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Appreciate the thread is very Marvel centric at the moment but I was interested in people's thoughts on a specific issue which does have some effect on LCGs and the like. LOTR LCG's fan continuation recently dropped an article for their most recent expansion and a bunch of the art is credited to Midjourney.  Previously they've used art from other games (below left), salvaged new art from existing pieces (below middle) and commissioned art (below right).    Doomtown: Reloaded is getting by on old works and commissions, but is wildly inconsistent (these cards are from the same pack):   Emerald Legacy - the L5R continuation - is notable because all the new art is very different to what came before. L5R under FFG had a strong artistic style throughout.   All this is not to dump on artists who are often under- or unpaid, or the fans who continue these games in their own time and usually for little to no monetary reward. It's more to ask if people think AI art could be helpful going forward for these sorts of things, if people think there are any ethical or legal issues, and so on. Doomtown and NSG, as products of actual organisations I assume come under different legal scrutiny to ALEP and EL. But yeah, wondering if anyone had any thoughts!
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Oct 20, 2023 14:38
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I would say it's unethical, and also looks really bad if you do more than glance at it.
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Oct 20, 2023 14:52
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Fan continuations of games are built on the premise of "I desire [thing], but you own the rights to [thing]; gently caress IP." (I say this as a fan of of fan continuations.) The thought that groups of people organizing to use IP that doesn't belong to them would like to use AI does not boggle the mind.
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Oct 20, 2023 14:55
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If it’s not-for sale work among a fan base, I don’t see why it’s bad if they use AI generated art work. AI is deleterious when it takes jobs from humans, not when it’s bad aesthetically.
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Oct 20, 2023 16:15
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Golden Bee posted:If it’s not-for sale work among a fan base, I don’t see why it’s bad if they use AI generated art work. AI is deleterious when it takes jobs from humans, not when it’s bad aesthetically. Exactly this. And at the same time you get what you pay for. It's unreasonable to expect the best designed stuff from teams of people that are all donating their time, and while you can playtest out bad designs you can't do the same for art as it's a limited resource and any artist worth their salt is going to want to get paid. I would even go so far as to say it's better to use AI art because a lot of the art that is already used in custom content is rarely done with the consent of the original artist or the publisher that probably owns it. Like if I wanted to go make a custom Batman hero for Marvel Champions, I'm just going to google some batman panels and general art to put on the cards, and I'd say it's worst to do that without permission than use AI. CitizenKeen posted:Fan continuations of games are built on the premise of "I desire [thing], but you own the rights to [thing]; gently caress IP." It's funny because the defacto stance on this fan content was basically started by Decipher that told fans to essentially make whatever to keep the game going as long as they didn't attempt to profit from it or infringe upon the IP of other stuff which is why all the Star Wars and Star Trek cards didn't use new art was so that there was no legal infringement of pushing players towards printing their own game. It's been a *fairly* recent thing IMO that these games started to get daring enough to try and push custom content into having whole new cards; specifically with Star Wars/Trek CCGs. FFG opened the door a lot more with the fan continued versions of Netrunner/Conquest as they were basically like "do whatever as long as you aren't profiting from it". Recently I started checking out other old CCGs; notably Star Wars TCG, and DBZ(Panini/FanZ) and in the cases with those games they just straight up stole art from the shows without regard for the creators to keep the content coming. poo poo the Star Wars TCG did a whole 2 sets of MCU Avengers using footage from the movies so in case any of these things ever blows up, it would probably be best for all these groups to switch to a system of using AI.
