Blog Archives
Self-Correcting
I feel there are many elements about AI that will eventually be self-correcting… in a sort of apocalyptic, crash-and-burn kind of way. For example, the AI-summarized web doesn’t leave much economic oxygen for people to create content worth summarizing. Assuming, of course, that ad-based revenue streams continue to make sense at all as we cross into over 50% of all internet traffic being bots.
On an individual level, I am experiencing some interesting changes that may also be self-correcting.
I have mentioned it a few times, but I have had a problem with watching Youtube (Shorts). As in, I would pop on over to quickly decompress from some other activity, and then 2-3 hours later, awaken from my fugue, algorithmic state having not accomplished anything that I had set out to. It’s a problem.
…or, at least, it was. Because I am now beginning to encounter (presumed) AI-directed, curated, and/or created content. And it repulses me in an uncanny valley way. Takes me right out of whatever hypnosis I was under and immediately causes me to close the tab. Which, of course, is great for me.
I put “presumed” up there though, because sometimes I cannot really tell. For example, this video about “15 forgotten garden traditions” is probably AI generated – it features generic voiceover on top of stitched-together montage of others peoples’ (at least attributed) content. Much like the now-maligned em dash however, perhaps that style of video is now just guilty by association? Another video was on The Saver’s Paradox and my AI-dar went off immediately. Looking further into the channel and thinking about what it would require to prompt that level of video though, it seems like it’s legit.
Perhaps neither of those videos bothered you in the slightest. In which case, congratulations! You are absolutely set up for a future filled to the brim with… content. For me though, the magic is gone.
It may well be inevitable that the quality of AI generation is such that it become indistinguishable from human content. In which case, why would I be on Youtube at all, instead of in my own prompt?
Self-correcting! As it turns out, even black holes evaporate eventually.
AI Won’t Save Us from Ourselves
I came across a survey/experiment article the other day entitled The Hidden Penalty of Using AI at Work. The “penalty” in this case being engineers more harshly judging a peer’s code if they were told the peer used AI to help write it. The overall effect is one’s competence being judged 9% worse than when the reviewer is told no AI was used. At least the penalty was applied equally…
The competence penalty was more than twice as severe for female engineers, who faced a 13% reduction compared to 6% for male engineers. When reviewers thought a woman had used AI to write code, they questioned her fundamental abilities far more than when reviewing the same AI-assisted code from a man.
Most revealing was who imposed these penalties. Engineers who hadn’t adopted AI themselves were the harshest critics. Male non-adopters were particularly severe when evaluating female engineers who used AI, penalizing them 26% more harshly than they penalized male engineers for identical AI usage.
Welp, that’s pretty bad. Indeed one of the conclusions is:
The competence penalty also exacerbates existing workplace inequalities. It’s reasonable and perhaps tempting to assume that AI tools should level the playing field by augmenting everyone’s capabilities. Our results suggest that this is not guaranteed and in fact the opposite could be true. In our context, which is dominated by young males, making AI equally available increased bias against female engineers.
This is the sort of thing I will never understand about AI Optimists: why would you presuppose anything other than an entrenchment of the existing capitalist dystopian hellscape and cultural morass?
I don’t know if you have taken a moment to look around lately, but we are clearly in the Bad Place. If I had once held a hope that AI tools would accelerate breakthroughs in fusion technology and thus perhaps help us out of the climate apocalypse we are sleepwalking into, articles like the above serve to ground me in the muck where we are. Assuming AI doesn’t outright end humanity, it certainly isn’t going to save us from ourselves. Do you imagine the same administration that is trying to cancel solar/wind energy and destroy NASA satellites monitoring CO2 is going to shepherd in a new age of equitable prosperity?
Or is it infinitely more likely the gains will be privatized and consolidated into the techno-feudal city-states these tech bros are already dreaming up? Sorta like Ready Player One, minus the escapism VR.
I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. We are absolutely in a transition period with AI, and as the survey pointed out, the non-adopters were more harsh than those familiar with AI. But… the undercurrent remains. I do not see what AI is going to do to solve income inequality, racism, sexism, or the literal death cult currently wielding all levers of government. I’m finding it a bit more likely that AI will be used to, you know, oppress people in horrible new ways. Or just the old ways, much more efficiently.
Wherever technology goes, there we are.
Egregious
Hearthstone recently announced a new feature coming soon: pets! As in, little animated avatars that sit in the lower-left corner of the game board and do cute things and react to emotes, dealing damage, and so on. Pets are purely cosmetic with no gameplay elements whatsoever. Blizzard has introduced a lot of cosmetic enhancements to the game over the years, so this would not be especially noteworthy.
