So it’s interesting to me that the creator here didn’t encounter the tens of physically published versions, or the hundreds of them shipped to digital app stores, or all the codebases on GitHub, in the course of making this. I’m sure they would have done naturally prior to GenAI. Is that good or bad? I don’t know! But it’s interesting to me.
The simplest counterargument: since there are already tens of similar games out there, why didn't the previous authors, supposedly grass-fed genuine checkmark blood-through-their-veins humans didn't notice the other 9-8-7-6-5... games, and still released their own version? Maybe because it was still that they wanted the game out there? Maybe because originality really isn't that common? Maybe because each individual had their own idea and spin to it? Maybe because they wanted the game out as they made it?
Same for this author. How they made the game is irrelevant, and nitpicking the "originality" or anything else is silly. Something like this wasn't possible 3 years ago. Now it's possible. Deal with it, and stop trying to find ways to diminish it. It's a huge accomplishment any way you cut it.
I gave a simple counterargument to this. Since there are "countless" prior games, many of them released before genAI, your argument is pointless.
To spell it out in case it is still non-obvious: knowing this allows iteration. It allows remixing. It allows you to inspect what has come before and what it did well and where it succeeded and where it fell short and thus what you could _add_. It is an enabler of creativity! Thus I think it is interesting that GenAI may make it harder to have this experience.
a) To make it better
b) To learn, in service of a) or another project
he used to say “the best artists have the biggest record collections”.
they’ve done their research. they developed taste. they’ve been in that battle with the unoriginality demon. they’re still in that battle with the unoriginality demon. they’re always searching for new. for unexplored. for different.
they’ve also figured out what “good artists copy, great artists steal” means.
we take small bits. small ideas. small riffs. we turn them into our own. then we repeat that N times to create “a song”. we borrow. we revere. we obsess. turning lots of little differences into a completely new work. yes it’s all derivative. but derivative originality takes a lot of fuckin’ effort to get right. to be tasteful.
this thing isn’t artistic stealing, it’s the most low-effort stealing possible. creativity, originality and more importantly taste appear nowhere here.
so, is it bad? depends on your perspective on creative endeavours being worthwhile and whether you have taste or not i guess.
edit - personally i don’t think you can polish a turd. even if you rewrite it, the memory lingers.
I'd wager it's because ideas are simpler to explore orthogonally, giving an overview of what's possible.
Snark aside (and apologies), there's absolutely nothing wrong with the "no new ideas" take and nobody should think there is. Humans tend to work collectively, try as we might to do or appear otherwise, and often come to the same conclusions through reasoning and logic. No one-person truly invented the light bulb, etc, when really all inventive thought is branches of derivative thought as we build our collective knowledgebase. A better question would be how many novel ideas are the logical conclusion of branches of derivative thought and how many are tangential brought about by the injection of our irrationally.
A child is born every 4.4 seconds. But it took me and my girlfriend over 9 months to birth one!
Even if an original idea did show up every minute globally, does not mean that it takes only a minute to come up with the idea.
By my math you should should have at least 2 in that time, unless one of you wasn't pulling their weight.