my take on the subject, as someone who worked both in design and arts, and tech, is that the difficulty in discussing this is more rooted on what is art as opposed to what is theft

we mistakingly call illustrator/design work as art work. art is hard to define, but most would agree it requires some level of expressiveness that emanates from the artist (from the condition of the human existence, to social criticism, to beauty by itself) and that’s what makes it valuable. with SD and other AIs, the control of this aspect is actually in the hands of the AI illustrator (or artist?)

whereas design and illustration are associated with product development and market. while they can contain art in a way, they have to adhere to a specific pipeline that is generally (if not always) for profit. to deliver the best-looking imagery for a given purpose in the shortest time possible

designers and illustrators were always bound to be replaced one way or a another, as the system is always aiming to maximize profit (much like the now old discussions between taxis and uber). they have all the rights to whine about it, but my guess is that this won’t save their jobs. they will have to adopt it as a very powerful tool in their workflow or change careers

on the other hand, artists that are worried, if they think the worth of their art lies solely in a specific style they’ve developed, they are in for an epiphany. they might soon realise they aren’t really artists, but freelance illustrators. that’s also not to mention other posts stating that we always climb on the shoulders of past masters - in all areas

both artists and illustrators that embrace this tool will benefit from it, either to express themselves quicker and skipping fine arts school or to deliver in a pace compatible with the market

all that being said I would love to live in a society where people cared more about progress instead of money. imagine artists and designers actively contributing to this tech instead of wasting time talking fighting over IP and copyright…

absolutely agreed

oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m also all against the exchange of game items with real money (specially when it affects gameplay). in my view, you could only ever put 2 “real currencies” into a game: time or money. though everyone is roughly at the same playing field for time (I understand there’s a contrast between a well off kid vs a hard worker adult) people are born with absurd differences in wealth, so much that the game itself becomes meaningless when that factor is introduced (the so called p2w).

when I say “amazing” I am talking about non-p2w mmorpgs - otherwise is just plain old capitalism hehe. the concept of grinding can be very interesting in the sense that it adds risk to the gameplay, in this case the risk of wasting time. basically all non-p2w games implement this risk in different ways: if you die in Mario it’s the time to the start of the level/checkpoint (seconds), in WoW is time attributed to a few gold coins/respawn walk (minutes), in games like Tibia you lose 10% of all your progress (sometimes amounting to months/years). I’ve been a lifelong mmorpg player and one thing I realised is that the more you have to lose, the more thrilling the game becomes and the more immersive it gets (at a big cost, sometimes your own sanity).

I do agree with the things you and the Sega guys are bringing up. NFT and decentralisation of authority over game items allows that and doesn’t add anything nice. imo, the only viable and fair monetisation for any game is retail and subscription models

well one could argue that production costs aren’t necessarily reflected in the product’s final value, which is dictated by society (for its usefulness, desirability, status power, etc)

this is very evident precisely in fictional digital game objects, but in the online game context. a powerful item can give you advantages over other players and be very valuable but cost 0 to be created by the company. of course it’s just a flipped bit nevertheless, but there’s no way around to cheat and flip it at will

mmorpgs exist merely because of this concept. the whole level, skill, item grinding turns man-hours of work into bits in an authoritative server somewhere, and for that they have value. it’s an amazing thing to watch