The amount of things you're trying to simulate within the the performance contraints (games push computers to their absolute limits).
An example - a 3d humanoid character. You need code to manage the mesh, the animation (probably skeletal), the animations themselves, all the blending logic, probably specialised code and data for facial animations, and then you need to make sure all of that can mesh with both input driven locomotion and AI driven locomotion - and that's just one problem domain.
And I'm grossly oversimplifying what's involved even in that particular area.
> Even 5+ year old rigs can run most modern games just fine
AI-hardware demand is responsible for slowing down the AAA graphics frame-rate treadmill. Back when Nvidia and AMD were releasing improved mid-range consumer GPUs at a steady clip, there was incessant pressure on AAA games to have ever-increasing frame-rates and "photorealistic" graphic-fidelity. Making a game update at 144Hz at 4k resolution/max graphics quality, with no upscaling shortcuts would be a challenging problem, were it a common target.
In an alternate universe where the LLM boom didn't happen, we probably would have 24GB midrange GPUs (and 32GB/48GB Nvidia 5090 Ti), allowing for humongous textures, and likely games rendering at 8k, which 5+ y.o. rigs would struggle with except at low-quality settings.
Yeah that's other part. What was PhD level computer graphics becomes table stakes a few years later and not only do you have to do that, but you have to top it a few years later.
Oh and all of these systems have to be aware of each other, because the higher fidelity they become, the harder it is to keep the seams hidden, because the seam between them become more jarring.
Sure, you have skeletal bone animation and all that stuff in 2003, but do your characters adapt their footstep placement to the terrain height? Does the run animation blend smoothly between states? Oh it blends smoothly but now player inputs feel unresponsive because you had the clever idea to make it inertial? Oh now do it all over a network at minimum latency because esports are a hundred million dollar industry.
This all sounds great until you've actually had your own small business and experienced things from the other side.
Employees are expensive, good employees are hard to find, and sometimes things need to be fixed outside 9-5 to avoid having an angry client on your hands.
You should hire people to cover those hours outside of the 9-5 then. Or do you expect your employees to slave away for your benefit without getting anything but the bare minimum from you?
Personally I haven't stopped doing things the old way. I haven't had any issues using LLMs as rubber ducks or brain storming assistants - they can be particularly useful for identifying algorithms which might solve a given problem you're unfamiliar with. Basically a variant on google searching.
But when it comes to the final act I find myself unwilling to let an LLM write the actual code - I still do it myself.
Perhaps because my main project at the moment is a game I've been working on for four years, so the codebase is sizable, non-trivial, and all written by me. My strong sense even since coding LLMs showed up has been that continuing to write the code is important for keeping it coherent and manageable as a whole, including my mental model of it.
And also: for keeping myself happy working on it. The enjoyment would be gone if I leaned that far into LLMs.
I'm in the same boat. LLMs help with some research and idea bouncing, and then I write all the code myself.
Despite what some might say, there isn't a big moat between those who use LLMs for programming and those who don't. So if I ever truly need to use LLMs to survive, I'll just have to start paying for a subscription.
In the meantime, I'll be keeping my own skills sharp and see how that turns out in a few years. I'm afraid software quality is going to take a nosedive in the near future, it was already on a downward trend.
I get the impression dating via games is becoming much more common in general.
Anecdotal example - I'm 39 and used to be an avid counterstrike player, and back in my days (2005-2014) it was 99.9% men. But every so often I play it now and I've been surprised by the number of women I've played with, and doubly surprised by the number of them who have made flirtatious advances. So much so that if I was single I'd almost consider it a reasonable avenue for meeting someone.
My sister used to game a fair bit and she got sent loads of free stuff by thirsty guys. She even got a mechanical keyboard sent to her. At least half the "girls" online are guys pretending to be girls to get those sweet benefits (can't say I blame them).
There are also a lot of men with voice changers in CS2 now, for whatever reason. I have been playing a few times and then the "girl" cuts their voice changer and starts yelling at some guy hitting on her, etc. Very strange to witness when you're just trying to find out if this round is a buy round.
With LLMs, this has become commonplace. Most folks don't realize how far real time video/audio generation has come. You should never ever trust the sound of a voice or a video call, pictures on a screen, etc. it can all be faked.
Behind every virtual "thirst trap" is some dude in another country hoping to scam some sucker out of money.
EDIT: oh and to be clear, I've no issues with meeting folks online. I met my spouse online a couple decades ago, and we quickly moved it offline.
I also know folks (guys) who run hobbyist setups that stream on platforms and pretend to be attractive young ladies. The voice quality is very believable, and the video is approaching realistic. With a bit of doctoring, it looks completely believable...and we are talking about the widely available stuff, NOT the stuff available behind closed doors.
What I am trying to say here is don't treat a relationship as real until you meet the person in real life and build an actual connection.
I am so confused at why people are doing this. I mean, are they just doing it "for the lols" or are they raking in suckers from the gaming communities?
I keep a voice button bound to toggle on and off all comms, also known as a "clutch key", and usually in these scenarios I keep comms off quite a bit because there is a lot of non-game chatter and I tend to only talk during freeze time - since outbound voice still works for call outs. I'm just really bad at listening to people while I am trying to focus and it frustrates me to die because of lack of game sound awareness. So, I don't know if these are the same games where people are trying to beg for skins, etc.
Being a somewhat lazy individual myself, I'm wary of this statement. It feels too... comforting. "It's okay that I wasn't productive today, because laziness has merits".
I consider my laziness a part of who I am, and I don't demonize it, but I also don't consider it my ally - to get the things I care about done I often have to actively push against it.
An example - a 3d humanoid character. You need code to manage the mesh, the animation (probably skeletal), the animations themselves, all the blending logic, probably specialised code and data for facial animations, and then you need to make sure all of that can mesh with both input driven locomotion and AI driven locomotion - and that's just one problem domain.
And I'm grossly oversimplifying what's involved even in that particular area.