A bit of a disclaimer, the main reason I wrote this was to try to explain what I felt was implicit my view point in the previous post. I also want to say: I know I can be wrong, in fact I expect that I am never entirely correct, so no opinions are final (a hazard of being human). Even if I work at a company which works with AI, I make VR simulations in Unity. I am definitely not an expert in art or AI. I am just trying to organise my thoughts by posting them here. If you enjoy reading them or find them interesting, that is just a bonus.

So with that out of the way… 

I am not much to keep up with current affairs but it is hard to miss AI stepping into the main stage in this day and age. What I realised from writing that post is that for it to really make sense I had to talk more about what art is to me. A couple of years ago I was watching a youtube video from exurb1a’s channel where he said “meaning is a jumper you have to knit for yourself” or at least something similar. The idea was not new to me but from that moment whatever way I had originally thought of was replaced with having to knit a jumper. So what is the wool that goes into my jumper that I knit for myself? Part of it is how I live my life, Adam Savage said “you have to inject kindness into all of your interactions.” Another thought that I have had for many years rephrased when I heard it again. For me though there is something deeper that I pursue, that I can’t help but pursue. That is art.

To be clear, to me at least art and fine art are not the same thing. To borrow some more of Adam Savage’s words “art is using your unique perspective to make something”. To me art is something that anyone can make. This aspect of unique perspective reminds me of a book I read about how humanity evolved, became sentient and eventually became the dominant species. What makes us special, makes us unique is that we weave stories. When our ancestors saw a footprint they did not see just the footprint, they saw the story of an animal walking past. Similarly as we live our lives we tell the story of ourselves. More recently I was reading the beginning of infinity which has a more precise way of talking about the same concept. That is we as humans are universal explainers. Which perhaps sounds very technical but it all comes back to a very simple idea. Humans are beings that create stories to explain things. The story we create could be about Zeus being angry causing lightning strikes or it could be about flows of electrons (not that we really understand lighting either way). How good these stories are in explaining the world is vastly different, but fundamentally they are both just humanity trying to assign meaning to things. So it is natural to want to assign meaning to yourself and give meaning to the story you write or perhaps knit for yourself.

Where does art come into this? Art is a way to express yourself. It is a way to capture part of the story of yourself in a different and often symbolic way. It expresses ideas, values and part of a story. Sometimes that comes together as a television show for instance. It could be an uninspired show with no great meaning or substance. It could also be a thick book which has been branded by some as unimpeachable literature. Which you enjoy more is something that only you can find out. So to bring it back to Lords of Illic - since it is supposed to be a blog about lords of Illic. Are video games art? 

Yes. Ten Thousand percent yes.

Not only are video games just art but it is a multifaceted hydra of art. The design of the characters, the world, the soundtrack, the story, how the UI is composed, the game system itself and even how someone experiences the game are all art. Now as I mentioned before just because something is art doesn’t make it some amazing transcendental thing. You can take all of the opportunities that the medium provides and make a drab uninspired open world game set in a drab cityscape. The game mechanics can be uninspired. The music could be original, but exist only so the game is not silent. The menus could exist solely because they are needed. On the other hand you could also be Bastion. A game which weaves music, narration, gameplay and story telling into a beautiful package. Maybe you don’t like Bastion and you do like the drab open world game. That is fine. Art is art and it can be appreciated or hated. There are no right answers and you may come to love something you hated or hate something that you loved. Art can be made for money or because the painter just needed an excuse to stare at a naked model for hours. It can be drawn by a child and placed on the refrigerator by their parents. It can sneak into a video game or get lost on the cutting room floor. There is an infinite array of possibilities out there and everyone has the power to take a step on that journey. Art is something that I hold so dear to me that I can’t understand how anyone can live in this world with all these opportunities to create art and not feel like there isn’t enough time in the world. For me my brain constantly churns over inspiration and ideas for as long as I am awake and sometimes my ideas go so far as to sink into my dreams.

While I am at it I will say that even programming can be art. It is true that programming is constrained by language but even then it requires inspiration to solve problems. I take incredible pleasure in finding good solutions or refine them. Requirements for functionality are just constraints, but constraints have always been important in art. How can you possibly decide what to express with no constraints anyway? I like to draw abstract art which starts with a blank page which I have decided to fill with colour. Even so quickly I come up with constraints, with shapes and colours I will use. If I did not it would just end up as random scribbles.

All of which brings me back to AI. Since art is about expressing myself when it comes to my hobbies, using AI generated is like wanting to take up knitting and then remembering that you can just buy jumpers and doing that instead. If your goal was to be warm in the winter as quickly as possible then it is a better idea than knitting a whole jumper. But if your goal is to knit well… I know my mother wouldn’t teach an AI to knit for her. 

How useful are AIs? Well it depends on your goals. If you want to make art yourself well… actually an AI can still be useful. It can provide you with really specific examples to help you figure out how to do something. Also it can generate answers to questions and do boring heavy lifting for you…

But… Well I am not gonna want to include any AI generated content in my game except… Actually I was seriously thinking about having an AI generate some level designs for me to use as a base for adding levels in my game a couple of months ago so ah… Well…

What I want to say really is that AIs can’t replace people except in the case when it was just heavy lifting. This is going to be a problem for people who are getting by with this kind of work for the few opportunities to do actually cool things so… Well you can’t say AI won’t disrupt things. In the end though it is just a tool. Unless it becomes sentient at which point well… I hope our AI overlords will let me make video games and not destroy humanity?