Gamedev

AI of the Serengeti!

There’s a lovely old joke from Billy Connolly concerning lions running towards two members of film crew. One colleague puts on trainers.

“You bloody fool, you’ll never outrun them in those.”

“No” said the colleague “but I’ll outrun you.”

I’m hearing versions of this a lot lately, concerning embracing AI in our creative work.

It really is a bandwagon.

Jump on or jump off? Stay ahead of the lion, right? Tech bros love it. Real artists are worried. Environmentalists are screaming. And the public are happily making cute plastic toys or muppets of themselves.

I don’t hate AI, truth be told. But I’m troubled by the industrial creative aspect that’s being touted as an inevitable end to artistic careers. Naturally. I mean, we all gotta eat? I have a feeling some people will outrun those lions for a little while.

But there are more lions waiting around the corner. For all of us.

My entire career has been specifically built on blending my creativity with tech. Each new Design tool or programme or… they’re all called apps now 😂, has been a learning curve & made things marginally easier. (Sometimes.)

I love innovation. I love progress. I think clever new things are fascinating. And, to be clear, I do think AI can change our world in many positive ways. I particularly love what it’s doing/could do for Health. It’s certainly not all about taking artists jobs. No.

But. (Oh no, here it is! The ‘but!’)

But, putting talented creative people out of work is not helping anyone but the big corporations who (often unwillingly) have to pay ‘creative people’ to create the ‘product.’

“But you’ll adapt”, scream the tech bros, drowning out the environmentalists. ”Relax. It’s just a tool. It’s inevitable. Embrace it.”

This is akin to walking up & embracing that hungry lion that will happily eviscerate you & feed you to its cubs.

Here’s why…

  • Creative people love to create. A job where you get paid to be creative is THE dream job for many. They hone their skills & WANT to create. This is not factory labour (or shouldn’t be) or a tractor replacing a horse… this is a calling that is being tragically culled.
  • Making something wonderful is not easy. And It is deeply satisfying when it works. And we grow & learn when it doesn’t. Typing words into a machine that simply does it for you is not satisfying. It’s not YOUR words, YOUR art anymore. You are now an editor, as much as you can be bothered. And, arguably, we learn nothing.
  • We (artists) are not the ones who are going to benefit from this ‘tool’. This is the most important aspect. This creative avenue of  ‘machine learning’ will squeeze out rising creatives across the board. An entire strata of entrance level jobs gone. It will numb us & dumb us.  And simply make the big boys richer.
  • Arguably, no creative person asked for this. Some might be intrigued & think they can stay ahead by learning everything about it. That if they embrace it, it will spare them. Ultimately, it will replace us all & will not care how good your prompts are. It’s designed to ‘not need humans. You’re fooling yourself if you think that doesn’t mean YOU. (lions. 😉)
  • Creativity is a beautiful human thing and not everyone has it. Why would we give it away?

And then there’s ’what is real?’ We’re starting to see hyper real videos & photos of animals thanking firefighters, beautiful people petting Lions without being eviscerated, rainbow lightning and incredible things that simply cannot be.

Mountains with twelve waterfalls streaming off them? Stunning. No, I don’t know where the water’s coming from either? Maybe It’s the waste outlets from the data banks?

But they look ‘kinda’ real, these fakes. And more so by the day. Maybe even better than real? And no one is saying they are not.

And so people believe it IS real.

And if no one knows what’s real anymore, then we’re all going to hell in a bucket. If the natural world is underwhelming the next generations in reality, who’s going to care for it in future?

The truth is fluid, because we can rewrite it with AI prompts.

Politicians can deny everything, even if they say or do it on camera. It’s all too real and it’s all too fake.

(And let’s face it, people are going to get a nasty shock when they try to kiss real wild animals!)

So what to do? It’s inevitable. That’s what I keep hearing. We can’t stop it. The corporations are mining our heritage of books, music & art and it’s all grist to the mill of machine learning.

They’ve probably taken it all already.

But, even if it puts me at a disadvantage, wherever I can, I’m going to choose not to use it to help me creatively, thank you very much. 

It’s too easy, you see?

I enjoy writing. I enjoy designing games. I enjoy thinking & imagining. I enjoy seeing the real sunrise & being there to photograph it. My own words. My own outputs.

If I let AI do it, then… what’s the point of me? My creative muscles will get flabby and dull. Why even finish a sentence if the machine will do it?

Instead of creators, we become editors of a machine.

I’d be far happier to create & let the machine suggest edits. I mean, are we really all that predictable? Replaceable? Pointless? Apathy is akin to death.

We should fight for this.

Knowing how to ‘creatively’ problem solve as a human being is NOT a problem we should blithely surrender. It requires context. Knowledge. Connection with people. It’s satisfying, it stretches us and helps us grow. Develop. Mature. Learn to be better.

Do we really learn anything if ‘someone’ simply gives you the answer?

Perhaps that makes you happy? Maybe I’m alone in this? I hope not. But if we want to carry on this analogy, lions are less likely to attack a herd. 😉

And when/if the AI lions do finally gobble up all of our collective creative careers, come and find me? I’ll be selling my analogue wares somewhere in a dystopian black market with a stall banner saying, “Made by a Human.”

Trying my very best not to look like a wildebeest.. 😉

Marc Diamond, StoryToys, Producer of LEGO DUPLO MARVEL & upcoming LEGO BLUEY

AI will chew you up.