What is noteworthy this time around is the fact that this pet will cost most people $160.
(Most coverage says $158 because it takes 15,800 Runestones, but you can’t buy that specific amount.)
The only way to unlock this first pet is to participate in the new Darkmoon Faire gacha machine – only available for a limited time! – which features 10 prizes. The first pull is free, because of course it is. Thereafter, there is an escalating cost for some reason, and a weighted score that puts the odds of getting the pet at between 0.1% and 7%, even after eight prior pulls… for nefarious reasons. This is certainly some of the most ridiculous gacha bullshit I have seen ever recently.
…at least, until I remembered some of the other “sales” Blizzard has had.
For reference, here is what my shop looks like currently:
You don’t really need to know what Golden packs are or the value of Signature Legendary cards – just look at the dollar totals. Not pictured are some of the “Mythic” alternative hero portraits, which turn the typical JPGs into 3D models with special animations and such for the low, low price of $60. Several months ago, there was a “bundle” of two different colors of the Kerrigan model for $80. So, while doubling the upper floor to $160 certainly feels egregious, I cannot say it came out of nowhere.
Plus, if I were feeling onery, I would point out that technically the pet only costs $158 if you value the remaining items at zero. Signature Legendary cards in the shop are sold for $30 as seen above. Hero portraits are usually $10 apiece and there are two. It’s hard to value a Diamond Legendary since you only get those in special ways, but I think I’ve seen them go for $40-$50. A single Golden pack costs $4. I’m not going to speculate on the other Signature cards or the card back, but already we’re back down to $54 taking the other stuff into account.
Is this rollout still a PR disaster? Yes. Is it indicative of cynical, pernicious monetization? Yes. Does it bring up legitimate fears about the future direction and longevity of the game as a whole? Yes.
Is it completely unexpected for Hearthstone? …ehh, kinda sorta maybe yes. But also no.
(AI)Moral Hazard
There are a lot of strong feelings out there regarding the use of AI to generate artwork or other assets for videogames. Regardless of where you fall on the “training” aspect of AI, it seems clear that a game developer opting for AI art is taking away an employment possibility for a human artists.
One possibility I had not previously imagined though, is when a paid human artist themselves (allegedly) uses AI to generate the art:
Released as part of [Project Zomboid] build 42, these new images for the survival game seemingly contain some visual anomalies that may be attributable to AI generation tools. In the picture of the person using the radio, for example, the handle of the radio is misaligned with its main casing, the wire on the headphones seems to merge into the character’s hair, and there is an odd number of lines on the stand-up microphone – on one side of the microphone there are five indentations, but on the other side, which ought to be symmetrical, there are six.
It is worth noting that this is all forum speculation – AI has not been proven, although it certainly seems suspicious. Moreover, the “AAA concept artist” commissioned is not some rando, but the very one that did the still-used cover art of Project Zomboid from back in 2011. So this particular controversy is literally the worst of all possible worlds: game developer did the right thing by hiring a professional artist with proven track record for thousands of dollars, and received either AI-assisted artwork (bad), or non-AI artwork with human error that is now assumed to be because of AI (worse).
All of which is a complete distraction to another otherwise commendable game update (worst).
“Either way, they are gone for now – likely forever, as frankly after two years of hard work from our entire team in getting build 42 done, it would break my heart if discussion as to whether we’d used AI on a few loading screens that were produced externally to the company pretty recently was to completely overshadow all that effort and passion and hard work the team put into getting B42 out there.”
Truly, it is an unenviable time to be an artist. AI technology is only going to improve, and as it does, you will be increasingly competing against both “Prompt Engineers” and anonymous internet sleuths hunting for clues to “expose” you for Reddit karma. Eventually, AI-generated content will be so prevalent that none of it will matter; I could imagine ads that are dynamically drawn in, say, anime-style because it noticed you had CrunchyRoll open in another tab, or with the realistic likeness of a TV star from your most-watched Netflix show.
Right now, utilizing AI as a business is a sign of being cheap and invites controversy. Perhaps it remains so, presuming the ad-based hellscape imagined above. But at a certain point, AI will probably figure out symmetry and how many Rs are in strawberry and we will likely be none the wiser.
Or we will just assume everything is AI-generated and it won’t matter. Same difference.
Cyberpunk 2077, Completed
Finally finished Cyberpunk 2077 over the weekend. Total playtime was a combined 148 hours.
