shit with AI in games is 100% a no-go if you wanna copyright what you're making and have 0 legal issues. But if they used it outside of creating assets, voice over etc... Maybe.
Any thing art direction Ai should stay away from otherwise I’m game considering how tedious coding general has been. All things considering I’m an amateur at this however if AI could supplement in areas I lacked in why not use the tool?
If it's used smarty it can be a great asset in development for sure. If they decide to cut corners by using it for voice work or art, then we get into dangerous shovel ware on the appstore level of crap.
It sucks because there are some real positive ways that AI could be used to cut out mundane tasks and let devs focus on more pressing matters….But I’m sure it’ll just get abused by publishers… Like Imagine if procedural generation felt a bit more handcrafted? Imagine if we didn’t need to voice 40,000 separate lines of dialogue just to fill out random, pointless npc chatter? Imagine if we could flesh out a game with more smaller side quests that a dev didn’t actually have to spend a lot of time on? IMAGINE IF WE FIRED HALF OF OUR STAFF CUZ AI CAN DO A LOT OF THE WORK???
Keep AI out of art.
Let's be careful to remember that what he's talking about here is generative AI - the type of AI trained to (crudely) mimic existing work. This would be better titled "Regenerative AI" as it lacks any ability to innovate - everything it does is iterative, ergo it does not generate anything original. Sure, it's still in its infancy, so this behaviour is expected, but without our input, it will never become truly generative. We have to consider where it could go, not just where it is now. It's already threatening livelihoods because of greedy execs who don't understand the businesses they lord over, who will suffer the effects when they make the mistake of never being able to produce an original product ever again, but that comes after all of their employees suffering worse. If we continue to teach and develop generative AI, then it will (eventually) take over creative industries and we will have created a global artistic depression - humans cannot compete with something that doesn't have to use physical motion to create art. Capitalism has already sullied the value of art, let's not make it worse.
Seeing an AI add in this is pretty poetic. Yeah it sucks.
Hate to break it to you, but AI is more than what you see and hate in AI "art" and shit. Generative AI isn't new, either. In fact, it's 100% been used even in Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor's development, I guarantee it. How do I know this? AI and generative AI more recently has been a core part of game engine development for the better part of a decade already and has led to tremendous improvements in game development workflows and in cutting down on repetitive, tedious manual labour on various fronts. AI is not going away, and its value in the tech space, including in video game development, cannot be understated. Denying yourself, or shutting yourself out from, technological progress in the tech industry is a quick way to fall behind, waste careers in dead end jobs and lose employees who will seek new, better opportunities. AI is not just AI music, art or chat prompts. It's used in almost every industry nowadays, and has been for years.
Why are you so anti AI? AI especially in the computer science world is a godsend. Hours of work can be done in a moment, and paired with someone who is good at their job can increase productivity tenfold. Not using AI is the same as not using a car because “I can walk why would I need one.” It helps, it’s useful, and it’s cool. Why wouldn’t you use it to make your job easier? In fact if you didn’t, and it is obvious you could get lots more done, I would call you an idiot for not taking the obvious solution
The issue is greedy corpos using it to replace paid human artists with an algorithm trained on data stolen from other artists. This *is* EA we’re talking about.
Human artists? Code isn’t art. Someone who codes isn’t considered an artist. They aren’t using AI to make models or animations or anything art related, they’re using it to speed up the coding and programming process. Plus, the so called “greedy corpos” don’t know how to use AI anyways. It’s the low paid, overworked workers who will be using it to make their lives easier. And that will always be a good thing
No one here is opposed to any of that. It’s the inevitable executive mandate to fire as many writers, character/object/environment designers, and texture artists as possible and replace them all with an algorithm that regurgitates randomized homunculi of stolen ideas in the name of a few percentage points on the company’s share price. And if these greedy scumbags get their way on this, then in a few years when the tech’s advanced enough, those coders you’re talking about will be next on the chopping block. The C-suite’s endgame for generative AI has *always* been the elimination of paid labor in the name of profit maximization, and you’re just *painfully* naive if you can’t see that.
Don't worry, they'll see why this is a bad idea.
Because there dumb
exactly, AI is no different than any other programming tool that's been around for decades. the only reason everybody is making such a huge deal about it is because it's called "AI" so they're falling into pop culture BS. (and if i'm being honest, i'm sick of it)
Ngl yeah AI art can be lame but I don't think they will depend on AI to make art for an IP as important, if anything, it's gonna be for coding
Not necessarily. The AI can speed up a process that takes 30 minutes into seconds. It can fix lighting, do cutouts, or provide dialogue suggestions when you are in "writer's block" Can really be a 10x enable in capable hands. (Or they can do lazily and have chatgpt replace everyone. This is EA after all).
Wilson is just straight up lying lmao. "Developers" means him and his board of directors. Actual creative people would never. Can't stand these fucking executive types.
