I want to live in Kenney's world

Recently, there's been a bit of an exchange on social media that triggered these thoughts. Let me introduce our protagonists: On one side, we have Kenney, a person you might be familiar with, if you've ever dipped your toes into making video games. Basically, Kenney spent a decade or so making video game assets and tools others can use for their game projects - and giving away most of it for absolutely free. Yup, free. No strings attached. To say Kenney is an absolute staple in the Indie-Game-Dev community is an understatement. Apart from that, Kenney also strikes me as a generally very positive and wholesome human, who clearly loves their art and has a genuine desire to share it with other people and enable them to grow from it. Even when voicing criticism, there's usually a focus on some positives, like in the relevant post on Shitter, which I'm not going to link to, but which was also put on Bluesky. The post reads:

Don't let billionaires convince you slop is the future. They're used to managing & directing, not making things themselves. Of course they can't see the difference. They don't understand your love for the craft. Keep making personal, beautiful games.

You've got my support 💖

Lovely, statement isn't it? As you can read, Kenney is a reasonable human being, who just doesn't like the big servings of AI slop big tech companies are trying to convince everyone to accept as inevitable, and who's encouraging people to keep making art without it. A fact that should not be surprising for someone who clearly loves their craft as much.

Now enter our second protagonist - and feel free to imagine the Darth Vader theme playing right now: Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, himself a billionaire. There's too much to say about him and Epic right now, so I'll leave it at the summary that he is firmly stuck on the AI hype train. And not only does he make that his personal choice, but through Unreal Engine, he is making that everyone else's problem in the game-dev world, too. Tim clearly thinks generative AI is the future. And Tim felt attacked by Kenney's post. Again, not linking to Shitter, but here's a screenshot of the response on Bluesky. Please read the following in the most pretentious voice you can imagine:

This is bullshit, Kenney. I'm the same tech tree following optimist who moved from C to C++, from 2D to 3D, and from closed source to open source. I run a company. I write code. I contribute to published papers. I've upped my expectations of AI. Up yours!

Well, looks like we found somebody's sore spot. There's a lot we could unpack here: from an apparently whiggish interpretation of history as a tech-tree to simply follow, to a clearly ridiculous "bigger number better" attitude, demonstrated by elevating 3D over 2D in some mysterious way (look out for Epic's next 4D Blockbuster)! But I won't go into all of that, not right now, anyways. I just want to focus on one aspect.

Two visions of the future

That exchange struck me as one between two fundamentally incompatible world views. One is the vision big tech has for society. Where everything is a product you use to enrich yourself. In games, music, writing, any kind of art, and even in science or any kind of labour, the focus is no longer the process of discovery, learning or creation. It's getting to the product stage the fastest. And that's just what generative AI promises to do. Skip the tedious part, go straight to the part where you can sell something. Because that's the only point that matters. A world where people creating something for free are suckers and kindness is abused.

On the other side is a vision represented by creators like Kenney. Someone, who clearly loves the craft for the process of creation, and not only for the end-product. Who even gives away their results for free, so others can learn and build on it. Who believes that through sharing, together we will create things bigger than any single one of us can. And who trusts that people will respond to kindness with kindness and enough support, so that everyone involved can keep going.

I know which version of society sounds more appealing to me. I want to live in Kenney's world. Thankfully, I am not the only one, and Kenney got a lot of support on Bluesky and through other channels. In fact, it should be the logical choice for anybody, apart from the handful of people becoming richer than god by hyping gen-AI. That is why those people are trying so hard to convince everyone of their idea how society should be. That's why they feel the need to attack Kenney. Because they know what they're selling is unappealing and illogical. So they need to convince everyone it's at least inevitable. Meanwhile people like Kenney just need to be there and do what they do, and that's enough to convince me there's a better way.

If by any chance you're reading this silly little website: Kenney, thanks for being who you are! Thanks for setting a positive example! Thanks for sharing your work and allowing us to grow! Thanks for being generally awesome and standing up for your values!

Elon proves the point

Oh and if you had any doubts, who is on the right side here: Elon Musk himself sprung to his billionaire buddy's side later. As clear a sign as you can get who's morally bankrupt. Tim himself also seems to be still rattled by this, because he's been going on weird pro-AI rants for days now.

As a friend of mine put it, the ridiculousness of the situation is hard to beat: here's an individual, running a tiny business aimed at Indie-Game developers, stating "Hey, you don't need slop to keep making beautiful games!" And two of the worlds richest and most influential people feel compelled to personally descend on this post with their army of shills. Insecure much?

Support Kenney

The ramblings post is now over, but it wouldn't feel right to not add a paragraph saying: please support Kenney! Have a look at what you can do. It's worth it trying to fight for our vision of the future.

(And please don't give Tim Sweeney any of your money!)