I mean its refreshing to read the opinions of people on the opposite side of this.. since my own feelings about gen ai are mixed. preferable to the hype
However some of the comments.. are a bit absolutist. And I don't think they are sustainable long term. I absolutely agree that the deluge of slop is a problem.
It's very distressing that you can't even fathom people would self-disclose. You clearly understand that a lot of people would refrain from purchasing if they knew...
If you can develop something that doesn't appear to be obviously developed with LLMs, what is the point of disclosing it? It serves no positive purpose for the developer.
Ethics? Respect for your consumer? Can you imagine if the food industry operated under your reasoning? If the consumer can't tell that the "ground beef" is rat meat|dog meat|human flesh, what purpose does it serve to disclose it? It serves no purpose for the manufacturer.
I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't care, but you "know" some consumers don't want it. At least give them the choice.
You run the chances of being perhaps more easily targeted by self-righteous assholes, sacrificing for the common good. If you appreciate that being able to separately browse between AI and non-AI works is useful, and recognize this capability as socially facilitated, then the way to cultivate that behavior is to take the leap.
As long as people are on the lookout for AI stuff with their eyes in the red, this won't work. If you invert the mechanism and tell people hey my shit is AI, you take the wind out their sails, and directly disprove that you're some monster trying to trick or hurt them. It's easily avoided, so that narrative doesn't work anymore.
Because if you disrespect your customers enough, you'll have to deal with a ton of refunds, getting banned from the platform, and never selling another game under your own name again.
You don't have some sort of right to put your game in front of other people. Some of those people don't want AI content, and if you try and sneak it in anyway, you've done a massive disrespect to your customers.
This is a hard problem to solve that always existed but is exacerbated by the barrier to entry dropping to the ground.
Really itch is kinda hitting what the mobile markets have been dealing with since long before LLMs, those markets were awash with clones and low quality even outright scammy crap.
Though maybe a bit harder for Itch since their whole shtick is being a low barrier place for people to put their game. Arguably the platform has always had slop, but I would categorize the majority as "honest slop", a person who maybe isn't any good at making games, or doesn't follow through actually finishing their game putting something up there.
anyone old enough to remember Newgrounds and the era of flash knows that loads of flash games were awful. but you would get a more normal Pareto distribution. Ai has lowered the bar so low that ratio becomes skewed. like 1:99 instead of 80:20 with the flood.
Banning AI seems like a non starter, you can make "honest slop" with ai, you can make even good games with it. Self tagging is basically saying "i don't want anyone to play my game". an honest game with AI will get thrown into the pit with the total crap. it's death.
chewing up real people in filters or auto-mod just makes the problem worse. Real people give up on the platform because they were burned, only the AI slop persists.
I don't know how you retain an open and friendly platform that's accepting of honest slop but can stem the tide of genuine slop.
The issue with AI slop is not so much the slop itself (there was always slop) but the amount of slop. When people are producing slop they are limited by time and ability, so the slop can go from mildly annoying to quite bad, but no more. However when it's entirely machine produced, you're literally drowned in slop if nothing is done. It's like the difference between being crapped on by a pigeon and falling in a manure pool
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 22.4 ms ] threadHowever some of the comments.. are a bit absolutist. And I don't think they are sustainable long term. I absolutely agree that the deluge of slop is a problem.
You don’t have to strive for perfection. Just get rid of the worst examples, and you’ll have a deterrent effect.
I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't care, but you "know" some consumers don't want it. At least give them the choice.
You run the chances of being perhaps more easily targeted by self-righteous assholes, sacrificing for the common good. If you appreciate that being able to separately browse between AI and non-AI works is useful, and recognize this capability as socially facilitated, then the way to cultivate that behavior is to take the leap.
As long as people are on the lookout for AI stuff with their eyes in the red, this won't work. If you invert the mechanism and tell people hey my shit is AI, you take the wind out their sails, and directly disprove that you're some monster trying to trick or hurt them. It's easily avoided, so that narrative doesn't work anymore.
Not the first platform with this feature by far.
You don't have some sort of right to put your game in front of other people. Some of those people don't want AI content, and if you try and sneak it in anyway, you've done a massive disrespect to your customers.
Basically, don't be an asshole. That's why
Really itch is kinda hitting what the mobile markets have been dealing with since long before LLMs, those markets were awash with clones and low quality even outright scammy crap.
Though maybe a bit harder for Itch since their whole shtick is being a low barrier place for people to put their game. Arguably the platform has always had slop, but I would categorize the majority as "honest slop", a person who maybe isn't any good at making games, or doesn't follow through actually finishing their game putting something up there.
anyone old enough to remember Newgrounds and the era of flash knows that loads of flash games were awful. but you would get a more normal Pareto distribution. Ai has lowered the bar so low that ratio becomes skewed. like 1:99 instead of 80:20 with the flood.
Banning AI seems like a non starter, you can make "honest slop" with ai, you can make even good games with it. Self tagging is basically saying "i don't want anyone to play my game". an honest game with AI will get thrown into the pit with the total crap. it's death.
chewing up real people in filters or auto-mod just makes the problem worse. Real people give up on the platform because they were burned, only the AI slop persists.
I don't know how you retain an open and friendly platform that's accepting of honest slop but can stem the tide of genuine slop.