Honestly it would be really cool if there was better resources for finding artists. Even just to commission for a piece or two. I’ve come up with a few ways to discover them, but that mostly comes down to building a really good algorithm in places like Instagram or Deviantart by interacting with the right posts. It’s hard when you’re looking for a specific style, so would be cool if there was a place where you could post work offers for artists
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Sorry guys, I don’t have time to read all 166 posts, but I read first Grimimic post and before I get banned for using AI in my projects:
I will express my point of view too.
The advent of AI was one of the main reasons I started developing games in the first place, and I will never give up on this critical tool. In case of my “Praedeon” game which made on RPG Maker all enemy sprites was generated by AI. I will not spend a week drawing a picture of a bear (yes, it will take me a week) that I generated in an hour and edited in Photoshop in another hour. AI helped me to save about two months of my time on enemy sprites which I wasted on drawing additional character sprites.
The same goes for “Vermonut” project where I use AI to convert my own male voice into female, because I am not a female and I don’t have any female friend who will help with that (and no, the voice won’t sound like robotic crap). The same goes for static objects like some crates, apples, boxes 3d models. I can’t see a reason to waste 20 hours on making “apple” 3d model when I can use AI to generate this apple in 30 minutes and waste another 30 minutes on retopology to get acceptable result. And I’m not even talking about how often I use AI to learn something about Unreal Engine or to debug some things (because it is way faster then using google and search for hours without luck in finding correct answer).
In general, I’m trying to say that I welcome any means that help reduce the time it takes to develop a game, including the use of AI. The only question is how good the result looks.
The issue of quality of projects where developers decided to shift almost everything to AI clearly worries me. For example, I don’t play in visual novels where author generated all visuals using AI simply because to me personally it looks bad. The same goes for Daz3d rendered pictures, but judging by the number of likes and comments on some weightgaming threads, such games also have their fair share of fans. So, I guess, it’s all a matter of taste.
P.S. I don’t have my own opinion about rules for permission to participate in weightgain jam, because I don’t plan to ever participate since testing my skills as a developer is not a reason of why I started developing games.
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Something that I recently thought of would be that there should be a Portfolio category - aka, a category that shows “I’m looking for work in this or that, and here is my proof!” because I have seen plenty of posts about artists, programmers, writers, and whatnot who want to work on a project, but no one replies, probably because there’s no easy way to see them, especially since those are all in the “Project Help” category, which is pretty nebulous on its own.
A Portfolio category, as the name implies, would be useful in having those people be better known. Especially if someone posts references to or actual previous work on the post. With the way the notification system works, this would be handy in finding each other.
I can already hear the concerns being voiced - “the AI bros on here might scrape our work!”: it’s not a perfect solution but there’s an article that talks about ways to prevent that:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
This - I think - might get some resolution with the mandatory introductory they put in the categories, IF there’s the Portfolio category. Putting up a disclaimer of “Once you put something up, you can’t take it off” - basically, make sure anyone applying sees the disclaimer and understands that all transactions are final; you volunteer or get paid, either way you can’t undo handing out assets you made. If you did, then that would technically be fraud.
One thing this community needs to understand is all actions are final. There is no going back, there is no taking back.
P.S. - can some of the posters on here please stop using segregating language? No one is excluded from a fetish or art. No matter race, gender, sex, religion, politics, disabilities, or anything you can add, this is a forum where one uniting factor matters - a love for games and/or plain weight gain/inflation/expansion/etc. Nothing else matters.
Frankly, I don’t see ai as an issue, it’s mainly how much effort that’s put into it (see big aspirations and many others)
I for one might be part of the minority that actually prefers ai sometimes, but the point still stands. As long as content is being put out, I’m cool with it. High effort content would be found (albeit harder) and still be enjoyed, which is the point of this community.
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As much as I dislike AI as the next guy - largely due to the unrestricted legal issues it brings - coldsteelj has a point.
