sohois
17hr ago
I'm going to echo one of the below comments and state that reverse engineering has gotten good, but that's a long way from perfect. The various photoshop and office clones out there do a great job of looking convincing, but the reverse engineering is only skin deep.
And none of this should be a surprise, as these tools have been developed over decades with hundreds if not thousands of people contributing. That you can run Astra or Opus for a weekend and get 80% of the way there is pretty incredible, and some skeptics using the fact that they aren't 100% to say AI is rubbish is an incredibly stupid argument.
The pareto principle still applies though, and I don't think (assuming AI just stopped advancing, which it won't) this would change software that much. Maybe 1-2 months of tinkering with your agents would get you basically feature complete for all the big stuff on a photoshop, but then the rest is going to be 10000 little things that have been added in over the decades and will take ages to discover and implement. 99% of these vibe projects are going to lose interest after the first week and go nowhere. Enterprises will continue to use the big SaaS programs, and you'll see some more niche stuff switch more to internal builds. (again, assuming AI didn't keep advancing. What will actually happen is in 6 months - 1year they will be pretty much perfect and software will cease to exist)
The big impact is likely going to be the cloud coming for even more software, especially in gaming. Reverse engineering is difficult, because you only have the software's surface to inspect. Decompiling a local application is a different ballgame and I think, even if direct game streaming remains a niche, a lot of games are going to shift some parts of their functions into the cloud, to tie games to internet access and prevent them from simply being copied straight away.
sohois
2d ago
While I think it is true that Western game developers have ceded a market in terms of making gooner games for teenage boys, I'm not sure that this is that important in the grand scheme of things. Hades 2, afaict, was still extremely successful. If you look at all the examples you provide, they are all big brands like Halo or critically acclaimed like Tomb Raider or Mass Effect.
Games like Concord and Hyenas, meanwhile, were mediocre attempts to enter into dead genres. Do you think it would have made a difference if Concord had some hot women characters? Maybe it would have lasted 2 weeks instead of 1.
This is not to say that there aren't some big titles which seem to go out of their way to antagonize chuds with particularly unpleasant and ugly characters, particularly female. Sony seem to revel in this across their different developers. I would guess that this is causing long term damage to their various IP. But that doesn't mean that games like Hades won't be successful even with some dodgy character design decisions
sohois
3d ago
If I might steelman the design of Medea, and the wider concept of 'safe-horny' for a moment:
That twitter post is standard internet hyperbole, but that doesn't mean that the Medea design isn't hot. This is clearly an attractive character, and the AI redesign makes her more titillating, not necessarily more attractive. What it also does is changes the feel of the character. I've not played Hades 2 so don't know this character's role but if I saw the latter, it would instantly strike me as temptress/romance option. The former is more neutral and doesn't set expectations of what the character should do. More widely, the AI design instantly codes as male/teenage bait, and could be off-putting for other audiences. There's a big commercial drive for horniness* to be done in a 'safe' way.
What is the purpose of sexy designs and horny material in games? Unless you're playing Sex with Futa Hitler 2:Goebbling Cock, it is generally not for players to drop their controllers and start masturbating. Sex can be an important part of romance in games. Lust more generally is an important part of the human condition. 'Safe horny' allows you to make use of this in your games and storylines without casting the game instantly into the pornography bucket.
The same exact mechanism is visible in film. There is pornography, and film, and there are plenty of films that straddle the line between the two. Long before woke there has always been criticism of films that rely on crude sexual imagery as being "literal pornography" or "material for teenage boys". At the same time, there are films that are far more explicit which are still considered high art because they are handled in a very 'adult' manner.
To be fair, 'safe horny' typically eschews the overt sexuality that films can get away with; there's still some way to go in how games can present this kind of material. But the important thing for most creators is probably getting away from that 'teenage boy' category while still presenting something that says "this is a hot character and you can have sex with them".
The first Hades did this very well. A character like Megaera is not typically attractive, with harsh facial features. She's also the ex of the main character and a lot of her dialogue is romantic in nature. So how do you get people horny when you're dealing with a character that is practically ugly to look at? Just give her the most sensual voice imaginable. Instantly, the designers have found a way to horny that doesn't rely on shoving tits in your face.
Compare that with something like the FF7 remake. Here we do have Tifa's tits shoved in your face, but as a scene it's pretty teenage**. It's like an anime beach scene, with a flustered protagonist and no actual suggestion of sex, beyond "Hey look at these fat tits and hot bodies".
Imagine a situation where you were playing one of these games in front of a wife or girlfriend. Or recommending to a colleague. I think the majority would feel more comfortable with Hades, despite the fact that the actual content of Hades is more sexual, more mature, than FF7.
i think this is the steelman, that 'safe horny' allows you to communicate and use sexuality in a game without bringing the baggage of 'teenage boys' (and I use teenage boys specifically, because it's not male sexuality that it should be blocking).
That's the steelman, but the reality is that while Hades 1 did was able to tread this fine line, Hades 2 largely fails. Medea, who isn't super hot by any means, is pretty much the only hot character. Hades 1 had hot characters where needed, unique characters where needed, and plain characters where needed. Hades 2 has a bunch of uggos and ridiculous designs like disabled gods. They went so far they completely failed to signal horniness.
*I appreciate that there a few games like Overwatch where the pornography has become an active selling point, but I don't think this is something you can aim for; lots of games have had casts of hot women without getting the impact of OW.
**which isn't a problem inherently. FF7 was a game for teenage boys and not everything needs to be super sexual. The scene is suitable in terms of the rest of the game.
sohois
3d ago
I think Miranda was very much a case of design and/or tech failures meaning Bioware didn't achieve the desired look for her, rather than them actively deciding to make her look plainer
sohois
4d ago
I want to step aside from the controversy here and ask if the lead artist of a series that's pretty much the poster boy (or poster man if you prefer) for safe horny really called Gen Z? Did she adopt this as a deliberate nom de plume?
Because Google Docs already exists.
There are already free versions of all these. All of these are probably going to get better a lot quicker, but they still won't do the enterprise stuff that gets the big subscriptions
edit: this comment was made without seeing Brainwavez reply. Great minds, etc.
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