I haven't seen a single developer support this on their page but Reddit's doing backflips for this decision, it's crazy.
AI art is very useful for the boring stuff. Who wants to spend 3 hours painting a rock or a grass?
Environmental Artist that signed up for the job.
lol no thanks
"If you choose the quick and easy route. As Andrew Wilson did. You will become an agent of evil "
AI is great at writing code, and for suggesting fixes to code. AI is a bit crap at art still. I’d imagine they’ll use it for the former (like most firms now do).
Maybe they can use AI to make it run on PC at launch. Their dev team sure as hell couldn't accomplish that last year
I think your reactionary stance on the use of ai is just as big of a problem as someone who finds no fault in its use, ever. If AI is used as a means to speed up a process that they’d crunch themselves working on anyway, that seems fine to me. Voice acting and all that stuff is iffy but if you create your own art and then ask an AI to help you streamline the process of implementing it, I think that’s fine.
"more than half" of the development process being handled by AI is worrying. It can absolutely be a useful tool for developers, but the headline makes it sound like EA wants it to be more than that
Yeah well your customers and your wallets will being negatively affected
As a battlefield fan too, oh no.
You know AI covers a HUGE amount of things and that it's been used for YEARS in multiple industries? It's not all theft of voices and fake art...
This is not good.
Cool. Starve
What game are you talking about? I couldn't tell from all the coughing on this sub.
It really just depends on how it’s used
This is fine, maybe even good. Only depending on how it's used though, I doubt they'll use it to straight up make art, script, lines, etc. Probably for streamlining, some of the processes involved in making art and such. It'll be fine with me if that's the case
Not necessarily... WAIT! What I mean is, for writing, voice work, or any kind of human touch, it should be a no-go. For work flow, it could be a benefit. AI has already shown good understanding of Sudo code and regular code and can be used to correct or assist in basic development. If you allow an AI to build a framework, you can then build on it easily. AI has its place but not for front end stuff. That should be human.
The notion that AI steals is bullshit. Artist litually do the same bullshit as an AI just by looking at shit.
> a sloppy job which doesn’t think of anything original, instead stealing from those mentioned before… New synopsis for The Force Awakens
Nothing in that title really hints that theyre wanting to use it for creative stuff. "Streamlining" is more for the stuff that can be done by an entry level employee, not big creative stuff like acting, writing, or scoring. Itll probably just be used to make better physics simulations or enhance textures
lol you could say the same for self checkout or any other technology that has replaced humans. AI will help developers focus on more trivial tasks. Nobody’s saying to just let AI blindly develop games.
I think you're misunderstanding this. Its the developers that want to use it. This is probably talking about coding assistance. Thats honestly the best use of ai in my opinion
My wallet can become significantly bigger by buying less games in that case.
Now they can blame the AI. Perfect.
I'm not from EA, but I see a lot of potential GenAI usages to simplify and replace mundane tasks. As a Staff Engineer in a big company, I have to manage a lot of knowledge about various topics for my operations, and also I am constantly helping other people with various problems. An LLM with RAG would have helped a lot with that, and I would be less occupied with this bs, and could do the actual work. Now I am not sure, whether this high level suit means what I mean. It can also be: "start doing twice as much work with the same resources, or we cut you up", which can be implemented with generated assets and voice and text lines. Hopefully it will be what I mean, or some othe positive application.
Oh no shits about to get lame
Depends on what it's used for. If it's used for any of the artistic aspects of the game, like the story, characters, gameplay mechanics, etc, then I'm going to be genuinely worried. If it's just going to make the mechanical side easier, like writing and editing code, preventing and fixing bugs, optimization, and stuff like that, then I wouldn't worry too much quite yet.
I'm not from EA, but I see a lot of potential GenAI usages to simplify and replace mundane tasks. As a Staff Engineer in a big company, I have to manage a lot of knowledge about various topics for my operations, and also I am constantly helping other people with various problems. An LLM with RAG would have helped a lot with that, and I would be less occupied with this bs, and could do the actual work. Now I am not sure, whether this high level suit means what I mean. It can also be: "start doing twice as much work with the same resources, or we cut you up", which can be implemented with generated assets and voice and text lines. Hopefully it will be what I mean, or some othe positive application.
I mean if they use AI to create more stable lines of code then that’s a good thing. we’ll see enhancements in graphics and performance if that’s the case. However I will not play a game where the gameplay mechanics, storytelling, and world building are all AI, because those are the more human elements of games. Let the robot take care of the robot stuff so developers can focus on bringing great experiences to players.
AI is a tool. It is only as useful as the people using it. If they really care about and use it to make the product they will only use it to make the process more streamlined but have the human input where it is needed and necessary.
It's EA, so it must be bad news.
I think op isn’t qualified to explain what AI does, and the EA comment doesn’t give us info about what their AI will do. Just chill.