Allow me to tell a story - there was a time where I wanted to make an RPG Maker game based on this webseries from old YouTube; it was largely a fanseries that used a couple of franchises that had ready made sprites… and technically didn’t.
The sprites that would be ready made, that was obviously going to be easy to track down since the biggest franchises were Sonic and Mario, and both had fighting pose sprites and large fandoms to begin with, finding any wouldn’t be difficult.
My first one was the Sonic franchise. There’s this website called Spriters Resource where either custom or ripped sprites can be downloaded for whatever you need. Now, I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I spent just searching and downloading these, nevermind the time spent looking for other sprites and plugins for RPG Maker MV. I must have spent probably a week’s worth of time tracking it all down.
And now, the awful, horrible part. I made a mistake. A big one.
At the time, the laptop I’m on did not have the space for all that data, so I had to find external storage to store it all. My mistake was where I put the files.
On a CD. That I got from a Goodwill.
Some of you can probably see where this is going.
I was on a train during a trip, where I finally decided that I was going to try moving those files onto a shiny new flashdrive I recently bought. Brought out my laptop, the disc in a secure case, and the flashdrive. While I was starting up the CD, something went wrong.
I saw a folder for “RPG Maker”, but there was nothing in it. No plugin files, no sprite/graphic files, not even a sound file. Everthing was gone, and that CD was now nothing but a fancy coaster.
Even a local computer repair shop that can do data recovery, told me it was pointless. All that time, all that progress, I was never getting back. And it was a lot of RPG Maker assets.
My point being, it is not easy to make anything. Art, game assets, even writing anything takes time that we as humans don’t have. So I can see where the AI folks on this forum are coming from.
That being said, reason I’m still against AI in most cases is that, no matter how you slice it, it still is theft in a way. And I imagine as ClownfishTV has said in video from maybe… a year? Two ago? - once companies find out all they can do with AI, then they’ll put in “protections”.
But not for you.
My friend, I don’t think you understand a lot of how AI works, or why it’s so contested. Either that, or you haven’t internalized what it means when people say “it’s trained off of someone else’s works”.
What you have to understand is that AI cannot independently make what it puts out, it NEEDS - that is, it is an important component - to train off a previous example - someone else’s work.
It is not like RNG (Random Number Generation) in a video game - colors, curves, lines, and complex problem solving are too complex for that, so someone else finds random images off the web and feeds them through the machine. When they say AI is getting better, what I’m betting is that what’s actually happening is that the available AI’s are getting fed refined results. They’re not improving, the programmers are just fine-tuning them.
Another thing is, when you use an AI off a major website (think ChatGPT), it’s still collecting data. Including the user who’s typing the prompt. So if you think whoever uses AIs connected to a big server are safe privacy-wise, they’re not.
That is to say, that doesn’t mean AI can’t be a tool, it can be. But in order for that to happen, it has to be extremely limited in how it’s used. For one, if you’re using AI for story making or starting an art project, it has to stay in a concept design or low effort stage. But, if you’re using it for a major art piece, written story, or programming block, then there has to be a limit; it cannot be connected to a third party server, and it must only be trained off the artist/writer/etc who’s making the work.
One thing I thought would be a good idea - back when all of this was really taking off - was if creatives instead made it their own product. Like basically, you train an AI off specifically your likeness, but it’s an inferior product. A client gets a quick result, but if they want quality then it’s a bit more time and a bit more money. It’d be sort of like vocaloids, except for artstyle (note: the sounds for vocaloids are actually voiced by real people. So is Siri). Again, this would require the AI programming to lack a connection to a third-party and instead work like a program. A program that artists can independently sell. Sort of like merch.
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This is literally my opinion, to be honest. I just don’t see a way for it NOT to be a battleground unless the battle is forced to end here. As I said on my original post regarding the AI issue, I actually believe that choosing either side to come down in favor of is better than choosing neither. Literally flip a coin if needed. But people are going to keep fighting over this until somebody with authority tells them it’s not allowed (either creating AI stuff or complaining about AI stuff, either way).