Years ago, my initial playthrough was as a female V, romancing Judy. Progressed up to the Parade mission, realized that things were probably going to go down, so I took an off-ramp into… literally everything else. Completed every single side-quest, and sucked the very marrow from the progression system. After that, I lost interest in going the final mile, never completing the game.
The second playthrough came as a result of the Phantom Liberty DLC release. Actually, a second playthrough would never have happened without the corresponding 2.0 overhaul of the Talent/Perk system. That overhaul really did turn everything around, making it a more cohesive, interesting experience. It didn’t hurt that Phantom Liberty was actually an extremely well-built DLC. In any case, I decided to start a fresh character using the “skip to Act 2” option to check out things as a male V, romancing Panam. And yeah, it was a “I studied the blade” playthrough (until I realized that sucked).
Ironically, I almost bailed at the exact same place as last time. Technically, in fact, I did: stopped playing in November after about 68 hours, right in front of the parade quest, having completely consumed all of Dogtown and thinking of what I had to do to unlock the various ending options. Already surpassed the old level cap, maximized gear, no progression of any kind to look forward to. Why bother slogging through to the end of this Civilization Conquest victory? I put the game away for a few months.
The main impetus of getting me over the finish line? My 2TB gaming SSD was getting too full. Yep.
Now, my reticence over finishing may sound as an indictment of the game overall, but that is not the case. Cyberpunk 2077 is an amazing achievement, featuring one of the most cohesive, believable gaming cities ever designed. The streets feel lived-in, puked on, bled over, and cyberpunked.
The commitment to immersive first-person perspective is bone-deep, but what sells it the most is the level of humanity present in the movement of NPCs. A decade ago, characters winking in Mass Effect elevated the entire medium for me. And while I am fortunate enough to have experienced the vicarious joy of the devs when it came to Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Cyberpunk 2077’s contributions are on the next tier higher. Being able to walk around characters as they are talking, seeing them casually step over chairs, or light a cigarette, or any of the general actions that, while scripted, never feel overally scripted sets a bar unlikely to be topped for years. Granted, most of this comes from extensive (and expensive) mo-capping, putting it firmly out of reach for the majority of developers out there. But once you leave Cyberpunk and try any other supposedly AAA game (cough Starfield), you feel the difference.
Having said all that, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about finishing the game.
Actually, hold up. Let me find that… here it is.
I’m not going to go into the nitty-gritty details of the ending(s), but you’ll be able to infer some things.
…buffering…
I found the overall narrative unsatisfying. To a degree, this is likely by design. Night City is a corpo-dystopia, poverty is rampant, gang violence is routine, and attempts to do the right thing usually end in worse outcomes for everyone involved. The primary motivation of the main character, established early on, is to become a famous mercenary and get rich. And while you do have the option to be a bit more, ahem, mercenary in a few quests, the language of action throughout is always centered on killing and/or stealing and/or sabotaging for cash, regardless of whether your heart is gold or lead.
From a gameplay perspective, that is perfectly fine – I relished every opportunity to cyber-ninja around Night City. But at some point there came a severe narrative dissonance in how much time I was spending killing random gang members as opposed to the corporations that were responsible for the dystopia itself. Maybe that is “too big” of a goal to accomplish, assuming I could even work towards that end with a ticking time bomb in my head. Maybe the point of the story is to demonstrate the corporations always win and the best you can do is disconnect and drive away into the desert.
You know, the ole’ Wargames “the only winning move is not to play” end. Which is second only to “it was all a dream” in terms of dissatisfying plot.
For most of the game, I also actively hated the Johnny Silverhand character. While there were some later quests that softened the rougher edges, for the most part, Silverhand just reminded me of one of those overly-dramatic friends whom the world is always out to get – defensively cantankerous, never realizing that if everything smells like shit, maybe you should check the bottom of your shoe. However, that thought led me to imagine a Cyberpunk where Silverhand wasn’t in your head. And… I don’t think it works. Not so much because Silverhand’s relentless cynicism enhances the narrative, but rather that it is structural crutch to an otherwise unsupported plot.
Like, imagine that you still have the Relic malfunctions and blackouts, and thus still have motivation to seek a cure. What else changes? Well, a shit-ton of dialog goes missing. And that was when I realized: Silverhand is the embodiment of a failure to “Show, Don’t Tell.” He’s the player’s digital conscience, ever critical of actions that contribute towards the preservation of the Corpo status quo… which is all of them. But the insufferable needling is necessary because the game otherwise doesn’t Show any of it. Arasaka and the other corps are right bastards in the lore, but aside from a few assassination attempts, they may as well not exist. The game should have been called The Gangs of Night City for how much gameplay ultimately revolves around Maelstrom and Tyger Claws.
