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Eldwood10 days ago

Mario did not put any effort into this at all. He just downloaded the assets, while Luigi created the assets. Luigi objectively put more effort into the game by writing the prompts. But selecting the things to use, is an activity you now assert to be equivalent of being “hard work” and “a lot of effort”. But if you assert this, you need to concede that Luigi did the same hard work and lot of effort by selecting the outputs of the ai.

Luigi created nothing. But that’s not the point. I’m strictly talking about the amount of effort here.

Write an image prompt, any prompt. Put the same exact prompt into Google image search and a generative AI. Both will give you images in return. Regardless of what happens in the computer, you have done objectively the exact same amount work. The exact same effort.

In either case, you will probably not get something usable on your first try as your first result. You will need to keep hitting that generate button or scroll down the results or refine your prompt. Again, effort. But it’s more effort on Mario’s side, for the following reasons:

  • Mario needs to filter out non-free images. Luigi does not.
  • Mario needs to filter out AI images. Luigi does not.
  • Mario’s results are limited to things that actually exist on the internet. If he wants something specific, he’ll need to adjust his needs to what actually exists or hand-edit what he finds. Luigi is not so limited: if he wants Abraham Lincoln riding a giant lobster through the New York subway system, he can get exactly that.

This means that Mario needs to put in more effort to get comparable results. Independently of any legal or ethical concerns. Mario could be a cannibal serial killer who voted for Trump and he would still be putting more effort into his game.

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IslandWind10 days ago(+1)

For whatever it's worth--

Luigi needs to keep refining prompts, selecting parts of images to change, and dismissing images that aren't what they were after. Trust me, I've done both. Both can be time-consuming, but sometimes AI-generation takes way more work than finding the perfect asset for your project. Also, the former is actually creative effort, not just scrolling and searching through stuff that's already been made.

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redonihunter9 days ago

Yes!

And notice how conveniently the process is shown in a way that only portraits one of them putting effort into it, while disregarding any effort the other put into it. Like the contrived idea of putting an ai prompt as a search term - into image search not less, instead of an asset store that has filters for no-ai and free.

My goal was only to show that an AI user can put more effort into a game than a regular developer. And if it can be constructed either way with individual assumptions, my argument holds true: one cannot infer sloppy development by ai usage alone. Having ai in it, is not enough for a slop or low effort label.

I do not even need to bring creative effort into it, and as you pointed out, there is that aspect. And for that reason, in my opinion, some hobby developers use AI. They can't draw, but at least they can direct the AI to generate something. So it feels like creative input - and it is. It is just not the same input and skill as drawing yourself. Or the same input of searching and chosing the assets - that would be more like curation.

And all three can be done sloppily without even considering skill. Mario just uses the first asset fitting the game jam theme. Luigi copys the theme into the prompt. And Peach, the talented artist, doodles something on the proverbial napkin. Contrast to them doing the same for hours or days, till they get it right.

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Eldwood9 days ago

And notice how conveniently the process is shown in a way that only portraits one of them putting effort into it, while disregarding any effort the other put into it.

I’m not disregarding the effort on Luigi’s side, I’m making the argument that there is less of it, numerically speaking. And I’m backing that up with an explanation. Lots of people use AI as a more powerful search engine. “More powerful” = “less human effort (on the part of the end user)”. And that’s effectively what Luigi is doing: searching the training data for bits and pieces to combine into a new image.

My goal was only to show that an AI user can put more effort into a game than a regular developer.

Well, that’s obviously trivially true. Take any non-AI game. Use AI to add features to it. The new game obviously took more effort than the original game (same effort + extra effort for new features). That’s not an interesting comparison. Bigger games aren’t better than smaller games just because they are bigger, and spending a lot of time and effort creating a big collection of slop doesn’t make any of it non-slop.

What I am comparing is the amount of effort required to get comparable results, because that’s the only context in which “low effort” as a description makes any sense.

And for the record, I think “low effort” is a good thing. I like labor saving devices. I use a compiler that I didn’t write. I use a sprite editor that I didn’t write. I use a washing machine and an automatic dish washer and a vacuum cleaner. I’ll take all of the labor saving devices I can get, so long as I find them sufficiently ethical and they don’t negatively influence the quality of what I’m producing too much.

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redonihunter9 days ago

And that’s effectively what Luigi is doing: searching the training data for bits and pieces to combine into a new image

If this would be so, I want to remind you, that you already established in your view that the search & decide effort Mario put into it, would qualify as "effort". You are now only haggling who is worse at searching and thus has to put more hours into it.

And that can turn out either way, so you cannot pin any slop attribute to a work because of AI alone. Because if you insist on that, we can put any dev that uses google or even the Itch browse search catalogue to find assets, into the same category and call their works slop. After all, they only put the same amount of effort into the game as those ai users - which makes it slop according to your logic.

Take any non-AI game. Use AI to add features to it. The new game obviously took more effort than the original game

You got it! I wish I had thought of that. Much simpler. Thank you. 

You have proven that gen AI stuff in a game, is not the key factor in recognising slop or ai slop.

Please do not continue a debate over value free low effort classification. It is not relevant. People do not dislike AI, because it is efficient and needs less work for some tasks. Oh, some purists might, like the people that scoff at devs that use a premade game engine, instead of coding their own. But in general, the users do not care about such things.

They do however care about dehumanzing previously human only things like creating art. Or that most AI output looks bland and uninteresting. Mass produced, uninspired and forgettable. Or they are oversaturated with seeing AI everywhere and are just sick of it. There is youtube videos and books on amazon made by AI. wtf. No one needs that. And no one needs or wants the dribble some AI puts out as a game.

I do not care about some hobby devs fine tuning or enabling their game with help of AI. But I do care about the flood of mostly AI made games. You can clearly see their slop nature by the sheer amount of published projects. Games are not a mechanical excercise, like creating assets might be. Or creating a textbook function in code. You could task a painter to paint portraits and if all you want is a somewhat accurate representation of the depicted scene, you can easily switch to a photographer that does this is in a second.

And that is what happened in history with oil on canvas painters. But we do not want only function in our recreational activity. We want more. We want to appreciate the game as a game. Not it's function of passing time. And for me that includes a human that made this with effort. And by that I mean thought put into it, and not merely directing a prompt or using less efficient tools.

There is tons of free human made games. There is simply no need for mindless ai generated content. It is not people needing individual portrait pics for their walls. On a bigger scale, the ai just does not solve a problem for the indie game sector, like there not being enough indie games. On an individual scale it might help a hobby dev create their dream games or help struggling devs to compensate for the things missing in their 1 person dev team. 

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