[HN Gopher] Ludum Mortuus Est
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Ludum Mortuus Est
Author : davikr
Score : 48 points
Date : 2024-01-20 13:21 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.brokentoys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.brokentoys.org)
| atlantic wrote:
| The title should be "ludus mortuus est", the game is dead. Ludus
| takes the nominative, since it's the subject of the sentence. And
| mortuus also takes the nominative, because it's a nominative
| complement. Google Translate will only take you so far.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Reminds me of the Life of Brian where the Roman officer catches
| the graffiti and does the whole Latin lesson.
| parkaboy wrote:
| I just have to link it here, because it's so good.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdqXT9k-050
| chrisweekly wrote:
| hahaha thanks, it'd been decades since I saw that
| masto wrote:
| I guess it's irony to use an AI translator to come up with the
| title of an article about how AI is taking our jerbs.
| kibwen wrote:
| There's no existing market for Latin translator jobs, because
| everyone knows the best way to translate a Latin sentence is
| to translate it poorly and wait for someone to correct it in
| the comments.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I recommend never providing unsolicited Latin advice
| _unless_ the phrase has been tattooed in flesh or used as
| the name of a legal entity (e.g. "Atlas Obscura").
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| Google translate gives "ludus mortuus est". 'Ludum' (vs
| 'ludus') possibly comes from the game jam 'ludum dare' (where
| 'ludum' is okay because it's meant to be in the accusative -
| the object of 'dare' - 'to give/make').
| yawboakye wrote:
| > and mortuus also takes the nominative, because it's a
| nominative complement.
|
| this is wrong. _mortuus_ , dead, is the perfect active
| participle of _mori_ , to die. its adjectival in nature, hence
| the attribution via _esse_. not too different from english.
| although in latin one is more likely to write _ludus mortuus_.
| the _est_ naturally is implied.
| bwestergard wrote:
| The situation in game dev not so different from Hollywood before
| unionization, where the workers who produced the content could be
| barely scraping by while the films they worked on created
| tremendous profits for studio heads and investors. As in the old
| days of Hollywood, workers' passion for their work was weaponized
| against the,
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I'm playing City of heroes which was published in 2004. What is
| dead?
| pfdietz wrote:
| The return of CoH is an amazing story, really contrary to all
| the NCSoft hate one hears.
| nottorp wrote:
| > really contrary to all the NCSoft hate one hears.
|
| Well, now they need to wipe Guild Wars 2 off the face of the
| earth and do a proper sequel to Guild Wars 1. Then I'll love
| them :)
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Games will be fine, anyway we have more than enough
| riffraff wrote:
| that sounds a bit harsh but also.. true?
|
| E.g. the upcoming releases for steam[0] show _eleven_ popular
| games coming out in the next _three days_ , and it's a single
| platform.
|
| Still sucks for those working in the industry and losing their
| employment tho.
|
| [0] https://store.steampowered.com/explore/upcoming/
| Lucasoato wrote:
| I feel close to everyone who lost his/her job, especially in this
| moment of crisis in which it seems harder and harder to find one.
|
| All societies in the world should have mechanisms to protect
| vulnerable people in moments like these.
|
| At the same time it's impossible to reflect on the fact that
| maybe the videogame industry is extremely crowded and a lot of
| tasks will require less employees as the AI advances. As humans,
| do we really need to have this many people employed in videogame
| development?
|
| The problem is that with capitalism, the only way to find out is
| by iterating economic cycles in which a lot of vulnerable people
| get abused. (Not claiming that any other economical system known
| to man would solve this issue in a better way)
| pprotas wrote:
| > And gamers won't buy them.
|
| There is an even darker possible future: gamers WILL buy this AI
| generated crap. And the executives know it, since gamers have
| been buying their low effort budget cut pre-order alpha crap for
| years.
| tyleo wrote:
| While I empathize with the message about layoffs, the tone of
| this article is too hyperbolic for my tastes, "Game development
| is in an extinction level event crisis, and it is entirely self
| inflicted."
|
| The games industry makes more money than music and movies
| combined. It's no where close to extinction. It does have all the
| problems of any entertainment industry though where the creators
| love the product and put up with unfair wages, hours, and
| personalities at the cost of their own well being.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| The opening of the story really undercuts the hyperbole:
|
| > There are approximately 330,000 people who work in the video
| game industry.
|
| > 9,000 of them have been laid off in 2023.
|
| > 3,000 more of them have been laid off this month. You know,
| the one that's only half over.
|
| That's a four percent reduction. Meta cut thirteen percent in
| November 2022, and it still exists, as does Twitter/X, which
| has notoriously cut far more staff. A four percent reduction is
| probably just beginning to clear out some dead wood, not the
| sign of impending extinction.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Yes, it is quite literally _not_ decimation, which would be a
| loss of 10%.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| Yeah all the layoffs all across tech are 100% a result of
| raising interest rates, but everyone wants to frame it with
| whatever their political ideology is (oh, it's DEI, oh, it's
| capitalist profiteering, whatever).
|
| People didn't like inflation, but they loved inflated salaries.
| When people said "tackle inflation", they meant "lower prices",
| but didn't really consider that their salary increases were
| _also_ a result of inflation.
|
| When you pull money out of the economy, companies cut spending
| and the single largest expense of tech companies is "salaries",
| so of course they're going to cut salaries.
|
| The end result of this should all balance out, but in the mean
| time, everyone was mad about rising prices and didn't complain
| about rising salaries, and now they're mad about falling
| salaries and don't complain about falling prices.
|
| In conclusion, (too much) inflation is bad and we should stop
| doing that.
| Loughla wrote:
| >falling prices.
|
| Where?