Again, I get it, having players just fight corps is probably a hard game to make. Plus, part of the “point” of the setting is that these corps are all but unassailable outside of a few acts of targeted sabotage. Even ultimately bringing down Arasaka doesn’t do shit within Night City – Militec immediately fills in the vacuum and the status is quo’d once more. This is the cyberpunk genre 101.
But… I dunno. I’ve played grimdark games before, I’ve played Far Cry 2 where by the end I as a player wanted my character to sacrifice themselves. I actually have a high regard to games that embody the Starfish Parable in the face of inevitability elsewhere. And yet, Cyberpunk 2077 somehow feels bleaker than even that. If that is the vibe the devs were going for, well… congratulations. You won, I lost.
Perhaps it is thus in a moment of supreme irony that I still recommend you play the game.
Not because of the “friends you made along the way,” or any sort of deep philosophical insight, or because of a game-inducing sensation of nihilism. Rather, you should play Cyberpunk 2077 because it’s a technological marvel. You can mod it into virtual photorealism rather easily, but even without mods the fidelity is on a level beyond all peer. Crysis was a gaming benchmark for decades, and I can see Cyberpunk 2077 occupying a similar niche for years to come.
But what really ties it together is the Immersion impact. Some Call of Duty sequel or whatever may end up being prettier, but what can you actually do in the game? Skyrim might technically be more immersive in terms of interacting with the environment, and Grand Theft Auto 5 also has a lot of activity. But I cannot stress enough: Night City feels real. You are in an environment. From now on, if I cannot jostle NPCs out of the way while moving through a crowd, that game is crap.
So, yeah. Cyberpunk 2077.
Buy it, play it, live it, and then end the game on your terms. Preferably before the parade mission.
Fighting the Game Mechanics
I just completed Orwell, a sort of Papers, Please-style game that demonstrates the dangers of mass surveillance. As an Investigator, your job is to comb through a few suspects’ Facebook pages, text threads, and anything else you can get your hands on (including medical records) to glean info and connect dots to stop further terrorist attacks.
The game is actually pretty slick in an AR sense, and reminded me of that one old (2012 is old, right?) Youtube video, Welcome to Life. There is no fourth wall – you the player agree to terms and conditions and your participation as an outside observer is intended.
Overall, the game was decent entertainment across the six hours I spent playing. The frustrating part though was how often I ended up having to fight against the game mechanics.
One of the central conceits of the game is that you have to upload information to the Orwell system as “Datachunks.” Sometimes this is straight-forward factual information, like phone numbers or email addresses. Other times you have to exercise judgment and restraint based on context. If someone says they live in “Wonderland, on the other side of the rainbow” or whatever, uploading that will actually make that their address in the system. That example is benign, but as this is a game with multiple endings, you can actually screw things up depending on what you submit and what you don’t.
The problem I faced rather early on though is that Orwell is a videogame. And as a videogame, progression is based on “flags” which must be tripped before you can continue. There were at least four instances in which I could not progress until I uploaded a specific Datachunk that was not otherwise immediately obvious as being necessary. Once I did so, there would be a totally unrelated phone call or whatever I could listen in on to get more information and continue onwards. But as I mentioned, the game makes it clear that you shouldn’t just upload ALL of the Datachunks lest you pollute the profiles and/or possibly implicate an innocent person.
There is no option to just end the day, or move forward with the information you already have. I suppose it would be more frustrating to basically soft-lock you out of finishing the game at all if you end up missing a crucial bit of information. Nevertheless, Orwell felt like it existed between a visual novel and a Hidden Object game, the latter being a hypothetical one in which you could “lose” by clicking on the wrong thing.
I don’t have a solution to this problem; the Orwell devs don’t either. It’s a shame that an otherwise delightful experience could encounter so much friction in execution based on game mechanics.
Years Late, $20 Short
Hearthstone is jumping on the Season Pass bandwagon… in perhaps the dumbest way possible.
Earn More Rewards with the Darkmoon Faire Tavern Pass!
The Darkmoon Faire Tavern Pass unlocks the potential to earn even more rewards on the Rewards Track! With the Tavern Pass you can earn Hearthstone’s first-ever Cosmetic Coin, the Annhylde Warrior Alternate Hero and card back, three Jaina Mage Hero skins, three Thrall Shaman Hero skins, and experience boosts of up to 20% on the Rewards Track. Once you purchase the Tavern Pass, you will unlock the Silas Darkmoon golden Legendary minion and a 10% experience boost immediately!
