This is a really interesting report with a somewhat misleading title. Come along as I ramble about AI adoption and this report🧵 Also, in case anyone was wondering you can't just "slap some AI on it" and expect revolutionary change. It just doesn't work like that.

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...

hbr.org

@vherve.bsky.social, @christophsalge.bsky.social, and I have a new paper preprint out!

Landmarks, Monuments, and Beacons: Understanding Generative Calls to Action

Algorithmic evaluation of procedurally generated content struggles to find metrics that align with human experience, particularly for composite artefacts. Automatic decomposition as a possible solutio...

arxiv.org

The singularity is awesome

Tech Guy: I have attained immortality! Me: Wow, you figured out how to stop aging? Tech Guy: No, I trained an AI on my emails to create a perfect copy of my personality. Then I uploaded it into a robot dog with M3GAN’s face. It will live forever Robot: As a businessman I often schedule meetings

For the last year I've had the privilege of working with the Kennesaw State University (@kennesawstate.bsky.social‬) Game Studio, and now our first student-developed game is finally ready for release on Steam. Presenting Chiba, probably the cutest Sokoban-style game on the market!

Chiba on Steam

A colorful pixel art box pushing puzzle game where you control a culinary canine. With a variety of ingredients at disposal, utilize scorching grills, slippery butter, and sticky syrup as you solve al...

store.steampowered.com

Dr Fiesler is an actual ethicist and has a more informed take than mine.

Dr. Casey Fiesler@cfiesler.bsky.social · last yr.

Another week, another research ethics controversy. TL;DR Researchers released a public dataset of 2B+ messages from 4M+ users on 3k+ "public" Discord servers. Usernames/IDs are anonymized. But let's unpack this one... 🧵 www.404media.co/researchers-...

This is the THIRD paper I've seen in the last year that uses people's data in a way that is deeply ethically problematic. If games scholars keep doing this it is going to seriously harm everyone's ability to do research with online gaming communities as they start closing off to scientists.

Discord Unveiled: A Comprehensive Dataset of Public Communication (2015-2024)

Discord has evolved from a gaming-focused communication tool into a versatile platform supporting diverse online communities. Despite its large user base and active public servers, academic research o...

arxiv.org

This experiment is a textbook example of "Just because we can doesn't mean we should" research. Doing this without community consent and buy-in is wildly inappropriate. Not only does it risk harming respondents, it also poisons the well for other, more serious, researchers. Absolutely unacceptable.

Sarah Gilbert@sarahagilbert.bsky.social · 2y ago

The mods of r/ChangeMyView shared the sub was the subject of a study to test the persuasiveness of LLMs & that they didn't consent. There’s a lot that went wrong, so here’s a 🧵 unpacking it, along with some ideas for how to do research with online communities ethically. tinyurl.com/59tpt988

Turns out some of my former students decided to form a games studio around a project they started in one of my classes. Really happy to see that they kept working on it. It's a good game and y'all should check it out!

Kennesaw State computer game design student launches studio, first video game

Growing up, Luke Gamage was often captivated by video games and found himself pondering his own future as a game designer. Now a student in Kennesaw State University’s College of Computing and Softwa...

kennesaw.edu

i would simply put the ai farms in antarctica and pipe the melted fresh water to the parched equatorial climes

we’re hiring a historian! this is a really interesting opportunity for anyone considering alt-ac possibilities

Google Stadia

D̒͂̕ᵈăᵃn̕ᶰ Ť̾̾̓͐͒͠ᵗe͗̑́̋̂́͡ᵉn̅ᶰtᵗl̀̓͘ᶫe̓̒̂̚ᵉrʳ@viss.hax.lol · 2y ago

Helpful to remember that computers got superhuman in chess 40 years ago and it's still as popular as ever. Apply to math, writing, games, etc. Computers can't take away joy and sometimes they enhance it

This is pure genius.

NANOWAR OF STEEL - HelloWorld.java (Source Code Video) | Napalm Records

YouTube video by Napalm Records

youtu.be

I remember when you could just buy a computer program like Microsoft Word or Photoshop and just have it on your computer forever without having to pay monthly or yearly. What a time that was

I think we're starting to butt up against what @codingcrafter.bsky.social & Jim Whitehead call the expressive range. Basically, we're starting to see sameness appear in the output. It took longer because these LLMs are so powerful, but that expressive limit is still there. We've just hidden it.

Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 2y ago

One interesting thing with these advanced LLMs: seems pretty clear that for most definitions of consciousness, they're not it. They're more toward it, so to speak, than a chatbot ten years ago, but something's missing.

Well deserved!

🐔 Brian Bucklew 🐔 ₑͤ＞∿＜ₑͤ ∞🌮@unormal.bsky.social · 2y ago

what the heck!? www.pcgamer.com/games/roguel...

Caves of Qud is up there with Dwarf Fortress as the most innovative games for PCG and generative AI. Happy to see it hit 1.0!

Kitfox Games 🦊@kitfoxgames.com · 2y ago

After 17 years of development, Caves of 1.0 is Out NOW! Live and Drink.

Treating game development as an engineering challenge, rather than a player experience challenge. Putting people infront of things, and iterating, is essential to intentional design.

Eurogamer@eurogamer.bsky.social · 2y ago

Google has developed an AI tool that generates fully playable 3D worlds www.eurogamer.net/google-has-d...

🎶 To the pirates of Uzbekistan, from Aral Sea to Samarkand, raise a tankard to the sky and say, Uzbekistan is a pirate land. 🎵

Are you looking for an internship (undergrad or grad!), can legally work in London, and want to make experimental work with LEGO bricks, digital *stuff*, and creativity? Consider applying to my team! www.lego.com/en-gb/career...

LEGO DESiGN iNTERNSHIP - Careers - LEGO.com

LEGO DESiGN iNTERNSHIP: Job Description Join the LEGO Design Internship Talent Pool Are you a student who loves being creative and has a curiosity about design?...

lego.com

Scientists, academics, researchers: We’re excited to share that @altmetric.com is now tracking mentions of your research on Bluesky! 🧪

Altmetric@altmetric.com · 2y ago

There are already many articles for which there is more attention on Bluesky than on other comparable micro-blogging sites, meaning the academic community and the general public have clearly adopted Bluesky as one of its core places to disseminate and discuss new research. A Place of Joy.

Overleaf is down so I am forced to comprehend the horrors

Fundamentally this boils down to the importance of game design. Just shoving tech into a game isn't going to meaningfully improve the player experience. AI really is no exception.

Liz Edwards@lizaledwards.bsky.social · 2y ago

The thing about AI games- AI Minecraft, whatever the hell EA is doing with 'make it more epic', is they promise it's future of games- but there no goddamn game. Look at the actual history of games - Pong didn't sell on promises! It stood on its own as a great game - so has every great game since.

Did you know? Black Friday is named in honor of Rebecca Black, who invented Friday in 2011.

This is a tricky one. The publishing industry is broken, but I'm not entirely convinced that Spines is going to change that in any meaningful way. This project seems more like an AI-powered vanity press than an actual tool set that would help authors. 🧵 where I rant about AI support tools.

New publisher Spines aims to 'disrupt' industry by using AI to publish 8,000 books in 2025 alone

A new publisher has claimed it aims to “disrupt” the books industry by publishing 8,000 books in 2025 alone using artificial intelligence.

thebookseller.com

Although it's hard to beat 1995-1997 there were some pretty damn good games released this year. Satisfactory, Space Marine 2, and Helldivers 2 come to mind. We also saw a new edition of DnD, and the MTG Foundations set is a great entry point into that game.

Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou@kanaratron.bsky.social · 2y ago

If anyone thinks 2024 has been a bad year for video games* then I'd suggest they start looking outside of AAA monoliths. *the games, rather than the industry

I do really appreciate Valve's new rules here. If you're not ready to commit to what you will provide in a Season Pass - don't offer a Season Pass. Players are buyers, not investors. partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/se...

I want to add The Internet Archive to this hill, and then I'm going to die on it.

Another Bruce@anotherbruce.bsky.social · 2y ago

I seriously believe the best two things the Internet has done are Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg. Didn't make me pick one of them.

Cory Doctorow's concept of "enshittification" comes to mind here. We had a good thing going with the old Internet, but it got monetized to death.

Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 2y ago

We're getting to a point where you now encounter young people asking about Old Internet as if they want to know about a glorious bygone time. More and more I think the best way to explain it is to say look at Wikipedia. Simple, direct, run by enthusiasts. No SEO, algorithm-chasing, etc.