Slippery slope arguments are ironically slippery slopes in themselves, but this clearly isn’t the case, as this isn’t the first time we have seen this disclaimer, but personally what set me off was it coming immediatly after the announcement of a new Crazy Taxi game, Crazy Taxi World Tour, rumored for months but now finally proper announced and arriving on current gen consoles and PC next year.
This should be a time of excitement as the summer reveals for upcoming titles are shown…. yet it’s all a parade of poisoned chalices, as the newly shown/announced Tomb Raider game, also has a similar, and it’s even worse as it’s a remake to boot.
I don’t blame the staffers, as this is 100 % a decision imposed by the corpo as they bought on this bubble that’s bound to burst even sooner than expected (and it should), forced upon the people that actually do the job instead of being handed golden parachutes.
Again, this new tech so good it has be imposed and made mandatory at every level to try and justify the use, again, because investors emptied gajillions on the new tech fad/buzzword that makes them sound “in touch”, fuck any expenses or impact it has on the world, the business doesn’t care, as abundantly shown, and nor do the people actually responsable for it.
I don’t like having to write this, i really do not, i’ve been wanting a new Crazy Taxi in forever, the little gameplay footage from the trailer does look good…..but not like this.
It’s shitty when the Let It Die sequel of sorts did, and i swore off on that, i’ve done the same with the new Layton (and other stuff of theirs) due to new Level 5 CEO being so adamant and obviously fellating in words and actions this new fad, it’s even worse (if a lot more expected) when big companies do this.
All new videogames announcements are now poisoned chaliches until proven to be otherwise, and i don’t like having to basically write off stuff i would like to play, but now i won’t anytime soon (my personal compromise would be getting it used if it gets a physical release, because i’ll admit i do want to play it still, but i’m not willing to give Sega any money), because this trend should have been killed in the womb, but wasn’t, and we shouldn’t fed it more than it already has.
Even if i do agree to play devil’s advocate and ignore the insane water usage these IA data centers have ( and i don’t, an ocean worth of water just to make shittier version of things that didn’t need this tech is beyond dystopic), just in terms of the games themselves… this is beyond awful and the dawn of a new dark age, an extra one because turns out you can’t escape the consequences of reality even in gaming (not that you ever did).
As i much as i covet a proper market crash, i know it ain’t happening as videogames are still the more popular entertaiment , nor any lessons would be learned from one when and if it happens.
This is especially horrid since this is supposedly the “creative industry”, yet we are, with even more remakes than the big budget movie biz (though the movie biz in general, given the previosly respected Tribeca Film Festival is gonna premiere/feature a fully GenAI made film that’s pretty much Israel propaganda, so it’s shit there as well, fear not), and Crystal Dynamics “needed” to ask the plagiarisim regurgitation machine pointers on how to build the fondations of the game from an aesthetic stand point.
You know you can have ideas for free by thinking… and you can use other search engines than Google to look for references? But again, this is the new tech industry, we’re selling a “solution” for a problem that doesn’t exist… until we made it exist. And the “solution” doesn’t solve shit, by design it’s not meant to actually do that, otherwise we couldn’t keep on selling you the non-solution.
You might think this isn’t the worse thing ever, it isn’t, given current events, i get that.
You might think this specific case of Crazy Taxi World Tour is a fringe one that’s acceptable, since it’s not being used to make the models of the CT drivers or anything like that….and that’s exactly why this shouldn’t fly either, because that’s how it starts, that’s how DLC came about after decades of complete videogame products, that’s how microtransactions came about and now are a normalized plague, common in F2P games and present also in old paid videgame that still ask 70/80 bucks MSRP on release for the “full game” that is often devoid of content to be resold via expensive DLC.