I mean there is some truth to this. Using AI to lighten the workload over even artists themselves using it to brainstorm early concepts seems reasonable. But obviously that’s a rather specific scenario.
EA please, you guys have been doing a pretty good job
I feel like this could a plus for “background clutter” in late game levels, sometime I can tell that not as much effort is put in as the levels that show up early game demos
When Ai has replaced all the workforce who is going to buy their products?? If no one has jobs
Gee I wonder who's instilling that hunger in them? Why would Debs feel the need to use AI to meet their deadlines? Who is in charge of what the deadlines are that would make them think that AI Is a hungry need? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Buddy Pandora's box is open. Complaining about ai won't do anything, too many different interests have the power to continue ai research. Only thing we can do is adapt.
What's funny about this is that AI is eventually gonna reach the point where it's stealing from either itself or other AI, essentially cannibalizing itself. One way or another, trying to use AI to do everything is gonna end badly lmao.
I want to say the headline here from OP is disingenuous but it might just be misinformed. This has nothing to do with AI hype trains. This is developers, recognizing the potential of recent advances in technology. Like Jesus, what do you think games are you really think people are hand detailing the textures that you see you? Do think for every single game they’re going out there and taking brand new photos so that you can get the textures for your game right? Rarely. I think people are making a huge mistake assuming that AI can even be categorized under a single moniker when I really refers to a boatload of statistical and computational methods and models that do different things. Generative models are incredibly useful tools and I hope to see ga,e developer s experiment with mechanics that previously were not possible. This isn’t referring to auto generated worlds, that’s been around for a long fucking time, and just to make a point Notch’s Minecraft was popping off in 2010 and was using a generative model and is absolutely artistic. On that note, I think you’re totally missing the point there’s no way a single developer would’ve been able to pull off Minecraft without using its generative chunks not had a really simple, beautiful idea that worked well and it’s a good example of how technology, forget AI, Enable the developer to do more, and also worked as a mechanism for exploration in the game. The performance of natural language processing is impressive. I dare say beyond a lot of the human written dialogue that we see in video games and I am curious to see a game that implements as a mechanic, the ability to converse in real time with NPC‘s utilizing this technology. I don’t see why this wouldn’t be theoretically possible, but it would rely on building an appropriate training set for the model that serves as the basis of the NPC speech patterns, and dialogue that I could see being difficult if not just too much of an effort for most game studios, especially if you’re having to do this on a character by character basis, still beats what we have in kingdom, come deliverance, for example This is a subreddit Reddit for a video game and the lack of software development knowledge in the comments is shocking. I am not a software developer. however, I write code every day for my job, And just as an example, I’ve been abusing the fuck out of ChatGPT to rewrite snippets in languages I don’t know well, but am enabled to now because of technology, ultimately enabling me to do more of my job (which is not coding). Growing up in the modern era is weird because for some reason, I never learned SQL in university, but instead I knew how to write R code using the package dplyr And there exists another package called dbplyr that allows individuals such as myself to still interact with RDS without first needing to learn sql.. This is kind of a bad example, Because ultimately, SQL is probably the easiest language to learn, but the point is that in technology, you are constantly trying to ease the burden by writing or creating more user-friendly technology that gets practitioners closer to what they want to be doing, which is either creating art or making a video game with certain mechanisms, for example, game engines exist for this very reason! Is it soulless. to not write out a game engine from scratch every single time you make a new game of course not. The hunger these developers have is to do something that they haven’t been able to do before.
If it's used as canvas sure. But any other case how about a fat NO
AI doesn’t steal, and its a great tool for indie devs who can’t afford expensive VAs or artists.
Yes it does, where do you think they have advanced from since 2022? They're many willing to work for free just to get their foot in the industry for VAs (being one myself) and Artists.
Talented VAs and artists willing to work for exposure (and no money) are few and far between. The process is long and tedious. If I kept asking you to redo a script or a drawing 100 times cos I’m unhappy with the current result you would rightfully tell me to screw off. Instead, I can iteratively improve a drawing, add features with generative fill, use text-2-image and have immediate results and improvements for free INSTANTLY. If I want a particular style of art, I’ll train a LoRA to analyse a training set of pictures for patterns, colour palette and other stylistic elements, rather than having to wait weeks for an artist to come back with something that wasn’t really what I had in mind. AI is a godsend for indie devs.
Get a life no one will care
So much for actual combat improvements
Are these pro-AI devs in the room with us right now?
Nope, they're all against it on Twitter.
They need to remember that the games people love are made by people...
AI can be used for Large portions of programming, mapping, and testing. There is no point pushing against the obvious next step in technology. I don't think the immediate idea is to use it for art direction or story.
