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Azukitou ❤️🔥💙 Blue Phoenix ✨
@AzukitouVT
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The discourse around Big Walk has made it abundantly clear to me that all existing AI discourse revolves around how poorly introduced AI was. Instead of focusing on a tools-first approach, AI companies focused on stupid content generation shit which produced some of the worst garbage ever seen on the internet. Time for a stupid rant about AI from me.
I want to make a few things clear:
- Yes, all reasonable people agree that AI generated artwork/media is soulless garbage in its current state. Unless there was substantial effort on the part of the human behind it (e.g. the shape store) it has no original vision or cohesion.
- Programming can 100% be an artform. But it also covers a wide breadth of technical knowledge. Even with my own CSCI degree, there's still a lot of shit that I personally didn't know how to do, and there weren't a lot of great on-boarding guides out there for those things.
- House House did not do anything wrong here, they are airing far more on the side of caution than they frankly need to at this point. I think their reluctance to disclose this was justified given how massively overblown the reaction has been. They frankly shouldn't have done so.
--
Programming and Art both have incredibly monotonous elements to them. Art is a lot more freeform and expressive, but programming at scale (especially in gamedev) is a logistical clusterfuck where you have to juggle dozens, if not hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of things around with all sorts of rigid scripts and build chains, configurations, etc.
No one is having fun writing a CMake file, no one enjoys writing python scripts to organize and curate data, even if it's something they're good at. Programmers have complained for years about the logistical bullshit they have to deal with, and now they don't have to.
This is the key difference between the shitty generative usage everyone knows AI for, and the pragmatic usage of AI as a tool that programmers are using it for. Generative AI art literally only exists for cynical reasons, and it deserves the hate it gets. It actually puts people out of a job, and doesn't function as a tool to accelerate artists in any way, merely to replace them.
Programmers aren't replaced by AI, they are accelerated by it. We can use generative AI to rapidly drive the creation of scripts and toolchains to solve logistical problems much faster than we'd normally be able to on our own, allowing us to focus less on monotonous bullshit, and more on the fun elements of system archetyping, technical design, and steering all of the logistics together. Instead of needing to hand-write all our scripts, we can just describe the problems we're trying to solve, provide contextual files, and it can stitch everything together.
It also grants a wider scope of accessibility to the breadth of technical knowledge in the industry, some of which is gatekept behind being in said industry. If there are things that we may not actually know how to do (because it's low-level or system specific), the agent has a deep knowledge resouvoir it can tap into. Then we can review it, restylize it by hand to understand it, and start iterating by hand from there.
Having performance problems? The agent is good at finding shit and optimizing. Having trouble finding a bug? Describe it and the agent can look through the code and work out what the problem likely is, and it can even test the code and build isolated test cases to get things working as intended. It's a wonderful tool that saves a lot of mental strain. For people like me with limited attention and energy, it helps a fuck ton.
--
Anyway, my point isn't to shill AI, it's your choice whether you use it or not. My focus here was more illustrating why AI is different for programmers versus artists. Ultimately, this moral grandstanding over other people's choice to use AI to assist in their work has become so overblown that it's genuinely irritating.
If you refuse to play a game just because someone has interacted with AI in the course of development, then you might as well get mad at them for using Google, or stack overflow, or books instead of paying someone to solve their problem instead. Clearly we're so fucking deep into late stage capitalism, money always has to be a barrier to solving problems.
And if your issue is with how much electricity and water is being consumed, push for all of that generative shit to be priced out in favor of AI as a tool for accelerating human hands in the creation of content. I agree that we should not be building compute centers in people's backyards, but the water consumption is a distration from things that are causing far more harm on the environment.
@JackJinseki Like why should people stop playing games they enjoy just because companies used a tiny hint of AI in the coding for whatever reason. That’s why I play what I want idc anymore. If it’s fun and I enjoy it, imma play it.
Idc if you hate me, block me or whatever for this but:
I’m still playing Big Walk.
They did everything right, used AI the way it should be used (fixed a bug humans could not for only 10 lines out of millions of lines of code) AND was 100% honest when they didn’t need to be..
-Indie dev encounters issues at the end of their development cycle
-indie dev attempts to troubleshoot said issues
-indie dev consults the MANUFACTURER of their game engine, THEY can't solve their issues
-as a last-ditch effort to avoid shipping a game with a glitch they can't iron out, they spitball with an LLM
-surprisingly, LLM assists in workarounds that fix said issues
-despite not needing to disclose (per steam TOS), the dev is honest about their disclosure when nominated for awards to be transparent.