This is not an issue that is going to be settled here, nobody is arguing from a place of willingness to be convinced because for a lot of people here this is potentially an issue of their income being threatened. So don’t take a “let’s see if people can hash it out” approach, because… how long is it acceptable to argue over this here? How much toxicity is an acceptable level of collateral damage for “the great debate?” Is the argument making for better games or games development?
AI is arguable as to its costs versus benefits and the inherent moral/ethical considerations when making a game. “Arguing about AI when no one in charge is willing to weigh in” is not. It’s a net negative. This isn’t a debate forum, it’s a games development forum - and the sides having the argument are as firmly entrenched as you can be, given that there are people in both corners who literally view this as a question of money in their pockets. (Quite rightly, given genAI-using developers have Patreons on here and artists on here are seeing people use genAI instead of commissioning assets. In both cases, going “okay, I’ll stop making money” isn’t exactly on the table.)
The parties involved literally have financial incentives not to come to consensus. Someone else is going to have to break the deadlock, and it needs to be someone with the authority to do so.
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I’m going to go off on a slight tangent since people keep talking about it, I think the biggest hurdle to getting people to work on a project is lack of confidence. No one wants to give up their time for a project that they think is going to be abandoned.
Having a few smaller, fully complete projects made using only the skills you do have lets people know that you have the not only the ability to handle your part of a project, but also the perseverance to follow through and not waste all their time making assets for a game that’ll never come out.
Just making a post saying “Artists needed!” for a large scale project, from an unknown creator, that hasn’t made a full game before, that isn’t super active in the forum, is not a great way to get people jazzed about working with you.
Using AI as a stopgap until you do get artists/writers/coders is also counterproductive, considering it’s a lot more likely people will find your use of it distasteful enough to not work with you if its for their specialty. It also shows a lack of scope management when you’re trying to make an indie game with load-bearing elements that you cannot do (if the visuals/writing are critical to the game then you need a plan for doing them, if they’re not then you can just use unpolished placeholders instead of AI assets).
I was about to type out a whole thing about what to do when you’re starting out, but then I realized I’d be reiterating stuff I already wrote about here.
And if the fact that building up a good reputation in the community, or networking, or learning a new skill take time and effort is an issue, unfortunately sometimes things take time and effort. I think “it’s more convenient” is a poor excuse for art theft, whether it’s a direct use, tracing, or paying a company for their program built off of stolen art.
Man we really do need an AI argument quarantine zone that doesn’t just get shut to argue about this kinda stuff.
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This is a continuation - sort of - of my previous post. It is a story about my attempts to understand AI, and why I’m not on board with using it.
At a previous job I worked, there were times where I had downtime to do nothing - it was also an evening job, so I didn’t have a strong social life going on. On top of that, I was having trouble conceptualizing an OC I was (and still kinda am) working on, so there was that, a source of inspiration.
At that time, I decided I was going to try seeing what all the hubbub was with AI chatbots, so I tried to sign up for an app featuring them called Talkie. Thank god I took care to read the EULA, because what stipulation they put in there was that they could collect data off me for using it (aka, listening in on my conversations with it).
Considering that I valued my privacy and understood I wasn’t in the best emotional state at the time, I decided it really wasn’t worth the price for talking to an entity that wasn’t real, nor would ever be. So I closed the application, and removed it from my phone.
It’s one thing when you put out contact info on Facebook, but folks like myself gotta draw the line at having our most vulnerable moments documented.
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I would just like to state one more thing in case staff are thinking of taking the pro-AI stance of “just use mandatory tags.”
A tag isn’t going to solve anything. The vast majority of users, especially ones not logged in, don’t even know you can block tags.
The only “centrist” solution on this is throw AI into a whole separate category entirely. You can’t educate every single person on how to mute tags when it’s a really obscure feature that isn’t very easy to find, but all users already know how not to click a category they don’t like.