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Oct 20, 2023 17:43
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I’d rather fan-made productions go with stick figure art than gross-rear end AI garbage, but that’s just me.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:37
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I would rather have Dr. Delphi Wallis there as my art style for every single card than have anything regurgitated by an AI. While that Doomtown art isn't to my taste, I can appreciate that someone put real effort and care into making something novel and their own. Credit where credit is due. Repurposing art with permission and/or credit depending on the circumstances is fine, fair use if it's not for profit, etc. This can get a little dicey but can be done right. Midjourney's and similar's AI models are unethical theft. No credit is given to the people who put in actual work that these models blended up and spit out. There is no way to do it right with these models.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:46
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Golden Bee posted:AI is deleterious when it takes jobs from humans, not when it’s bad aesthetically. This isn't the full picture. It's also bad when a paid artist uses it for a big project like Kickstarter campaigns for a variety of reasons. It's still plagiarism, it gives the companies the false sense that they can get vast amounts of artwork cheaply, etc. No jobs are lost in this instance, but it still harms the entire working artist economy. CitizenKeen posted:Fan continuations of games are built on the premise of "I desire [thing], but you own the rights to [thing]; gently caress IP." I also take issue with this, lumping people who want to continue supporting a game design and community with people that are ok with stealing and plagiarizing work is not fair*. Continuing game design/dev work and community support is not stealing IP. They may end up in legal trouble because companies can enforce copyright protections in vast overreaching ways, but I do not think the concept of fan projects for dead games are close to the same as people using AI art, especially something like Midjourney. *this specific case being the exception, of course.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:50
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I’m a pro copywriter who has to deal with AI in the marketplace. I would be perfectly happy if procedural text name is generation was stuck at the level of photoshop’s content aware fill. I’m speaking clearly in terms of custom content for people who already support the game system. But I don’t think you can have theft without loss. And judging things based on looks isn’t just a social construct, it’s a base element of animals having eyes. That Stick Figure poo poo looks so different from the original that it’s hard to comprehend it as part of the same activity. Reminds me of when they did second edition cash n’ guns and it looked absolutely terrible.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:56
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Bottom Liner posted:This isn't the full picture. It's also bad when a paid artist uses it for a big project like Kickstarter campaigns for a variety of reasons. It's still plagiarism, it gives the companies the false sense that they can get vast amounts of artwork cheaply, etc. No jobs are lost in this instance, but it still harms the entire working artist economy. It certainly looks like, say, Star Wars Destiny: A Renewed Hope or Star Trek CCG: The Continuing Committee (links are to recent fan sets) are using art (stills from Clone Wars and Trek shows respectively) that they don't own the rights to? (Or do they?) Fan communities keep making material for a thing they don't own. We may find it more I actually give a ton of credit to Null Signal Games: they seem to have gone through the effort of actually stripping out a lot of the IP (new icons, new frames). Do other fan made projects do this? PaybackJack posted:It's funny because the defacto stance on this fan content was basically started by Decipher that told fans to essentially make whatever to keep the game going as long as they didn't attempt to profit from it or infringe upon the IP of other stuff which is why all the Star Wars and Star Trek cards didn't use new art was so that there was no legal infringement of pushing players towards printing their own game. It's been a *fairly* recent thing IMO that these games started to get daring enough to try and push custom content into having whole new cards; specifically with Star Wars/Trek CCGs. FFG opened the door a lot more with the fan continued versions of Netrunner/Conquest as they were basically like "do whatever as long as you aren't profiting from it". Over on the Star Wars Unlimited discord I was talking to one of the people who work on the SW CCG continuing committee, and they (apparently) actually have a license with both Decipher and Lucasfilm to keep making the fan sets (TIL). That's why they don't use stills (as opposed to other games) - but they can use "new art". But since the SW CCG didn't use art, it used stills, their "new art" is photos of cosplayers and 3D renders of ships and planets. CitizenKeen fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Oct 20, 2023 |
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Oct 20, 2023 19:03
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Golden Bee posted:
Judging things on looks is part of the critique of using AI art anyways, as the poo poo looks terrible and off if you look at it for more than 2 seconds specifically because our animal eyes are really good at picking up on things that aren't quite right, as noted on this very page by OP. Golden Bee posted:But I don’t think you can have theft without loss. I gave specific instances of why AI is harmful even when no job is lost directly. Do you consider it theft when an artist traces another's work? There no loss of jobs there, an artist still got paid. Is it not loss when a company gets 500 custom art cards from an artist for 1/10th the cost of what they would have paid for 50 cards, because the artist used AI? That devalues the work for all artist and is direct material loss to say nothing of the quality of the work.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:06
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The AI art genie is never going back into the bottle. The tech is only going to get better with time, and the effect on the industry will be massive. It will become commonplace to utilize Midjourney et al for art when it infeasible to have a human do it. I expect smaller teams to do things like this across the industry within a few years. Bigger corps who could totally hire a bunch of artists will do it too, unless something drastic happens like the Supreme Court ruling definitively that AI generated assets cannot be protected under copywrite or something.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:14
