"How Embarrassing" - Sega's Getting Some Serious Blowback For Using GenAI In Crazy Taxi: World Tour

I can't say I care that much, as long as the core design is by people, I don't see the fuss over not wasting a lot of time on backgrounds and people still have to be involved in that process too. Some of these tweets are disingenuous as the scope is very cleary much larger than the original arcade maps and buildings/billboards will be more plentiful and detailed than 25 years ago.

I'm excited for the game and thought it looked great and would rather focus on that than be miserable

Only thing that matters is if the game is good.

The game looks great in the trailer.
Whether it ends up good or trash comes down to how much care they put into it, not if they used AI.

AI is being used by most (if not all) big companies, from code review to drafting assets, from meeting transcription to play testing. The floodgates are open.

10am on a monday and we're screaming at clouds. Again.

For stuff like the textures in a call of duty game I don’t think I would notice the difference if the model was trained on the textures in the previous games. I can imagine that would be very tedious work for the artists involved anyway.

The situation might happen that due to shifts in the industry many very good artists might be willing to take a risk on indie game and if they succeed they could make a lifetime’s salary on one game. It just depends on attitude towards risk. (Gabe Newell famously put everything on the line at one point house everything he had).

I think some people just don’t like change. I embrace it even if not doing so might be better for me financially.

The optimisation bit necessary for Unreal or Unity games to be properly implemented on Switch 2 would be another great thing for gen ai. (It would need a deep understanding of the low level architecture.) But I think that would be a boon for many indie developers. (They can make a great game using those tools but only a big team can do the optimisation properly.). It is becoming a joke just how badly the results are at the moment from this situation. Doesn’t help that Nintendo is so strict about access to the low level API details.

All the comments so far are bang on the money. Who the hell cares about generating backgrounds with AI - or any assets? If the game plays well, has a kicking soundtrack and is enjoyable, who cares if AI was used to help the process along?

AI is coming. The games industry should embrace it.

Man, pro-AI bros have really bought into the “it’s inevitable” lie they’ve been told.

No. It isn’t.

What’s inevitable is having fifteen AI chuds come into any discussion about AI to tell you that it’s inevitable.

I wonder if all these people saying it doesn't matter and it's inevitable will say the opposite when it affects them personally and takes their jobs?

Not all jobs will be affected - but too many are already being lost through companies chasing greater profits. Because that's what this is really all about. When did creating art become about the quickest route possible and ignore the journey and individualistic expression of each creator? Everything will become the same slop regurgitated.

Then we get onto the fact that GenAI is trained on stolen artwork and people are OK about this? And the environmental impact this is having?!

Even if it is 'simply' background assets, they're still assets which would have previously been designed by a person. That opportunity to work and earn an living, maybe an entry level job to get your foot in the door, is now being taken away all in the name of companies making more money.

@dedant i'm not pro-AI, i care if the game is good

As for "inevitable", that isn't even the right word anymore. Anyone working an IT office job for a large company (which is a lot of core gamer types) knows how deep AI is already integrated into nearly every aspect of work. It's already as established as using Outlook for email.

You and I can dislike the current state of things, but pretending there's any way back now is just cope

@ojisan i mean, your reply to me is just reinforcing what I said about people saying we have no choice but to sit back and let generative AI steal and destroy.

But again, we do have a choice. It isn’t inevitable. We can not use products that use Gen AI. We can openly discuss the negative impact gen AI has.

And i definitely think there are more important things than if a game is “good”. For instance if a game uses gen AI or a company supports genocide, that will be a bigger aspect of my buying decisions than subjective quality.

@h3s Texturing is rarely not fun in my opinion.