Post by Arthreal in Looking for Collaborators — Stellar Dominion (Godot 4X Strategy)

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I'm looking for people who love the idea of space exploration expansive galactic empires, theoretical technologies, the kind of stories told in The Expanse, Pandora's Star, He Who Fights with Monsters, The Last Horizon. People who get genuinely excited about building something in that spirit.

I believe people have value in themselves… not just in what they can produce or what tools they use to produce it. I respect artists, coders, and writers deeply. And I think there's genuine beauty in creation with new tools as they emerge, just as there was with digital art, photography, and synthesizers before them.

If you're someone who shares that excitement, I'd love to work alongside you. If you're not, no hard feelings — this project just isn't for you.

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Seventh_Coda8 days ago(+1)

Nice AI response lol

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your vision. There are genuinely many real artists I know who would love to collaborate on something of that caliber. The problem arises when you take Art, a deeply human medium of expression and creativity, and strip away everything that makes it meaningful.

Every human has value in themselves. And every human has the ability to create art. But there is a big difference between Tools which aid the creative process and the core principles of art and the human spirit, and "Tools" which steal, automate, and replace actual art from genuine Talent.

I am not alone. Go on any art or creative site, and you'll see almost all artists agree with me. You argue humans have worth inherently, and yet your actions promote theft and erasure from human made works.

There is far more value and merit to a mediocre, inexperienced, humanmade work than there is to any high quality slop created by AI

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Arthreal7 days ago

I actually share your concern about transparency, the hiding of AI use is a real problem, and I think that's a legitimate thing to push back on. I'm not hiding anything. My original post said outright that AI is part of this workflow. That's the whole point.

But I'd push back on the idea that any use of AI automatically constitutes theft or erasure. Look at what just happened with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. One of the most critically celebrated indie RPGs ever made, nine Game of the Year awards, a game people described as emotionally devastating and deeply human. It came out that the devs briefly used AI-generated placeholder textures in early 2022, most of which never even made it into the final release. The ones that slipped through were patched out within five days. The result? Two awards stripped by the Indie Game Awards, widespread calls for boycott, and a studio that by any measure poured enormous human craft into their work getting labeled "AI slop."

That reaction, to me, is the tragedy. A tiny studio with a limited budget used a tool to prototype faster and still made something genuinely extraordinary. The outrage didn't make art safer — it just punished people who were honest about their process.

I'm not a studio trying to replace artists. I'm one person building something ambitious because I love it, using every tool available to me. If that's disqualifying to you, I respect that… but I don't think it should be.

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Arthreal7 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

And one last thing. You speak confidently about what "real artists" think, what "actual talent" looks like, who belongs here and who doesn't. So I'm genuinely curious: who appointed you the arbiter of that? Art has always expanded to include new voices, new tools, new methods, usually over the loud objections of people who were absolutely certain they were protecting it. You might want to consider which side of that history you're on.

For what it's worth, I do genuinely appreciate this conversation. Pushback like this forces me to think more clearly about why I believe what I believe, and I'd rather have my ideas tested than just agreed with. So thank you for that, even if we're not going to see eye to eye. And honestly, I'd love to be friends.

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Seventh_Coda7 days ago

More A.I responses huh?

When I speak of real artists I speak of humans. Humans with creativity and passion. Art is a deeply human form of expression. and to be able to express art in any capacity is what I consider talent. A.I. Slop is not art. You are correct in saying that art has always expanded to include new voices new tools and methods, the thing is, up until not long ago, those methods were are still deeply human in workflow and production. Things crafted by humans. Even the continued evolution and iterations of methodology itself was still deeply human.

In other words, Yes. I do speak confidently, And I do judge and evaluate who has a voice on here
Humans do
Not algorithms

Ai "Art" is theft in more ways than one. It steals attention, jobs, resources and financing from real human artists. Not only that, AI doesn't create in the way a human would. Instead, it compiles premade human works without permission or credit, and the algorithm creates an image using that as a base. Currently, there is no real way for artists to opt out of this data collection

Furthermore, the comparison to Clair Obscur is very flawed. At the end of the day, as your AI chatbot already said, Clair Obscur used only a few AI placeholder textures. At the end of the day, they were removed entirely. As for the remainder of the game? Made entirely by real human artists, from Music, to Models, to Textures, to Code, to Writing. Clair Obscur is a work of Art. Because at the end of the day the entirety of the game as was released was humanmade. AI only served as a TOOL not a replacement.

You on the other hand, are not just using AI as a Tool, you are using it to replace the work of a real artist. And again, we are back to my previous point. This site is full of real, talented artists. Do you really think that a demographic like that will find any interest or enthusiasm in what you're doing, when most of us won't even condone it?

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Arthreal5 days ago

I think we actually agree on more than it seems. You said Expedition 33 is legitimate because AI was only used as a tool and the rest was made by human artists. I agree completely. So I want to ask genuinely: whose art am I replacing?

I'm a solo developer so far, and I want to be as direct as possible about that. There is no artist on this project I pushed out. There is no job I took. If I wasn't actively collaborating with AI tools and genuinely enjoying that process, those elements simply wouldn't exist at all. The alternative isn't "a human artist makes it." The alternative is it doesn't get made.

This project isn't just tolerating AI, it's intentionally built around it. Because I genuinely believe human and AI working together can produce something beautiful. Not AI instead of human creativity, but the two in real conversation with each other. AI isn't making art here without me. I am making art, and the AI is part of how that happens. That excites me. That's what this project is actually about.

I appreciate you engaging with me on this. The offer stands, I'd genuinely love to be friends.

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