Announcing The Void - a wave based survival horror fps inspired by the movie "The Mist" and spiritual theology. My first venture into solo dev. Looking for your support through this venture #solodevsurvivor #indieddev #survivalhorror #gamedevlife

What comes to my mind when I read @TimSweeneyEpic 's post below.

Dear @TimSweeneyEpic , You've done more damage to developers with your pro-Ai crusade that even if a developer doesn't use gen ai or ai tools in future UE6 games, the customers will label the game as - made with ai - because its UE and because of how you've been gloating about pushing AI. You just don't realize it (or perhaps not even care) because you are solely focused how fast users will be able to generate content for fortnite by pushing development with Ai. And that is your entire incentive in this debacle isn't it not. You fought Apple, Google, etc so more of the spending people did on Fornite would return back to Epic rather than the platforms having a bigger cut and you did it in the name of "this is for the developers" façade. This is all about money at the end of the day and everybody can see it now.

Man, you pursued the most anti-consumer practices when EGS launched and still have one of the worst stores for customers and you want to talk about pro-consumer? Ever wonder why people prefer Steam over anything else? Because they actually are pro-consumer. I wouldn't expect you to get it.

I don't think you get it @TimSweeneyEpic Valve includes the disclosure because their customers demands it. You would have known if you had built a customer 1st serving store.

Memories. We love doing things, because we just love the process of creating it. We love putting in the effort, going through the pain, and seeing the result of it being built in realtime. When I opened UDK about 16-17 years ago, this was the rush of feeling I had. It was pure bliss. And where are we now but in a joyless world rushing to create content for sake of content, making machines make more content so you can do nothing but be a mannequin at the end of the day - lifeless, joyless and idle. No artist or creator will want to give away that process of making art or creating. Let them who wants to pop pills and claim skills do so. Let them who wants to stand on shoulders of giants and call themselves tall do so. Nobody will care because nobody will want soul-less experiences.

Why are everyone so surprised about Bioware? The studio that made the games we cherish was no more even over a decade ago. The games they've put out over the past decade : Andromeda, Anthem, Veilguard - all failed to find success despite 2 of them being part of 2 massive IPs.

It isn't about the destination, but the journey to the destination that matters. That journey is where you grow, learn, understand, evaluate yourself, and everything exciting happens. Same with art. The process and the effort of it, is what matters more than end goal. What satisfaction do you even get when something or somebody does what you are supposed to do that is supposed to help you grow and learn.

Tim developed the 1st UE and might have been developing it throughout UE3's era and perhaps early UE4 as well. A lot of current day UE issues can be tracked to these legacy systems that were built before this time under Tim's leadership. CMCs are like 2 decades old at this point and really hindering performance and the engine haven't undergone an overhaul in over 2 decades. I used to think Epic hired only the best when some of my friends ended up having to clean up engine source bugs in UE that were just ridiculous. Regardless, while his early efforts demand applause, the period from where Epic sold shares to Tencent and onward requires scrutiny. Epic grew. Hired lot of people, and moved from being a game dev studio to becoming a platform and ecosystem developer. Billions flowed into Epic. They made billions too. And with that Tim's focus and priorities also changed. And it is evident from what they are pursuing. Fortnite was pushed to make Tim's version of the metaverse a reality. UE was pushed more towards a platform tool at the center of the ecosystem rather than focusing on solving issues actual game devs faced. A place where it makes easy for anyone without experience to make anything and just push it into the ecosystem for everyone else to play. And the push to opening up UE for use with Ai is only even more evident of this. This is not for the reason to "empower" developers as their marketting would suggest. The developers aren't even their priorities as Tim has mentioned in UE fest few years ago. Game royalties only make up for like 0.5% of Epic revenues. Their money making machine is Fortnite and Fortnite makes money as long as it has content coming in. User generated content. It doesn't matter if they are high quality or slop as long as it's content and people stay on the platform. So if Ai makes that process easier for the average person, so be it. And lets not forget what all Epic tried to do simply copying trends in chase of money and failed. Fortnite BR was also infact a copy when og fortnite bombed, paragon bombed. Their anti consumer practices with EGS and the terrible junkyard called Fab are all examples of how much into chasing money they are at the moment. There is literally nothing in here that is about empowering developers. Just mere facade. To think that this is some next level foresight is simply ignorance in disguise.

As someone who has been part of experiments with ai workflows across most disciplines for game dev - character art and animation, gameplay coding to even render engine coding - I can say with confidence that those who think this is going to solve problems are going to be in for a real surprise as this creates more problems than it is meant to solve. You can use it to automate chores, and there are a lot of it in every departments, sure. These set of instructions are always static and rules are set and doesn't change so that can be followed properly. But serious work be it on gameplay or rendering or any form of coding side that is part of dynamic gameplay - from my experience , you shouldn't use AI for it. Preferably, stay away as it breaks more than it creates. People also fail to realise that this thing is trained to duplicate or immitate things that exists because that is what it is trained on. Including code. This thing cannot invent anything new, or come up with techniques or technology that are new because it cannot analyze or rationalize logically and is incapable of reason. At the end of the day, this is an LLM that even when it gives you a right answer, doesn't know it gave you a right answer. So on its built on misunderstood foundations. So it has to be used with utmost caution and not to be relied upon fully. Anybody who says otherwise is simply gaslighting or outright lying.

Don't worry guys, @Steam will do the classic pro gamer move - "do nothing" - and end up winning yet again.

Because they can and they love every bit of doing it.

I want Ai to be trained on this

God forbid somebody has an opinion. God forbid somebody is willing to change their opinion over time.

Nearly half of this list arent indie games.

I concur. It also need a "Best Technical Achievement" category for stellar engineering works with respect to realtime rendering tech and game performance, etc.

This is what it looks like to be a sufficiently ignorant ai homie.

Acerola - Just because 2-3 people working on an idea for years on conception / ideation, you cannot call that an indie when the game later started with a probably a million in upfront capital for hires and office space of 1.5-2 years and then took close to 10mil in funding to complete. And on top of that the publisher hired A list Hollywood actors for voice acting, and a lot of other things. At that point it is "NOT" indie anymore. What is so difficult to understand about this? All this when the lead creative comes from a family of wealth. And blocking just proves that you have nothing to back your false claims.