Made by Nobody

Everything sucks a little bit right now, and there’s nothing wrong with realizing and saying that, and it kinda is the only way we can start thinking about ways in which things stop sucking. With me saying that, it may sound kind of hypocritical and unhealthy to think about ways in which things may suck even more in the future, but please, just this once, let me walk you through my new-found worries.

You may be already on the loop about this, but to those that aren’t: Saber Interactive newest announcement, Rideshare Simulator, has gone up in hellish flames after narrative designer Stella Sacco pointed some VERY justified worries that they may have fired her just to replace her with an AI, and the point we are right now is that, after trying to deflect it as much as possible, the company revealed they indeed used AI for several elements they did not disclose neither on the Steam page or anywhere , in what it could be charitably referred to as an absolute PR clusterfuck and utter embarrassment for Saber’s CEO and everyone involved in the AI’s usage and hiding operation.

With that mess signed off, and unless the big peeps at Saber have a shaming kink and have yet to disclose even more AI usage, it means that’s all and done, right? Yet another wonderfully miserable example of this ‘’tool of the future’’ being so ill-perceived by the masses (and with reason under the context of industry-wide precarity) that the suits enamored with the allure of lower budgets actively hide it under the rug. More at 11, I guess.

Except that’s the thing, this isn’t the first time this has happened, and I can bet my right hand won’t be the last. From last year onwards, it seems this has become an increasingly more common pattern, studios of all sizes, but specially the bigger fishes, dabble with LLMs in closed doors; inserting them in broken dev cycles only seen to those forced to work in it and in investor paraphernalia, but always lie in shadow when it comes to facing off the public. The moment the farce is revealed, all that follows are excuses, ‘’it was just a placeholder’’ being the new ‘’my dog ate my homework’’ of the videogame industry.

Companies feel shame, but instead of re-evaluating, they are actively putting more and more effort into finding ways to hide it, dodging the steam AI disclosure tag like their life depends of it. This is simultaneously more and less than taking the player base for idiots, this is an active embarrassment and the billionaire equivalent of putting more effort into cheating a test rather than studying. That’s two silly school related comparisons in two paragraphs, that’s really were we are.

We are at a point where we, the supposed consumers these companies should supposedly sell us their supposed products by their supposed allure as supposed quality products, will be the ones to point out and call out these undisclosed AI usage, even more than we already try to do. But even as time goes by in the present, when they’ll try to move along with their forced tech revolution more and more and it’ll sometimes be too late to call it out, then all I can think of is one thing…

Where the hell will the Making Ofs go.

You may already know this, but turns out learning how things are made, how art is made, is really really cool. Dare I say, really fucking important. The whole condition of ‘’creating’’ is fundamentally incompatible with isolated crafting, which isn’t to say things like outsider’s art don’t exist, but hear this; having resources that share a creative process and being able to form part of them can be as rewarding and thrilling as penning the story you had in your head for 5 years. There’s nothing more healthy that seeing a creative, ANY creative, share pieces of their journey, isolated and collective, in a documentary or interview.

So what would happen if the creative is gone.

By the time a game releases and we suddenly learn that a fucking AI stole and jumbled mis matched words to form a Skinwalker version of a story or produced a half-baked effect or model, what there will be to learn from? What thing will there be for someone to be inspired by or love? And most critically, what will there be to talk about afterwards that isn’t confined to the cold walls of an investor’s meeting room?

I haven’t lived for long, but even now and with each passing day I can see that every singular medium is as much the final result of the art as an entity itself, and the conditions and context is made to its most minute detail, to the point even textures or certain phrases can have entire stories of their own, and that’s why Ais and their promoters are even more pervasive that they let on. It’s not just simplifying a process, it’s actively destroying, reducing to a conveyor belt where not even that who uses the machine knows what the fuck is going on anymore.

Perhaps in purpose, their pursuit to avoid transparency, or God forbid actually think properly for once, will kill the way in which creativity itself is peddled and formed. Mindless consumerism was always the preferred outcome for a class that sees human interjection as damage to the bottom line, but going towards a world that has no space for the kind of magic that happens at GDC talks or independent panels that show the sheer, stunning beauty of human craftmanship, makes me ask: are we really shaming entities like Saber enough? Or maybe shaming is just a part of the process?

This is not doomposting, ‘cause in my heart of hearts I know that is the kind of world we will never fully reach. I choose to believe that we as humans will never fully let ourselves be beaten by an inability to share creativity with each other, and if the constant fight against the cowardice and compliance of the studios is anything to go by, I’m correct in my positive assumption.

I choose to believe that no matter how much they keep trying to say that the sign that leads to the road makes us fall from a cliff, we will still choose to stand.

Thank you so much for reaching this point.