Tim Sweeney says Epic Games Store is open to devs using generative AI (www.gamedeveloper.com)

submitted 1 year ago by simple@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Would be nice if there was any headway in that sense but it seems we just get more and more reasons why society can't keep going like this, but it keeps going like this.

You’re moving the goalposts here, your original comment asserted that large companies only bet on larger and larger games, and when you have this many mobile games out at once, a lot of them are going to be pretty niche. Currently, gacha is the go-to for small development for large companies, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for lower costs to lead to more traditional games to me.

I did not move goalposts one inch. You are thinking of mobile games as "small games" when in fact they are more profitable than console games. I specifically contrasted "niche" to "blockbuster". Candy Crush may be simple but it's one of the the most profitable game of all time, it is not niche. Even something like Final Fantasy Dissidia Opera Omnia surpassed 100 million dollars in revenue, which would be a huge fortune for the average, mildly sustainable indie. If you look at them solely in terms of how costly they are to develop you are missing the point.

They are not going to be making, say, psychological surreal point-and-click adventure games because it's not so easy to shove microtransactions out the wazoo and get hundred million dollars from them. You see them making a lot of live services with endless progression, multiplayer and arcade-style games where it's easy to monetize.

[-] Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I never meant small in terms of profits, I only ever meant in terms of development resources, that's what generative AI will impact. The most humble games can become huge hits, see: Stardew Valley. With a better cost proposition, we might just see those psychological surreal point-and-click adventure games.

Also do mind that Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition isn't a gacha, it's a scaled down port of the game of the same name that's divided into ten chapters; the first one's free, but the other nine will cost you. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis, a free-to-play port of Final Fantasy VII too will be episodic, but it will have a gacha for weapons and costumes.

[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Well I did mean small in terms of profits, because that's what directs the investment of big companies. So, yeah, I don't think so. Farming Sims weren't even seen as a money maker until Stardew Valley became a hit. Sure they can chase trends, but even if it was cheaper it's pretty unlikely that they'd bother investing in genres they can't see big returns in. Even with AI, it's not like they can put "psychological surreal point-and-click adventure game" on a prompt and get a finished product that easy, they will still need to invest in developers for it, nevermind all the marketing that big companies do for their releases. It's more likely they'd release yet another gacha.

Even your examples of it being done different are still the highest profile releases from that company, not some quirky novel idea. They were betting big on FFXV when they released that, and they are doing this for FFVII these times.

The AAA companies are too risk-averse to take out the indie scene, they would rather insist on trends until they stagnate.