It’s a different story for the more established studios with an existing following and previous titles. Game Oracle found that the use of AI by these studios resulted in a significant 40% to 60% drop in sales.
That’s a huge difference. AI stigma seems to hit competent developers with a lot to lose the hardest, and I’m not sure that game studios are ready to accept it.
I think we all hoped AI would mean more convincing worlds and characters, what we got is effectively the opposite with a nice side dish of job losses and environmental catastrophe.
It was discovered that inexperienced developers with no marketing budget, who likely turned to AI simply because of a lack of other resources, saw hardly any negative impact on sales despite the AI disclosure. These games were almost certainly going to struggle even without the use of AI.
It’s a different story for the more established studios with an existing following and previous titles. Game Oracle found that the use of AI by these studios resulted in a significant 40% to 60% drop in sales.
This actually makes sense. People are willing to turn a blind eye to more and larger flaws in a game if they know it comes from a small indie developer with barely any experience, than if it’s coming from a well-established studio.
The matter here is what players noticed, and avoid. I see three possibilities:
- people checking for AI disclosures, and avoiding games with them;
- AI output being slop and making a subpar game, something along the lines of Burton’s suggestion;
- the sort of dev who uses AI is likely to make crappy games, even without it.
#1 is irrationally brushed off by the author, but I think you should gather data before brushing off hypotheses like this. #2 and #3 are lumped together in Burton’s “advice” (that boils down to “if people complain about you adding shit to your sandwich, add a bit less, also if you’re pouring shit in the sandwich odds are the meat is rotten too”), but they’re two different beasts — one is about the tech yielding a worse product, and the other about the developers themselves being bad.
Games are already rushed and broken on release. Saying you used AI is like saying you rushed faster and broke even more than we thought possible.
“The ‘excrement stigma’ is real and severely punishes sandwich shops.” A new study shows how much using excrement in sandwiches hurts sales…
I dunno, guys, have your maybe considered not serving shit sandwiches? But no, I guess “try to use it in ways your customers won’t notice” is the only way forward.
Perfect analogy.
Yes I have a stigma against idiots who are terminally obsessed with AI, I have it because the only way to stop them ruining everything with AI is endless shame.
It is the same with all forms of fascism.
Social exclusion is evolutionarily the prime way to handle people with problematic tendencies.
Good, good. That makes me happy.
The simple solution would be to stop using it? It’s going to hurt us in the short and long term if we don’t stop.
But that requires too much work! And everyone knows taking part in society and being a human is easy and requires no work at all! /S
*The AI Stigma is real and severely punishes “”“developers”“”.