I agree mostly with @TheWell-Being on this issue, but getting staff to do anything on this seems like it’s going to be really difficult. A full-on AI ban would be awesome, and maybe we can pursue that in the future, but if we push too hard for unrealistic (in the short-term) solutions, we’ll end up with the staff not wanting to take either side yet again and unintentionally just supporting the pro-AI crowd who likes the status quo. We need to push the forum to separating AI into a separate category first. If people are still upset after that, then we move on to what is currently considered an extreme position.
But anyways, I would like to repeat the main point of this post.
ESPECIALLY TO STAFF: A tag-based solution is not a real solution. 95%+ won’t realize they can block tags. Separate categories is the most “both sides” real solution you’re going to get.
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I would like to point out that the conversation has fully moved on from the Rose/gojicks issue, and I think that comes down to how cut-and-dried that situation is for many of us (including me). Which makes the moderation decision there even more baffling
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Gee I’m so glad college is over! Can’t wait to see what I’ve missed on on my favorite forum, weightgaming.com!
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We are very sorry you had to come into this, good sir!
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For the record, as I don’t intend to engage much with this topic outside of stating my piece, I am not against discussion which I deem to be toxic or calling for a ban. The discourse should be allowed, but I believe it is way beyond dragged out at this point. The conversation surrounding AI stopped being civil long ago.
I don’t believe any change is necessary, or even a good idea, as it will only be placating a certain side.
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you can still see and just scroll past the tags, one of the biggest problems i have is clicking through each post to see if its just some ai slop or not; If i could see that it’s ai or not it wouldn’t be a problem
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Speculating here, as I am not familiar with the Discourse programming back-end, but this may be feasible if it’s an opt-in instead of opt-out scenario. That is to say, AI is tagged and the tag is set to be automatically muted on all users. A portion of the introductory “how to use this forum” tutorial, and/or the FAQ, and/or a sticky message on the projects section explains how to unmute the relevant tag and thus view the AI content.
Lots of forums use a similar opt-in for NSFW posts, which don’t really apply here as the whole forum is NSFW. Potentially there’s some function on Discourse for similar? This is purely theoretical musings based on my understandings of how similar site functions work on the admin end, but it’s a possibility.
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I agree with this but I am also not sure if that can be done through Discourse. If it can, then I would agree with this even more than just a category separation. However, it would need to apply retroactively to anyone who hasn’t edited their visibility settings, and that’s fairly unlikely.
EDIT: Muting the whole site for a while. Burned through all my sanity for probably a couple weeks. Need some time to recover. PTSD sucks.
I agree, I was fine with a few ai projects here and there, especially if they were accompanied by real thought-out game design effort and had their own category. But compared to 2020, etc, the site has become flooded with tons of low-effort ai-driven projects made with the obvious intention of turning a dollar, which isn’t what this site is supposed to be about.
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I can’t bring myself to care about the moral arguments when places like the multi-billion dollar corporation I work at is starting to replace all of their 20+ year old training videos with AI-generated ones (very uncanny valley). Banning it from this site isn’t going to make a difference, we’ve lost already.
Separately, I think many of the best new games on here use AI. Like others have said, it’s just one of the tools available now and the barrier to entry for game dev is high enough that there’s really not a crazy flood. Other than the chatbots, those are kinda weird and don’t seem like they fit the site. But they have their own tag and thread color so are easily skipped as is.
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Let me guess, you’re only on this site for the horny and don’t have a stake in any of it?
I won’t claim to know where AI is going, but I think the fact it’s being used recklessly and part of its popularity is being the shiniest new toy after NFTs flopped, there’s a chance that the luster of it all will wear down, and it’ll settle as just “there”.
I don’t much think discussing AI is getting anyone anywhere at this point. It seems pretty clear that people disagree and there’s not much changing that.
We needed to separate AI from actual art projects a while ago and it’s just high time we did it. Even from just a resources and advice perspective it makes sense to keep them separate.
I understand if folks want to beat this dead horse more, but it’s probably best to just give it a rest for now so Grot can weigh in unless someone has something new to bring up.
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