Two Wee Years

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Wee Gem Design is now two years old! So, Happy Birthday to me/it!

Firstly, to all out there who are interested and taking the time to read this, thank you for your company and support over the last two years. Be it with kind words, simple encouragement or engaging my design services, it is all very much appreciated. I also couldn’t do what I do without the constant support from my loving family (Yvonne, Sean and Jack. x) so a very heartfelt thank you to them, my relatives and friends.

And a special nod to my Twitter and Instagram community who interact, entertain and whose online presence is very much appreciated.

Has it been easy? Well, what important thing ever is? No. Freelancing is not easy. It can be stressful. It can be hard to find that balance between having enough work and not taking on too much. It’s also pretty hard to find new work when you’re trying to focus on what you already have. You have to pitch, keep an ear to the ground and network, network, network.

But it has been the RIGHT thing. It’s creatively liberating. I have the freedom to work from home, am never bored and crucially, I’ve the freedom to choose what I work on and when (Mostly). I’m loving it and loving my work. In fact, I’ve never felt so sure about being on the right creative path. I’m pushing myself, learning new skills daily and finally making the things I always wanted to in quiet moments. I’m also fortunate that I get to be around for my family, walk on a beautiful beach every dawn with my loyal friend, Hobbes and think/plan/create in my head all the things I need to do for the day.

If this all seems ideal and perfect, it’s worth saying that it does take a while to find your way. It doesn’t JUST happen. Wrong turns. Misadventures. Life will throw spanners at your head. But in a creative life, that stuff is all grist to the mill. You can use it. Turn it into something useful, even if the lessons are hard. I’m in the fortunate space now in that I now know from experience what suits me and what doesn’t. I’m also in the fortunate (?) position to have suffered enough mishaps and disasters to have a healthy alarm system in place…and there have been a few. I can now say ‘no’ to things.

And it’s not an easy thing to say ‘no’ when you’re a freelancer. You worry that you’ve burned a bridge by rejecting a paid gig. You worry that there might be no other jobs on the near horizon. What if you’ve just missed a major opportunity? And the money will always come in handy, right? 

But I’ve learned to trust my instincts. If a job looks and sounds like more trouble than it’s worth, then it probably will be and you do yourself a disservice by ignoring those warning signs. I’ve also found that the small, ‘we don’t have much money but…’ jobs that occasionally come in are often as much a drain on time and energy as the BIG ones. (Generally more so.)

My rule of thumb is that if there isn’t much money on the table then the client is always going to get more out of you than you out of them. Once you factor in initial meetings, emails, phone calls and feedback loops on, for example, a logo design, then the small fee involved is never going to add up… unless you’ve staff or a constant supply of such jobs coming in. It’s horrible to spend the bulk of your working week doing a small gig, getting paid (eventually) and then, when the car makes an expensive sounding rattle, you then have to hand that entire weeks work over for a couple of hours in the garage. That hurts.

As the saying goes, ‘a grand don’t come for free’, and when you’re freelancing then the weight of a thousand euro weighs heavy. You know exactly how long and hard you need to work to achieve it. And inversely, you learn that you’re not just going to give someone your precious time and experience for nothing.

*Can we meet for coffee so I can pick your brain about something?

Translated: Can I get some of your hard earned experience & knowledge for free?*

So I’m only taking on the big jobs. And only the ones that I’ve decided fall under my chosen specialist remit – Kids education and games. I’ve specialised. It’s the best thing I’ve done yet. It’s not altruistic – I just like do to proper research, make sure the project is something worth doing and that many will benefit from. And what are those jobs, you might ask? No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway…

This last year, I’ve been working on a pre-school Phonics Game for a network of schools in china. Consisting of learning activities and videos, the kids learn along with some interstellar Jelly Aliens who wish to visit earth but want to be able to communicate. It’s colourful, cute and squishy. Many thanks to Artist and Animator Sara Mena for her talent and superb assistance on these projects. 

*Did you know there are more people learning English in China than there are native english speakers in the entire world?*

In addition, we’ve been making 12 song videos with accompanying games. These sing-along videos, which are a mixture of live action & animation, are designed to teach and entertain in equal measure and were brilliant fun to work on. The entire experience has been eye opening, fun and a fascinating insight into China and what it’s doing in the educational realm.

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I’ve also had a little design input into a revamp of the ISPCC/Childline infrastructure, and naturally, anything to do with the protection and support of children is a project very close to my heart. It’s a massive project and an important one, so it’s great to have a small role in it.

And teaching! Now in my 4th year as a 2D Game Art Lecturer at Pulse, which I continue to enjoy, I’ve also recently taken on a night class teaching Design at Blackrock College of Further Education. In addition to watching my students learn and push their own skills to make wonderful things, I’m finding deconstructing and analysing my own processes in order to teach it an extremely useful exercise. Win, win.

And finally, I’ve continued my writing with excellent mentoring from Sarah Webb‘s workshops and have ‘something’ that’s nearly finished. All going well, I hope you’ll hear more about that soon.

Two years in and all is well.

In turn, I hope all is well with you out there too. If you are leading or want a creative life, be bold, be brave and keep looking and learning. Even in the most mundane things, there lies inspiration for art, design and stories. It just needs someone (YOU) to notice it and to go off and do something wonderful with it. Go on – someone else will if you don’t! It won’t be easy, but that shouldn’t stop you.

Take care,

Marc – Wee Gem Design x

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