Players have been asking for the ability to filter out games made with Gen AI.
We've added an automatic tag on SteamDB based on the AI gen content disclosures on the store pages.
Honestly, I’d love that as well, but the problem is that you cannot connect GenAI generations to mechanics because they’re too fuzzy. The best way to use them atm is to use them only for fluff. For example to automatically generate the art for encounters, or the flavor text for card games etc. But even then, they tend to converge into generic boring slop. Still I think there’s some potential there for some creative roguelike devs to do GenAI fluff kinda OK.
I think you have to be clever with the usage of gen AI to get non-boring things, and just use it as one or multiple elements in a larger pipeline/computation graph. This is my intuition and not battle-tested.
Disagree. They can be connected to actual game mechanics. For instance, it’s quite easy to ask an LLM to output something in json format:
{"name":"The Master of Evil","hitpoints":205,"class":"vampire,"}
and so on. You might object that it could make mistakes here. Suppose the detectable error rate is 10% (I actually think it’s lower from what I’ve played around with.) Rerunning it in the case of a such an error (e.g. malformed json, invalid class name, hit points exceeds bounds, etc.) reduces to 1%, then 0.1% etc., and in the end there can be a non-AI fallback just for certainty. Admittedly, the errors are not i.i.d., but still it should be pretty low. Many traditional procgen techniques, such as map generation, also use rejection sampling in this way, with even larger rejection rates than 10%.
It’s easy to generate something as generic as that, not as easy to generate mechanics. And if you don’t generate mechanics then you’re only doing fluff like I said
The ethics based on Intellectual Property? Quality, sure, but ethics?
Full disclosure: I’m a geek from the days of newsgroups and Geocities. I watched the rise and fall of things like Napster. And I watched IP-law get more and more restrictive. But what is “intellectual property” really? You’re effectively taking an idea and saying “this is mine, I made this first, therefore I own it”.
Around 1996, when I was 12, I thought it’d be really cool to have a small laptop that laid flat and you could hold in your hands. The designs I drew up VERY closely resembled a Blackberry. Blackberry came out a few years later. If I had filed the right paperwork, at 12, should I be able to stop them? I sincerely doubt they were spying on the drawings I made on the back of my homework. Should you get to stifle innovation just because you had the first brainfart? I don’t think so.
But okay, let’s say you’re only thinking about artistic works. Again, you’re gonna have repetition. This came out in 1995. This came out in 2008.
So what’s the issue with AI; it was trained on “copyrighted” material? K, well so were you. Are folks upset because creators didn’t get paid every time an AI reviewed their copyrighted works? Well, are they similarly upset about folks who check a book or movie out of the library? Not so much…because that’s normalized (though would NEVER go over in today’s hyper-corporate nonsense world). Okay, so are folks upset that generative works can resemble the style or “essence” of the original work? Lol, see the Jill Sobule/Katy Perry comparison above, also consider “Fair Use” and the likely transformative nature involved as well.
This isn’t an “ethics” issue…it’s an issue of disrupting existing channels for corporate power within a world sliding more and more into a dystopia of corporate fascism.
Procedural generation though. Infinite replay value with actual graphics or voiceover? Fuck yeah. Great roguelites will use genai and that’s awesome.
Honestly, I’d love that as well, but the problem is that you cannot connect GenAI generations to mechanics because they’re too fuzzy. The best way to use them atm is to use them only for fluff. For example to automatically generate the art for encounters, or the flavor text for card games etc. But even then, they tend to converge into generic boring slop. Still I think there’s some potential there for some creative roguelike devs to do GenAI fluff kinda OK.
I think you have to be clever with the usage of gen AI to get non-boring things, and just use it as one or multiple elements in a larger pipeline/computation graph. This is my intuition and not battle-tested.
Disagree. They can be connected to actual game mechanics. For instance, it’s quite easy to ask an LLM to output something in json format:
{ "name": "The Master of Evil", "hitpoints": 205, "class": "vampire," }and so on. You might object that it could make mistakes here. Suppose the detectable error rate is 10% (I actually think it’s lower from what I’ve played around with.) Rerunning it in the case of a such an error (e.g. malformed json, invalid class name, hit points exceeds bounds, etc.) reduces to 1%, then 0.1% etc., and in the end there can be a non-AI fallback just for certainty. Admittedly, the errors are not i.i.d., but still it should be pretty low. Many traditional procgen techniques, such as map generation, also use rejection sampling in this way, with even larger rejection rates than 10%.
It’s easy to generate something as generic as that, not as easy to generate mechanics. And if you don’t generate mechanics then you’re only doing fluff like I said
ah, I misunderstood by what you meant by “generate mechanics.” My bad.
We’d still like the option to opt out of that mess, though. I’m not sold on the quality nor the ethics yet.
The ethics based on Intellectual Property? Quality, sure, but ethics?
Full disclosure: I’m a geek from the days of newsgroups and Geocities. I watched the rise and fall of things like Napster. And I watched IP-law get more and more restrictive. But what is “intellectual property” really? You’re effectively taking an idea and saying “this is mine, I made this first, therefore I own it”.
Around 1996, when I was 12, I thought it’d be really cool to have a small laptop that laid flat and you could hold in your hands. The designs I drew up VERY closely resembled a Blackberry. Blackberry came out a few years later. If I had filed the right paperwork, at 12, should I be able to stop them? I sincerely doubt they were spying on the drawings I made on the back of my homework. Should you get to stifle innovation just because you had the first brainfart? I don’t think so.
But okay, let’s say you’re only thinking about artistic works. Again, you’re gonna have repetition. This came out in 1995. This came out in 2008.
So what’s the issue with AI; it was trained on “copyrighted” material? K, well so were you. Are folks upset because creators didn’t get paid every time an AI reviewed their copyrighted works? Well, are they similarly upset about folks who check a book or movie out of the library? Not so much…because that’s normalized (though would NEVER go over in today’s hyper-corporate nonsense world). Okay, so are folks upset that generative works can resemble the style or “essence” of the original work? Lol, see the Jill Sobule/Katy Perry comparison above, also consider “Fair Use” and the likely transformative nature involved as well.
This isn’t an “ethics” issue…it’s an issue of disrupting existing channels for corporate power within a world sliding more and more into a dystopia of corporate fascism.
They’ll be great once the tech is better. Right now, genAI that appears in games is still pretty jank.