While Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress, is technically a millionaire—he's never quite minced his words like one, especially about the nonsense that goes on in the gaming industry. Last year at GDC, he came out swinging against a brutal year of industry layoffs. This year, while speaking to PC Gamer's own Lincoln Carpenter, he had some similar steam to vent.
"I'm just depressed for everyone that's out of work," he admits, taking a tired and long view of a situation that hasn't exactly improved since. "The whole funding situation for everyone I'm talking to—it's just very hard to get things going out there."
Part of that, Adams surmises, is generative AI and deep-learning nonsense: "Don't like AI everywhere. It's kind of depressing," he adds, "But there's always something. I mean, every one of these events you go to, it's: AI, Blockchain, VR, etc. With VR, obviously, there's some cool stuff that happened there, but still—it's the immense attention being paid by people that just want to get something for nothing, basically, it's kind of annoying. And the spirit continues on to this day."
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He's not entirely wrong. Alongside the existential threat it poses to artists of all stripes, including voice actors who are in a prolonged union battle with certain studios, AI also happens to just be, like, annoying. It's pushed in annoying ways, it comes and goes in annoying projects that never go anywhere, and it's hailed as the next big thing in annoying speeches whose prophecies never materialise. Just ask our besieged hardware team:
Jacob Ridley noted as early as last year, "stamping the catch-all term of 'AI' onto a product may as well be meaningless". Our own Jess Kinghorn also shared a similar sentiment recently in a search for a better word, noting that: "'Venture capital black box that's slowly cooking our planet' hardly rolls off the tongue."
"I don't give a sh*t about any of that stuff," Adams adds. "I'm sure there's some kind of productivity thing you could get from that, or whatever. I know people do that. But yeah, it's not the type of stuff I'm interested in."
It's an interesting conundrum for Adams, though—because Dwarf Fortress is so dominated by procedural generation. While generative AI and procedural generation aren't even technological cousins, they can sometimes do very similar tasks—though, in my understanding, you've a little more control over a procedural generator's output. AI's sometimes liable to hallucinate something out of whack.
"I feel like we, by existing, have created a certain 'floor is lava' effect for people making handwritten games. You have to be good enough to not just be like some cheap Dwarf Fortress world or whatever. You have to do a good job—and at the same time, the AIs are now the lava for us.
"I don't prognosticate about the number of years that things take, because things go fast and slow, but, yeah—if you could press a button and make my game, well, hell, that's very interesting," he admits. However, he then goes on to pretty astutely observe: "Right now, what people are experiencing is like, press a button and it writes a really sh*tty, wrong essay about something and they still take your job. So that sucks. That's sh*tty. That's a horrible f*cking society to live in."
Honestly, I share Adams' exhaustion, here—I think generative AI's got plenty of uses, sure, but it's generally wound up being in niche and boring, hard-to-sell areas. WoW's using AI, but it's to fit armour to various races, saving artists and 3D modellers a bunch of time and busywork that, let's face it, no-one wants to actually do. Hardly something to boast about in a tech conference.
But we just keep having to hear about it. The long, exhaustive speeches about how we all need to change how we make games forever, before those same executives vanish into the night. The uncanny ghoulishness of neo-NPCs. Voice actors watching, helpless, as gaming companies parade their new technology with their vocal likeness despite their discomfort and—inexplicably—studios trying to march out AI-generated trailers despite the fact they never, ever land well. The "sh*tty, wrong essay" to "they still take your job" thing feels like a metaphor for the whole exercise. Y'know what, Tarn? I'm tired too.
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