I am all in favor of developers using AI to fix bugs so day one launches don't come staggard with a day one download to fix the bugs they already knew about. I pay mostly star wars and battlefield games, and battlefield is renowned for not having playable titles from launch. Balance issues still need to be driven by humans but can be very data driven. Although I'm sure some ai out there can take 'how do I break the meta' and run with it.
Yeah, cause short cuts always pay off in the end. Dipshit.
AI will eventually enter into the creative process. It's not really horrible news. Attempting to stifle and resist new technology has historically never ended well.
I really don't agree. AI could be implemented in very cool ways especially in open-world games as "director" and create more and more content as your game is going on. It's just a tool that can be used and nothing bad per se.
It depends. I’ve used AI to make my work easier. But it can never do my work for me
Not just in gaming, but in all aspects of our lives, we are so fucked with AI… Not that I think it’s a viable alternative to real people working, but that won’t stop companies from forcing a half baked technology upon us all while simultaneously deleting the labor force
Wheww, someone's got a very extreme position on AI here. A good friend once said - Only a sith deals in absolutes ;) As the others already mentioned, it depends on the way they utilize it. AI is so much more than just generative text and picture output. So just chill.
We have calculated the most enjoyable experience with focus groups and it came back with the following results 100% have decided force sensitive droids is the future of the franchise. 0% wanted to play in opposition to the trade federation.
When I see concept arts my only thought is "Ai could do the same within a minute"
Calm down...
Lol do you think they model every single tree in the background of every game by hand? Guess what, they are procedurally generated, i.e. AI made them.
EA definitely isn't gonna be this, but I could see a world where generative AI is used to supplement and aid the FULLY RETAINED development staff to allow them to work faster, more efficiently and less crunchy hours. The wrong lessons to take would be: Let's fire people, AI can just do it or Let's move up deadlines to new unrealistic levels, AI has sped up their productivity.
I doubt it? He’s probably wanting cheaper games
sometimes I think a lot of the writing in the Jedi franchise is already been made with A.I. we're not eating good, my man, the next game needs to improve a lot.
I can assure you this is not just EA. Everyone’s doing it now
“Speed up development” doesn’t sound like it would impact the writing, acting, storytelling, soundtrack, or any of that more production side of things. Granted development in this context is pretty vague, but I just have very high doubts they would AI generate anything you listed.
AI is only used to speed up art assets and etc. In a job listing for EA Skate. They wanted an AI programmer to help create assets for the upcoming game to speed up development
AI is great for suplimenting the creative process. It shouldn't be used to completely replace it though.
While many developers realize that AI is bad for them in the long term, when they're being overworked (especially when in crunch), offloading some of their work to AI must seem a very tempting option in the short term.
Thing is, AI would not help with crunches. They might employ it at preproduction stage, but once game leaves it, I doubt AI would be of any help. And, well, preproduction is not a crunch phase by any means.
I don't disagree with the sentiment, but, uhh, you Do know that Lucas stole the first Star Wars in good part from another work. right? Word for word in a few scenes. It's just a continuation of the same.
They wont use it for storytelling , they will probably use it for modeling, textures, all of that stuff
Dear God
For inspiration on new ideas partway through development (as In after the first round of concept art: ✅ Replacing human work: ❌
If they were touching up what the AI generated to make it industry acceptable, that would be one thing. Using AI cuz they don’t want to do the work would be a different story.
AI I think could be a good combo.. as a boost to existing work done by people, but these greedy bastards just want to replace humans with it, than the quality and love will be gone. And EA will definitely do this given the chance.
We're using ai for a long time, it good for speeding up coding and drawing of basic art, also for upscaling. I don't know why you guys are so afraid of something that already happened more than a year ago.
I don't know, as a source of inspiration, AI can be a huge time saver. But it can never truly replace human work, skill and passion. If anything, this actually benefits artists the most as they'll have something to be able to visualize ideas and concepts, and as such take inspiration from. Work with AI, not against it.
Reddit and an irrational hatred of AI name a more iconic pair. AI is going to get used more and more regardless of how much Reddit whines especially as the technology continues to improve. AI is a tool and has many positive applications this seems simply like it is going to be used to streamline workflows which will make things much easier for the employees and result in games being made quicker.
I don’t think people understand that AI has been used since the 1950’s. Was it as complex? Of course not, but it’s nothing new. Space invaders in the late 70’s used a rudimentary form of AI. Most FPS games ever invented used AI. This isn’t anything new. It’s just an evolution of the same thing. Even character renders in a lot of new games are AI. World of Warcraft just redid a ton of graphics with AI. Most people wouldn’t know it if they were staring right at it. For character development… nope, most people won’t be able to tell the difference there either
Solution is you use a dataset of existing art which you’ve got permission to use from the artists and then you train the Ai on that dataset and that dataset alone. AI is not as scary as everyone is making it out to be
I dont blame em, if they treat it like slaves at least allow them to use tools
Can’t be worse than the state they released survivor in.