Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

What Steam users want is a way to filter out crap but crap existed well before AI (trust me, I've spent a _lot_ of time scrolling through games on Steam both for "Fests" and just in general). And unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to filter "crap" out. There as good games that use AI, there are bad games that use AI, there are good games that don't use AI, there are bad games that don't use AI. I don't think "AI" is a good filter.

Thankfully Steam has easy refunds if you don't like a game or it doesn't live up to it's marketing page.

View on HN

This is such a tedious argument, "<bad thing> existed before AI too". Yes it did, but there was like 0.1% of it compared to today. Sometimes, a substantial enough different of degree becomes a difference of kind.

Even if the ratio was better for AI, the volume means the filtering has to be better:

Before: 1e6 games, filter out 99.99% to get the top 100, but the filter is only 90% accurate so 10 bad games get through.

Now: 1e7 games, filter out 99.99% to get the top 1k, and even if the filter is now 95% accurate (or equally if the content is on average twice as likely to be in the "good" range) there's still 50 bad games.

Unfortunately the filtering is also AI, and the filter is at best(!) of a similar kind as will have been used to train the AI which made the slop, so this necessarily goes much worse, and is reasonably likely to pass all 9e6 new vibe-generated games.

0.1%?

If I had to guess, bad games to good games ratio has always been like 99 to 1.

Issue is there are more games nowadays obviously, so more slop, though I'd be surprised if the ratio has moved much.

Human made trash has always polluted Steam.

The screenshots and description used to be a good filter - stock unity assets and poor copyediting meant low-effort game. This is no longer the case.

Why doesn't Steam's rating system work to filter out the crap? Does this problem only exist for new games, are the ratings being gamed, or is something else going on?

I really like small indie games, sometimes there just aren't enough reviews or the reviews are inconclusive. Sometimes when I read reviews that are negative they're actually something that I _do_ want in a game, and so it's actually a sign that I do want to play that. So you can't just trust the review #/rating alone. And they're probably being gamed as well.

Someone has to buy the game before they can rate it and there is a threshold before a consensus rating is shown, by which time the slop submitter has already gotten what they want.

Ratings are indeed being gamed now, yes. Not sure how long this has been going on, I've started to see it be obvious in the last 6 months.

It's very obvious when looking at the reviews for certain new indie games. All LLM written comments, most short, most low playtime.

Then actual customers come along and buy the game and over the next few weeks the game craters from Mostly Positive to Mostly Negative.

Steam Next Fest is unique in that the first two days of it have the default view for the page be random. This is intended to give more games exposure, and then two days into the Fest they have enough data to start personalizing recommendations. So the event format's design makes slop particularly bad compared to most other places in the storefront.

Now there is an an infinite amount more crap to filter through...

There is an easy way to filter crap out: crank up the fee charged to developers to submit a game to Steam in order to deter slop and also use the proceeds to cover the cost of more human curation of submissions, also to deter slop. Sometimes the gate does need to be kept.

Aren't devs on Steam required to disclose use of AI? If yes, then there is a way to filter crap.

> There as good games that use AI

[citation needed]

There theoretically could be - and I don't have an issue with an otherwise competent dev/artist making use of AI tools - but I know no examples of good games that also deserve a "made with AI"/"uses AI" badge.

I'm sure this is a logical facility, so I apologize, I don't have an exact example but I imagine most developers are not eager to stick their hands up to say "Hey, I use AI!" given how consumers have treated games that they think use AI.

> most developers are not eager to stick their hands up to say "Hey, I use AI!" given how consumers have treated games that they think use AI.

They could always take the bold step of listening to what their customers want, and eliminating use of AI. Then they wouldn't need to hide it.

> They could always take the bold step of listening to what their customers want

Customers don't know what they want. Sorry but it's just true. They are anti-AI because of a multitude of reasons, only some of those reasons are based in reality. Most of them will give up their anti-AI stance once the dust settles and they will not reward the creators who "stuck to their guns".

It's the same way customers beg restaurants for healthy options then when the restaurant puts those items on the menu they don't sell. Right now mob mentality might sink a game that people think AI was involved in but give it a year and they won't care.

Thinking that not using AI will be a winning play (today) is just fighting the last war.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3312030/AI_Learns_To_Driv...

It’s not exactly what you meant, but I enjoyed this for several hours.

Here goes a case:

Paradox publicly admit use of AI in various places, yet their games are good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com