I’m currently reading “This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You” by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas.
It’s about the science of what makes certain music appeal to you (or repel someone else). The author argues that there are seven key dimensions that make up a listener profile.
One of those is authenticity.
It’s cliche to talk about “real” musicians vs those who are overproduced candy for the masses. While authenticity is subjective (if you were moved to tears due to a Spice Girls song, no one can say you were “wrong” or “misguided”), it’s separate from a musician’s technical skill.
There is an authenticity to both The Shaggs (a group of sisters forced to practice and perform for their father who refused to actually get them lessons or expose them to outside music, who produced a unique sound that was considered awful until it was rediscovered a couple of decades later by music producers and musicians who were a lot more positive about it) and to Bach’s skillful use of music theory and technique in his concerts.
I’m still reading the book, but I was immediately thinking about how it could apply to games and game development, how some people loved games such as Gears of War or Half-Life 2, and some people really love the amateur games that you can find in game jams, and almost no one likes it when a game adds random features to an otherwise cohesive game design to try to check some boxes to make it more like Fortnite or when a beloved title like Dungeon Keeper becomes a mobile game with silly features that are clearly designed to get you to spend money to speed up knocking down a wall, something that is almost a non-event in the original game.
I imagine that even if we start seeing a lot more GenAI used to create art and animation and audio that there will be a certain something detectably missing. Maybe many gamers aren’t so discerning and authenticity is less important in games than it is in music. Maybe there will be a lot of money made by people who exploit GenAI (and ignore the costs they aren’t paying for).
But I think there will be a difference between something created and something generated, and that something might be what makes a game (1) something that felt worth making to the developer and (2) something that felt worth playing for the player.