A full game made from AI without an engine. Tim Sweeney is not amused.
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (43)
sorted by:
Them not using the specific term for it doesn't mean it wasn't part of their development process.
Mario 64 had a gameplay loop of "enter painting level, get star, get kicked out of level, repeat until unlocking next area." The loop was clearly noted because its one of the major changes Odyssey would do away with later after many iterations of playing with it. Heck, handhelds as an entire system were built with something resembling a "gameplay loop" in mind because most of them were designed to be played in short chunks instead of longer sit down sessions.
A gameplay loop is just the most distilled down bones of what the game wants you to do with the mechanics it presents you.
The modern issue is that the "loop" is now designed less in the interest of fun or soul, and more to create addiction via skinner boxes and other nonsense. Cart before the horse design, which is why it has such a negative connotation. An AI can create a loop the same as anyone, but because its designing it in that cart before horse manner it'll usually be quite shitty.
It's a problem of "desconstructing" something in an attempt to define it in simple terms, which end up being entirely alien to the original intent. I'm fairly certain this is the reason that AI feeding upon it's own output produces progressively worse products. It may very well be that, by the constraints of programming, such loops do emerge within a game's design. Yet if you try and focus on such things alone you end up with progressively worse results.
That's inevitable when things go from "a bunch of dudes from various backgrounds come together to create a passion project" to a literal industry with college classes, billion dollar corporations with management giving powerpoint slides, and an entire legion of "game dev" video series on Youtube.
Things that everyone just understood now need a name so they can be compartmentalized and taught separate from the whole so they people who lack the extreme passion and talent of the old masters can still understand and create from it by eventually assembling those pieces.
Its not necessarily a good thing, but that's just a problem with our education system in general. Like, for those of us who were just capable of math from the outset the systems upon systems that teachers use to teach people who cannot do math the ability to do basic shit look completely alien and retarded. But its probably the only way they can grasp it, regardless of how slower and soulless it is.
That's very much the issue I take with such things. Our whole concept of what progress should look like is built upon elevating people beyond their own abilities, and it's causing our entire society to collapse under the weight of collective incompetence.