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| Currently mostly energy and things whose prices depend
| mostly on energy like airline tickets, but inflation
| _generally_ doesn't end with prices falling over all, just
| not going up any more.
| slily wrote:
| Sounds like the author was unaware that he was riding an economic
| bubble.
| handoflixue wrote:
| The author has been in this business (and writing about it)
| since at least 2001, when Dark Age of Camelot released. This is
| hardly the first time he's seen an economic bubble
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| It's hard to let them eat cake when the cake is a lie.
| klik99 wrote:
| Jeez, anything that happened in 2023 is now blamed on AI? That's
| some great marketing for sama.
|
| Unfortunately it misses the point - a huge number of these
| layoffs were companies purchased by Embracer Group, so a big part
| of it is overleveraged attempt at consolidation failing
| spectacularly. Secondly is just game industry cycle at big
| companies of overhiring and cutting fat. Thirdly is overall
| layoffs in tech industry in 2022-2023.
|
| AI maybe had a small role in the unusually high number of layoffs
| in 2023 but it's far from the biggest factor, but the more banal
| truth is it was a combination of different events.
| quasarj wrote:
| What? He specifically said it wasn't AI.. did you read the
| article?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder how the market will shake out...
|
| Generally I see AAA studios churning out Boring Shooter: 2024 Q1
| edition. Pay $70 for the same engine, some balance tweaks, and a
| new map. But their games are pretty because they are the only
| ones who can afford to buy millions to make assets.
|
| Indie games are, of course, where all the interesting mechanics
| are invented.
|
| If AI makes it easy to generate assets, why won't the AAA studios
| feel the pain first? Of course, everyone would love a stable job,
| and it is really sad when they lose them. But the management just
| contributes coordination. Maybe we're heading toward a world
| small teams can leverage AI to fill their skill gaps, they can
| make some actually interesting games, and the AAA studios can go
| extinct. The game shattering Steam records was made by like 10
| people apparently, and I think they didn't even use AI (as far as
| I know).
|
| None of this puts food on the table now of course, but the future
| could be better.
| lmm wrote:
| > If AI makes it easy to generate assets, why won't the AAA
| studios feel the pain first?
|
| Because, as you said in your first paragraph, the AAA studios'
| USP is that their games look better. They have skilled artists,
| and for the moment generative assets aren't going to be able to
| match that - and they don't have to, for most purposes. Indie
| games using procedural generation is already a tradition, it's
| just going to kick up a notch, and then the low end of AA will
| start using it, and so on; I'm not saying this stuff won't
| eventually make it into the AAA games, but it's going to get
| there from the bottom up, and the low/middle-end - those
| studios that just barely kept a few artists on the payroll at
| the moment - will be the first jobs hit.
|
| > None of this puts food on the table now of course, but the
| future could be better.
|
| It'll be better for creative and original people. But those who
| were just getting by churning out good enough are in for a
| rough time.
| nottorp wrote:
| > churning out Boring Shooter: 2024 Q1 edition
|
| Lovely description of current AAA drivel. Permission to reuse?
| :)
|
| I used to call those "Battlefield of Honor of Duty", but I
| think that name combination isn't current any more.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > hope you liked the games of 2023 because that's all folks [...]
| Game development is in an extinction level event crisis
|
| Okay, we'll wait and see whether games are really dead this time
| next year. That's an easy one to confirm, since he gave a
| prediction and a timeline. We can just wait a year and see if
| he's right, or if he's being hyperbolic to the point of inanity.
| Being really generous, I'll interpret his prediction as weaker
| than stated and say that the prediction is confirmed if there are
| 25% fewer games released this year than last.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I didn't read the prediction as saying the number of releases
| would go down. Just that we were sliding into an area where the
| majority would be shitty AI-generated games.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| I struggled to find anything of substance in this article. How
| did 2023 differ from 2022? Why does laying off 5% of the AAA
| workforce (which part?) correspond to an AI apocalypse in 2024?
| What is this article actually arguing, and why should I care?
|
| For example, the author opines that
|
| > Games in 2024 and 2025 will be a few labors of love, from indie
| developers or the few good AAA development houses still running,
| and piles upon piles upon piles of AI-generated vomit that will
| make people nostalgic for the days when most of Steam's catalog
| was Unity Store asset flips.
|
| > And gamers won't buy them.
|
| The only games I cared about in 2023 were from indie developers
| or labors of love. But... "gamers" bought them. At least I did.
| Am I a "gamer"? Are the titles I care about going to suddenly
| fail in 2024? I don't see any evidence for that in the article.
| Will sales of titles I don't care about fall in 2024? I don't see
| any evidence for that in the article either.
|
| I didn't buy any Unity Store asset flips or AI generated nonsense
| or NFT-powered whatever or gacha b.s. or Call of Duty 20XX:
| Shootie-Person Redux, and I wasn't planning on doing so in 2024.
| Should I be concerned about that industry?
|
| I don't put much value in the EA/Activision/Blizzard/Tencent/etc.
| gaming shops. I haven't for a long time, though. If the market
| somehow killed those studios, I'd struggle to call that a bad
| thing? Should I think differently?
| quasarj wrote:
| Ah yes, someone in yet another industry discovers capitalism,
| especially the joy of infinite growth capitalism! Nothing to see
| here
| lmm wrote:
| The games industry has been due a correction for years. Too many
| people want to make games, relative to how many games the world
| actually wants or needs. Wages and working conditions are always
| going to be terrible.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| I mean as much as I love game dev I understand there is a lot of
| anxious dead wood in the AAA scene. Timothy Cain talked about it
| recently https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVQ30c7TcA
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