Was watching this latest Arch video where he compares the 'April O'Neil' that was in the latest TMNT property compared to a black April O'Neil he put together with AI. TLDR; the AI despite a few faults still made her hot and look capable in each compared to the frumpy troll the film got.
We know some of this is ideological that they want to lower the standards of beauty, but with AI becoming easier and easier to use that boomers are starting to use it, why pay for over compensated, lazy, unskilled vurtue signalling artists currently striking than just use a machine and then edit it a bit with 1 artist or AI again if it makes a third arm?
I honestly think AI is going to not really hit the blue collar jobs and heavy industry since if something goes wrong you need a human that can adapt to either fix it or turn it off to limit further damage. The service industry will be case by case like if there's been too much of an issue getting staff or with the staff there if it's more beneficial to turn it into a giant vending machine. But the one that I think will be obliterated in the west will be the Media industry, when all they do is repost each others works like a giant human centipede, why pay them when you can just get an AI to write it for a few dollars and it takes minutes not hours and doesn't require giant office's just a computer.
Entertainment is worse as I fundamentally believe we can easily have a lot of films that have the same CGI as the Final Fantasy film for cheaper than it would take to use actors nowadays. Just make sure you get a seperate AI to make the script good. We'll still get your Top Gun Mavericks, your John Wick or even your Sound of Freedoms as they appeal to customers but by large, I can see the bulk of western media being replaced with CGI in the next 2-3 years than a decade.
I don’t see this affecting Asian, Indian or even Eastern European media as much since they are still appealing to a customer base than preaching. I do think at the end of the current strikes, we are going to see a massive reduction in physical studio spaces and 'celebrity' actors and a rise in machine made Entertainment.
Here's Why the AI Takeover is Actually a Good Thing for Japanese Animators!
I don't see a lot of downsides tbh. They're infamously overworked and shows with standout animation like OPM s1 and AOT are labors of love that take up to three years to crank out. Then OPM s2 comes along after two years and it's a piece of shit, animation-wise, because they couldn't call in all the favors used to make s1. And it still took years!!
We're already at the point where cels aren't hand-drawn anymore so if AI is used to speed up the more repetitive posing, keyframes, whatever, I don't know if anyone will notice.
Maybe a bit of a hot take / shit opinion, but I wonder if famously stressed schedules of Japanese entertainment is kind of what makes them great.
You hear about stories with the composer of Chrono Trigger pushed to the limits of his sanity, code changes hours before compiling and shipping to the mask ROM house, people sleeping under their desks.
Sacrificing for your game means you're not going to piss away that sacrifice on something substandard. If they didn't believe in it they'd be working on something else, after all.
Meanwhile in the West the communist gaming media have gotten the ear of the right people and are pushing big on better conditions. And, sure, better conditions are good, but I think you see what the lack of pressure and devotion looks like. Pozzed messaging aside, modern games have more bugs than ever despite better and more mature engines and middlewear. Even Japanese companies buying in to the Western way of doing things like SquareEnix and The Pokemon Company show of what the 9-5 "it's just a job" crowd can pump out
I think it's even less complicated, more simple. Normie corporate drones have diluted the arts and media. Smaller, less accepted/glamorous industry meant greater proportion of fans/passionate employees. When games were more haram, you had more nerds and outcast geniuses working on them.
I think working conditions are kind of a red herring. Yes, schedules change when a company reaches a certain size, and it generally causes bloat and waste. But by far the biggest problem is when big money gets involved in a studio and MBAs, rather than true believers and visionaries, get to run things. Great games and revenue generation are related concepts, but sadly it's not a direct relationship.
Homeworld is one of the greatest RTS games ever and it was made by like seven guys who quit their jobs at Microsoft or w/e. I'm sure those guys had their sleepless nights but as far as I can tell from the making-of, they had a pretty good time creating the game. On the other hand, the development of Cyperpunk 2077 was supposedly under terrible working conditions with a lot of crunch and we know how that turned out. Why? In large part because CDPR was trying to keep up appearances for shareholders.
If the directors and the teams take pride in what they're working on, the result will generally be worth playing.
This is an excellent point tbh. Like truly dedicated and competent development teams, even when small, are almost certainly going to have a better time of creating a game than an over-bloated larger studio with massive organizational and structural problems.
There's less pressure and influence from above, creative decisions and general collaboration flow more easily, and there's sometimes less pressure to aim for the big bucks and more interest in just making something good and satisfying.
I only wish we hadn't seen so many indie devs diving straight into 2D retro styled games for so long. 3D, while a little more work in the art department, is still pretty doable for a small team without straight up asset flipping in an obvious way.