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Never get the “oh well it’s here now” argument. So what, I don’t have to like or accept it. I’ll continue to rail against that poo poo every time I see it.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:20
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I dunno how I feel about fan projects using AI art—probably depends on the scope. If it's just you and your buddies, who cares. If it's a larger community project, I'd rather they not further diminish the importance of human-made art. When it comes to actual products though: the day they start using AI art is the day I stop buying them. No matter how much the quality of AI art improves, I think I personally will always want some sort of human connection in creative works.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:31
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SettingSun posted:The AI art genie is never going back into the bottle. The tech is only going to get better with time, and the effect on the industry will be massive. It will become commonplace to utilize Midjourney et al for art when it infeasible to have a human do it. I expect smaller teams to do things like this across the industry within a few years. Bigger corps who could totally hire a bunch of artists will do it too, unless something drastic happens like the Supreme Court ruling definitively that AI generated assets cannot be protected under copywrite or something. If consumers at large, or in this case, the very small niche community that will follow and support fan projects reject AI art it can absolutely be put out to pasture. Consumer pressure has already had a handful of prominent crowdfunding sites issue policies restricting or outright banning it. That doesn't mean it will go away entirely of course, especially with CEOs of every industry frothing at the mouth for it, but if public sentiment starts affecting their numbers they'll have to gently caress off too (look at the Hollywood writers' guild and all the concessions they got about AI use in their contract after striking). And yeah, "lovely thing is here and not going away" is not much of an argument. We are aware. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Oct 20, 2023 |
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Oct 20, 2023 19:40
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Bottom Liner posted:If consumers at large, or in this case, the very small niche community that will follow and support fan projects reject AI art it can absolutely be put out to pasture. Consumer pressure has already had a handful of prominent crowdfunding sites issue policies restricting or outright banning it.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:44
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By all means. I hate AI art as much anyone. I just see the future with commonplace creative AI generation in it and I would LOVE to be wrong about it.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:46
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SettingSun posted:The AI art genie is never going back into the bottle. The tech is only going to get better with time, and the effect on the industry will be massive. It will become commonplace to utilize Midjourney et al for art when it infeasible to have a human do it. I expect smaller teams to do things like this across the industry within a few years. Bigger corps who could totally hire a bunch of artists will do it too, unless something drastic happens like the Supreme Court ruling definitively that AI generated assets cannot be protected under copywriter or something. Twenty years ago when I was getting my degree in digital art, it was more or less the same complaints but with Photoshop/Flash/Illustrator/etc. You're still going to have someone's hand on the wheel it's just the amount that it gets turned is different. Ultimately, it comes down to what the public is going to consume. I hate to go all Asmongold, but everyone is going to get on their soapbox and rant right up until the next Lorcana set comes along with AI art and then suddenly the sales go right back up.
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Oct 20, 2023 19:52
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EdsTeioh posted:Somehow I missed that post; that's awesome! Def gonna check that out! Since it was recommended to me I’ve tried both ways (suggested heroes and suggested aspects) and I prefer full hero, they are less powerful but more thematic.
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Oct 20, 2023 20:03
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Just so it doesn't look like I threw a bomb and walked off, thanks everyone for the ongoing discussion, it is helping inform my position on this stuff. I was genuinely undecided on the issue which is why I asked, and tried to keep my original question as neutral as possible. Probably shouldn't have mentioned Doomtown since it's actually a proper retail product, but I buy that game, so it was in my mind. Anyway, carry on.
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Oct 20, 2023 20:05
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Back on the topic of MC, they just put out a teaser for the next product which looks like a new Deluxe(probably X-Factor) featuring Apocalypse and the horsemen. https://fb.watch/nOBsdU8gyn/
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Oct 20, 2023 20:59
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Hey folks. I'd like to say first that I feel like everyone who participated so far in this discussion did so in a civil and reasonable way and I super appreciate that! Seriously. That said, a couple of you might not be aware that a few months ago we had a heated debate about the topic of AI use in our Trad Games forum, discussions of that use, and discussions of AI in general. A consensus was impossible, but we did reach something of a ceasefire compromise, as described in our stickied rules for the forum. This discussion does run afoul of this part of our rules: Leperflesh posted:
Again, you guys had a good discussion, nobody seemed to be real mad, etc. and that's cool, but let's redirect any further discussion on the topic to the above thread. Thanks. This does not prohibit the mention of the use of AI art that you find in products and offerings, etc. as that sort of announcement is a service to people who want to know. I've seen it in the board game thread and the industry thread and not intervened, provided those posts don't lead in to a debate on the ethics.
