Hironobu Sakaguchi explains he thinks gen-AI has potential as he defends his positive remarks about an AI-generated Final Fantasy 6 remake trailer.
Fucking boomers. I don’t condone dishing out death thrests, but If you are too old and tired to get work done then you should retire.
It‘s easy to dismiss this as a reaction from an older dev who‘s simply out of touch. However, from what I‘ve been picking up people in Japan are very split on AI. For every artist, developer or writer that hates it there‘s another artist, developer or writer who says it‘s a tool like any other. But it does feel like it‘s mostly older guys who are already retired or close to it that don‘t have a problem with it sometimes.
“In the end, maybe it’s just that I’ve barrelled through 40 years of work and private life powered purely by ‘exciting things’,” he added
I think older people still have this optimistic view of technology, bordering on rose tinted. For the majority of their lives, they’ve seen technology evolve and expand, so they don’t understand the “new” negativity towards it. Enshittification is a new term to them, if they’ve heard it at all, but for many younger people it’s all they’ve ever known. For some, technology has always been inexplicably getting shittier. For others, technology that was once great has become a tool of oppression, entrapment, and misery in their lifetimes.
All these different groups, anecdotally, react very differently when you ask them about their thoughts on AI.
I wish there was more technology I could be excited about.
The fediverse is pretty cool, for one. I can’t wait to spin up my own Reddit :P
I’m not a nostalgic person by nature. I’m not out here pedaling a story about “back in my day” because I know the '80s and '90s were awful in a lot of ways for a ton of people. But I do believe that the internet peaked by the mid-aughts. I got a good 15-20 years of this one thing getting cooler, more diverse, more accessible. But once corps started figuring out how to actually monetize the internet and create their walled gardens, it was all downhill.
My father literally taught me how to use the Internet when the best search engine was Ask fucking Jeeves.
The most important thing to remember, he said, was to never give your real name, address, or phone number on the internet. Once you do, it is there forever because anyone can copy it down.
And then Facebook happened, and tons of high school classmates were asking me when I would make an account. I told them all the same thing, that putting your real name, let alone your whole fucking face, on the internet was a bad idea. Eventually I had to make one to coordinate different club activities but I never liked the whole idea of Facebook. I couldn’t even watch The Social Network because it was everything I already knew.
We’re so, so, far down the hole from back then that looking back feels quaint.
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To be honest, in my experience those of us that are staunchly anti gen AI are a vocal minority.
Not at all. We had a company wide town hall at my office recently and there was a huge debate about AI in the chat during a talk from one of the execs about AI strategy. Most people in the debate were staunchly anti-AI, with only a few developers in favour.
I’ve gotten the opposite impression, especially with all those recent AI advocates getting booed and laughed at by students during university commencement speeches. It feels like the usual ‘powerful elites with huge platforms’ - including legacy and independent media - versus almost everyone else.
I hope you’re right. But in my anecdotal real life experience, the vast majority don’t care or are into it.
I’ve unfortunately had the same experience as you, I’d say at least 2/3 of my office is pro-AI.
I am so torn on a FF6 3D remake. On the one hand I think it has huge potential - and is way more interesting than an FF9 remake (does anyone seriously think that game actually needs to be remade? It’s fine as it is!). But on the other I think FF6 is so spectacular in its current iteration that I also don’t want to fuck with it. The desire to remake FF7 was obvious - early 3D games have aged horribly and look like ass with modern eyes. But much like Chrono Trigger FF6 is in that peak era of pixel art and as so many indie games keep demonstrating year after year: pixel art is timeless.
There is no chance they do ff4 or ff6 justice on a remake. Ff6 is so large that it’d probably be split up into 10 episodes as well.
I tried to play ff9 and it was rough. It’s good as a story vehicle but I’m spoiled on modern game mechanics. Additionally I wouldn’t mind an uprez.
That said, ff6 would benefit from it far far more.
Admittedly it’s been a minute and I might have rose-coloured glasses on FF9. It is a PS1 title and those have historically… not aged all too gracefully, let’s say.
I actually think FF8 and FF9 have aged wonderfully. Personally, it’s FF7 that hasn’t aged the best.
Yeah that was kind of my vibe. I mean, I don’t think anyone disagrees that 7 has aged the worst. It’s a great game, but visually speaking I think it looks terrible. 8 is better than 7 but still has problems like the pixelated faces. I still think 8 could be well positioned for a proper remake instead of that horrible “remaster” they did. Mechanically it’s kind of an awkward game but gunblades feel like they would be cool inside of the modern action combat framework of the remakes.
8 is definitely not a good first JRPG to start with, but I think it’s an interesting reversal of the regular mechanics/grind that you expect from the genre.
It’s definitely interesting but I think for a lot of people it just didn’t feel good to play.
Triple Triad is goated though.
Regardless of how much you dislike AI, it’s indisputable the hate has gone too far. People are regularly receiving death threats just for using generative AI.
Nah, farther. These people gotta learn not to use it by the rest of us shaming them.
Shame is unfortunately a very bad way to encourage someone to desist from behavior. We can especially see this in addiction management. If someone is ashamed of something they are dependent on, the shame causes them to think about it more, makes them more likely to become entrenched and defensive about the subject, and causes them to use it in private.
The more effective route is in education and harm reduction. Teaching people what AI is capable of and what it is not capable of won’t immediately make someone stop using AI, but it has a much better chance of leading to desistance in the long run.
I think there’s an exception to be made here for shaming very public evangelists, but that’s less to discourage them from using it so much as it is about discouraging others from taking them seriously.
In what way? The guy hasn’t been involved in a Final Fantasy game for 25+ years. He isn’t even part of Square Enix for Globs sake. The only thing tying him to the franchise is that he started it and directed it in the early days. Whatever his opinions on AI is it’s not going into Final Fantasy. And based on Mythwalker studios game output I don’t think it’s going there either. The man is basically retired and looking back at fanart.
It’s the same reason I regularly hand out death threats to people eating meat, driving cars, and creasing the corners of books as a bookmark. It’s imperative that they know I’m judging them, and I’m really important, so they need to be threatened with death on the regular for not agreeing with me.
Clearly it isn’t affecting your livelyhood just yet, shut the fuck up.
Do you want to talk about it?
shut the fuck up.
I bet you purport to support free expression when you go elsewhere on social media.
Oh shut the fuck up
Death threats are never acceptable, but public shaming is an extremely important pillar defining the morals of society, and we are not wrong to use it whenever necessary.
I dispute that the hate has gone too far. I think it could go farther.
