Ironically I do remember a fair bit of condemnation of proc gen in general about 15-20 years ago, when it started getting more mainstream attention instead of being just something inscrutable indie games with ASCII interfaces did. It wasn’t exactly new tech but people were starting to look at moving it into places that aren’t as well suited for it and that garnered a lot of discourse on whether it was a good idea that needed more work or a bad idea and a trap for devs who’d waste labor on a boondoggle.
Even now it’s more found a middle ground where it’s still often disliked and criticized (with some exceptions, like map layouts in ARPGs, roguelites in general, etc) as being vapid and boring compared to bespoke work, but it’s largely tolerated and no one’s particularly up in arms about it more than they are about roguelites or survival crafting games being oversaturated genres.
Ironically I do remember a fair bit of condemnation of proc gen in general about 15-20 years ago, when it started getting more mainstream attention instead of being just something inscrutable indie games with ASCII interfaces did. It wasn’t exactly new tech but people were starting to look at moving it into places that aren’t as well suited for it and that garnered a lot of discourse on whether it was a good idea that needed more work or a bad idea and a trap for devs who’d waste labor on a boondoggle.
Even now it’s more found a middle ground where it’s still often disliked and criticized (with some exceptions, like map layouts in ARPGs, roguelites in general, etc) as being vapid and boring compared to bespoke work, but it’s largely tolerated and no one’s particularly up in arms about it more than they are about roguelites or survival crafting games being oversaturated genres.