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Oct 20, 2023 23:32
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Oops my bad, never go in that thread and hadn't checked the rules in a while. Mea culpa, thanks for being chill!
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Oct 20, 2023 23:34
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I knew you hadn't posted in there, so I figured. No worries.
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Oct 20, 2023 23:35
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PaybackJack posted:Back on the topic of MC, they just put out a teaser for the next product which looks like a new Deluxe(probably X-Factor) featuring Apocalypse and the horsemen. Very weird that they’re doing a teaser. I don’t think they’ve done one before. They usually just toss the announcement on their home page. That’s what I’d like to see.
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Oct 21, 2023 15:23
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The Black Stones posted:Very weird that they’re doing a teaser. I don’t think they’ve done one before. They usually just toss the announcement on their home page. That’s what I’d like to see. Even more strange given that the teaser is for an announcement in ~2 weeks. Like you'd think this was the kind of thing they would have wanted to drop in September. I'm really curious who the female characters are going to be. Feels like the male heroes have to be Nightcrawler, Beast, and Iceman. Magick, Jubilee, and Emma Frost?
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Oct 21, 2023 15:55
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I know they're called "waves" instead of cycles (right?), but Marvel Nextwave featured Monica Rambeau (already released), Elsa Bloodstone, and Tabitha Smith. Smith is too deep a cut, but Elsa Bloodstone's in the MCU so she's not entirely out of contention. But it's probably just going to be more X-Men.
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Oct 21, 2023 17:42
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CitizenKeen posted:I know they're called "waves" instead of cycles (right?), but Marvel Nextwave featured Monica Rambeau (already released), Elsa Bloodstone, and Tabitha Smith. Smith is too deep a cut, but Elsa Bloodstone's in the MCU so she's not entirely out of contention. It was confirmed a long time ago the 3 waves when X-men hit would be all X stuff because they had to keep the Avengers stuff and X-men stuff siloed from each other. It’s why the X-men cards all have new art as well from previous counterparts. Marvel is weird and dumb.
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Oct 21, 2023 18:45
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Age of Apocalypse announced. March 2024 release. So 3 month window of now new stuff but I don’t think that’s too crazy. Looks to have some cool encounters and the heroes look really good. The aspects cards look to have some crazy combo potential.
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Nov 2, 2023 16:39
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Standard 3 seems slightly harder than Standard 1 since you can't dodge "Shadows" as effectively; you pretty much have to plan for it to happen. Bishop was a strange choice popularity wise, but I guess he was in a movie and has featured in some stories fairly recently. His gimmick looks kind of bad though; I guess we'll see. Magik looks awesome, and she's bringing in more powerful cards for Strange and Wanda it looks like. They say this is the end of the mutant trilogy of expansions at the end so I guess we're not getting anything mutant wise past this? Odd they didn't give it the X-Factor tag then; instead mixing X-Force and X-Men stuff together. The "mission" side scheme gimmick seems really annoying and a dumb way to weed allies out of your deck. The one they previewed makes it seem like it's not even worth potentially losing your allies forever. Not only that but the allies have to be good at scheming? I'm very non-plussed by the concept thus far. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since we don't really know how they're going to work fully but being forced to run allies to handle side-schemes that my hero can't touch sound like absolute poo poo for every aspect except leadership. Unus, Horsemen, and Apocalypse all look fine. The shadow heroes look like they're going to be Iceman, Jubilee, Nightcrawler, and Beast. It's really dumb they'd go with Jubilee over Emma though; maybe it's some kind of diversity thing that they needed to have another ethnic character, or I don't even loving know there's nothing in the past 30 years of comics that would possible make you think Jubilee is somehow a bigger character in the world of the X-Men than Emma Frost is but whatever, I guess we gotta make sure those 40 year olds that watched the X-Men animated series in the early 90s are looped in. This is just very frustrating as a fan of the comics. I thought maybe since Hope was featured in the last cycle there was someone out there that had actually read a comic since they were in high school but I guess maybe not.