“we only used it for reference”
” we only used it for tertiary assets”
“we only used it for very minor NPC dialogue”
” 70 % of the game has been vomited by a stupid machine that hallucinates bungum and we had the unpaid interns slightly tweak the generic cloned gestalt shit it dumped on us”
Anyway, i do believe we’re gonna keep seeing worse games because these companies did invest so much in another fuckin scam tech that further exacerbates and already decaying industry like the videogame one, and it would be funny to point out that the Japanese and asian based companies are the ones very willing to just use GenAI to make worse content, pay it more and cut even more jobs, extra funny since the Japanese are so coded to suck corpodick they will bleat for the sanctity of copyright and harass you when you pirate games they ain’t selling to you… if this whole situation didn’t suck shit.
It’s not gonna last forever, because the costs are (apparently, but likely) already exceeding the impossible, unrealistic amounts of profit for the company, sure as hell we’re gonna see a lot more of these disclaimers pop up thanks to Steam policy on GenAI usage…. and a lot more games will just lie and say they haven’t used it, even if it will be discovered.
and then we’ll get the “yellow apology jpegs statement” where they feel bad about being caught with their hand in the cookie jar. And they will use some GenAI bot program to write these, and not even spellcheck the vomit, so they can be humiliated online for another round. If by then there will be an actual internet as we have known for decades.
Not that these disclaimers are actually helpful, any way you slice it they’re very vaguely worded so of course they will keep feeding the outrage, as people righfully ask what the fuck does that actually mean in reality, what the unsaid and implied mean since the statement itself it’s weasily written by design, so speculation thrives.
Until a new vague clarification that doesn’t actually clarify shit will be made, more speculation, and maybe an actual explanation extorted via pressure, which i assume it’s Sega being stupid or adhering to the fallacy of “all publicity is good publicity”, despite plenty of situations when the GenAI disclaimer situation become the only discussed facet of the game, already staining the game’s rep at launch and after, stellar marketing stunt as ever.
Pretty smart when people realized in hours the new covers for the KH games new collections are lazily upscaled via IA so we get stuff like KH Donald Duck with 5 fingers instead of 4, with Nomura’s artworks most likely fed into a GenAI program after, just for maximum disrispect.
But then again i trust the gaming public to be the usual ensemble of weak-willed loudmouths, spineless as ever at best, actively feeding the hand that robs them blind at worst, i’ve seen the “gamer boycotts”, i know most people do not give a shit unless it’s about “them”… and even when it is they don’t.
Very few go out of their way to see how the sausage is made, and most simply aren’t attuned into the hobby to even wonder about that, and most simply do not give a shit either way.
I’m not quite blaming people that just casually play videogames once in a while, this kind of audience isn’t attuned into the latest news, the sales report, because they frankly aren’t that invested in the medium, and it’s fine, of course it’s fine, whats the point of asking people that barely know what a “Diablo” is to crusade for a thing they don’t feel strongly about to begin with?
I am blaming those that are attuned and constantly check news, play the latest releases, breathe videogames (allegedly), as “The Gamers” TM have the attention span of magpies, i remember the Diablo Immortal backlash dying when they did announce Diablo IV, as they knew giving a new morsel to the dogs will shut them up, that the new toy will make them forget instantly, or help in them getting bored of talking about it anyway and moving on to lament about a woman existing as a in-game character in a videogame or stupid shit like this.
Yet i kinda get “not caring”, because it doesn’t matter if we financially sustain a game by buying it or not, the developers will be laid off regardless, and it’s also absurd to ask the public to salvage companies from their own stupid greed, to put on the consumer the task of saving an industry that doesn’t deserve it, nor the videogame buying public should pay for the failures (financial or moral) of the besuited, evil morons on top.
But then again, if you don’t care about anything, no argument will shake the apathy of letting everything slip by “because it doesn’t concern me” until it does and you can’t just look away.
As usual, in the end, do what you like, this is just me venting, and not even about the worse case scenario, but it’s about the precedents it inevitably sets, how even a benign usage of this is just laying the groundwork for worse stuff to come, for further poisoning of the well, which isn’t inspiring, to say the least.
anyway, we’ll be back tomorrow with the first review of Mini Summer Of EDF.
see ya.
Wise Cafe (International) 