I would say House House did everything right. An LLM was used to solve problems humans could not. It didnt generate assets. It didnt infringe on the creative process.
I hate what AI, and particularly GenAI has done to the gaming industry, but this is a stupid fucking hill to die on. This isn't vibe coding. This isn't slop. This is what AI was SUPPOSED to do in industry.
Pick the right battles, people.
@JackJinseki Right? Like I’m sick of this whole Anti-AI in general thing. Like yes, if the company used AI assets or Gen-AI for things in the game then sure, I’d avoid it but they literally used it as a last resort tool to assist them in fixing a bug that others couldn’t even help fix.
Been seeing a lot of debate on commercial pricing for Vtubers.
TLDR: anyone can charge what they want, and anyone can commission what they want, but I do have some insight from being BOTH a creator and in the industry:
Scale pricing for larger creators, companies, etc. does exist. But you don't really see that in other industries until you get to MUCH LARGER tiers in terms of reach and profit. Usually, it also comes with more manpower, deadlines, details, etc., to boot.
If you are scaling pricing between a 10K vs. 20K follower channel, for example, you're not really going to see that difference (most of the time), AND you aren't taking into account all factors that are usually present.
To be honest, following is one of the lowest-lift metrics, just easiest to find on a public profile.
If you are starting out, you also likely DO NOT need things like expensive merch illustrations, etc. Focus on your content first. Do research into what your community buys and what they're willing to pay.
And then, even when you ask, assume only a FRACTION of those saying they are interested will buy something.
You don't need merch to be a Vtuber; you need content.
There's a LOT of nuance to this debate. Honestly, the way the Vtuber market handles rights and merch is SO DIFFERENT from what usually happens out there. It can be a little disingenuous to cite practices from elsewhere if you're changing them immensely.
At the end of the day, just be smart with your money and honest with what you can afford!
P.S. Do NOT misconstrue this to say artists shouldn't get paid. That's not what I'm saying at all. The moral of the post is to just know what YOU yourself should pay for at this point in time and find someone within your budget.
I don’t think artists should have to cater to everyone when their sole purpose is to make art, not sell your product. IMO a 1 time fee for a piece that can be used again and again for merch, over a % fee on every sale is a much better deal for us and we really shouldn’t complain.
I agree!! And if they can’t afford to get commercial rights from artists, picking up a pencil and learning how to do art for themselves is cheaper/free depending on their needs. 1/2
Merchandise, regardless of the size of the creator, is an investment. When artists sell commercial rights, they are renouncing their rights to royalties. Which means if your merch doesn’t sell today but it starts selling like hot cakes in a year or two, the commercial license will still cover you.
The alternative is paying royalties, which means that for every sale, a hefty % would go to the artist.
It is not the artist’s responsibility if the client doesn’t make a return of their investment. This is a business transaction. It is not right to try to guilt trip artists into lowering fees for individuals. If you want to sell merchandise, then you HAVE to play by industry rules because that is a big financial move. And if you can’t afford industry rates, perhaps look for artists with prices that adjust to your budget.
I would recommend VTubers who don’t see a return of their investment when selling merch to LEARN about marketing BEFORE even considering selling merch. Do the research on what your community actually wants, sometimes digital products or other type of products would sell better.
Making the impulsive decision to invest in merch BEFORE you’re ready for it is more harmful than anything, and trying to offload that responsibility onto artists is frankly disrespectful. The artist is not responsible for the client’s finances. Please learn about alternatives that fit your budget and don’t let yourself be pressured into making financial decisions that you’re not ready for. You don’t need to do merch to be a ‘real’ VTuber. Do your research and consider alternatives that fit your size and budget instead.
@qloombee Stupid character limit. 😭
@qloombee Like I said, as an artist, I get it. I agree, artists should not undercharge themselves ever. If they think a months paycheck is what their art is worth than all power to them, we should not be trying to dictate what people charge. However, as a smaller vtuber….
@GyaruMonstr Man I wish I was conversational in Japanese 😭 I just know the fundamentals enough to read Romaji and sing it with proper pronunciation. I can understand a little of the lyrics but not much (like a word or 2). Trying to set a goal to start learning it since I love the language.
@Ringmaster_Remi @EggieWeggieVT Omg I get this too! I recently moved but lived in Canada for 27 years of my life (aka my entire life up until a couple months ago). The conversion fees were TERRIBLE! and literally is the only reason I could never really afford art because bills too oof. 😭
@Jeyraident That's okay!! This helps so much tho! Thank you so much :D
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