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Nov 2, 2023 17:31
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The creators of the Marvel comics game don’t read comics, because they had an idea for a Jubilee character and not an Emma one? Just download the Rainy one from TTS. It’s great.
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Nov 2, 2023 17:38
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Golden Bee posted:The creators of the Marvel comics game don’t read comics, because they had an idea for a Jubilee character and not an Emma one? It's not the idea, it's that you're trying to put out the characters that are of major importance and significance. If you ask someone who read comics within the past, 10/20/30 years which character is more of a major character in the X-Men storylines, Emma would only lose out to Jubilee if you go back 30 years. X-23 is a more recent character but she was at least majorly featured in a film. Jubliee has nothing going for her, she has less screen time than Emma did. She has featured as a central character in NO major comic storylines, while Emma has been at the forefront of many of them. The only reason you might think of Jubilee as a more famous X-Men character is because she was on the team during the early 90s comic boom and was in The Animated Series that aired on FOX. The wikipedia entries for Jubliee for the last DECADE fit on a single window, while Emma takes four and most of those entries are stubs. It's extremely out of touch with the actual fanbase, and doesn't even cater to a casual one very well as it wasn't like she was featured heavily during the boom period.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:18
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PaybackJack posted:but whaI guess we gotta make sure those 40 year olds that watched the X-Men animated series in the early 90s are looped in. Hey I’m only in my late 30’s
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Nov 2, 2023 20:20
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PaybackJack posted:It's not the idea, it's that you're trying to put out the characters that are of major importance and significance. If you ask someone who read comics within the past, 10/20/30 years which character is more of a major character in the X-Men storylines, Emma would only lose out to Jubilee if you go back 30 years. They just didn't know what to do with her after Generation X ended. She lost her powers on M-day, became a vampire, became BFFs with X-23, became Not A Vampire, then found a baby and went "Yoink, mine now!"
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Nov 2, 2023 20:41
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I reckon they'll keep Emma Frost in the back pocket for the future personally, she's obviously become a mainstay X-Men character but that hasn't quite filtered down into the adaptations and stuff. I guess they've said this is the end of the "Mutant trilogy" for the game but they could probably do a weird set of unconnected heroes as a wave sometime in the future, like they did with the Valkyrie, War Machine, Nebula and Vision wave and that could have her in it. Or maybe they'll do some new product that's like a villain, some modulars and a hero pack, one of the potential ones is the Hellfire Club and they think she'd fit in that as the hero or something.
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Nov 2, 2023 20:42
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Gynovore posted:They just didn't know what to do with her after Generation X ended. She lost her powers on M-day, became a vampire, became BFFs with X-23, became Not A Vampire, then found a baby and went "Yoink, mine now!" She also had a dragon!
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Nov 2, 2023 20:59
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They’ve outright said the X-men stuff was siloed off from everything else because of Marvel licensing demands. Which is why there’s all new art even for reprints. If we get more X stuff in the future it will be in another big wave.
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Nov 2, 2023 21:06
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I feel like Marvel Champions is one of the more "kid friendly" of FFG's games, and Emma Frost feels like a slightly harder pitch for a game played by kids.
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Nov 2, 2023 21:14
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The Black Stones posted:Hey I’m only in my late 30’s I will admit I'm kind of biting my tongue saying that because there are some parts of the 90s TAS that should not be forgotten. CitizenKeen posted:I feel like Marvel Champions is one of the more "kid friendly" of FFG's games, and Emma Frost feels like a slightly harder pitch for a game played by kids. They toned down Psylocke sexuality; they can tone down Emma. Emma was the lead female in the Wolverine and the X-men cartoon also, so it's not like she hasn't been in a role aimed at children. PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 21:15
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PaybackJack posted:It's not the idea, it's that you're trying to put out the characters that are of major importance and significance. If you ask someone who read comics within the past, 10/20/30 years which character is more of a major character in the X-Men storylines, Emma would only lose out to Jubilee if you go back 30 years. It’s because they’re really pushing X-Men ‘97 right now, there’s a huge toy line and everything
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Nov 3, 2023 02:23
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