In case you missed it, Blizzard did a big overhaul on Hearthstone rewards in conjunction with this Tavern Pass. Previously, the reward system was very straight-forward: you get daily quests (up to 3) that reward primarily gold, and 10g for every three wins. The new system is that there are now both daily and weekly quests that award XP, and you receive rewards as you level up along a track (which includes gold and other things). If you pay for the Tavern Pass though, you get the normal rewards plus a few cosmetics along a parallel track, plus a general 10-20% boost in XP gain.
Throughout the process leading up to the change, the Hearthstone devs repeatedly stated that this new system would not result in less gold rewards. But it does.
And the real kick in the teeth? The Tavern Pass costs $20.
Last year, I was gushing about Supercell introducing a Season Pass in Clash Royale. A large part of why was because of the value. Clash Royale has a cash shop that is borderline absurd/predatory, which made the $5 asking price seem downright beneficent in comparison. That’s… likely not an accident. Be that as it may, the amount of extra stuff you walked away with for $5 made it worth it for me.
When I look at Hearthstone in comparison, I don’t even recognize the company anymore. Literally, what is this shit? Paying $20 was always borderline for me when it came to the mini-expansions and the Dungeon Runs, but I put down the cash and largely walked away with what I considered some value. Dalaran Heist single-handedly got me through hundreds of hours of my son’s larval stage.
With the Tavern Pass though, the dissonance is getting too real. Hearthstone is not a premium game worthy of a $20 Season Pass. Seeing expansion sets with $80 “mega” bundles being advertised everywhere is sickening. And we just learned that in addition to the new normal of three expansions per year, Blizzard is adding another mini-expansion. Which would be fine, if the game were not so goddamn expensive already.
In the early days, the prices justified themselves in comparison to Magic: the Gathering and other paper CCGs. It isn’t 2014 anymore though – Blizzard is now competing in a world in which gamers can get things like Genshin Impact for free and the Xbox Game Pass for $10/month. Those obviously are not CCGs, but the world is moving on.
Blizzard has been keeping things fresh, like when they introduced Hearthstone Battlegrounds, which has been a relatively large success in spite of the fact that it’s even more crazy RNG nonsense. But that very innovation casts the rest of their monetization strategy into sharp relief. Battlegrounds Perk is another tier of paid advantage that expands the random selection of heros at the beginning of each match. Then there is Duels, another new game mode which seems poised to cannibalize the Dungeon Run roguelikes by replacing bosses with human opponents.
Also, Duels is directly tied to your card collection because fuck you.
SynCaine used to say that Hearthstone was a garbage P2W mobile game ported to PC, which never made much sense at the time (it released on PC first), but seems to retroactively becoming true. Except Hearthstone as an app is pretty garbage by itself – the app takes 40+ seconds to load, there are frequent disconnects, and it takes up a huge amount of space. So, basically, the monetization of a P2W app without the optimization.
I really don’t understand what Blizzard is doing. And, likely, neither do they.
[Fake Edit] As I was typing up this post, Blizzard released an official announcement:
We have been listening to your feedback regarding the Rewards Track and it’s clear we missed the mark both in how we communicated and implemented the full functionality of this first version of our rewards system.
We apologize for the confusion and disappointment we have caused.
During the natural progression of the rewards cycle, our intention was, and still is, to give out extra XP over time through a variety of ways. The aim is to help players get through the Rewards Track, or catch-up if they join later in an expansion phase, ultimately ensuring players earn more rewards. […]
In addition, you’ve provided us with a wealth of feedback, and we agree that the pack rewards at the end of the track don’t feel appropriate for the effort it takes to get them. We’re going to adjust these rewards in the later stages of the track, swapping six packs for a total of 1350 gold that players can spend as they see fit. If any players reach this milestone before we implement these changes, they will be retroactively compensated.
https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/7783-rewards-track-update-official-blizzard-statement
Amusingly, they appear to be following the same script as Bethesda with Fallout 76: release a reward track that mathematically requires hundreds of hours of grinding (unless you pay!), ignore the people that warn about the math prior to release, then release it on a population that instantly revolts, and then “remember” that you forgot to mention the hastily thrown-together events that give bonus XP.
Sounds legit.
This is the part of the post in which I make a token effort to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt. “They’re changing the 6 pack reward with 1350g, which is a big improvement!” But this capitulation was foreseen on Reddit for the past week: “2 greedy steps forward, 1 greedy step back” And seeing it play out in real-time is a bit nauseating… because it’s true.
Great, they fixed patched a very obviously broken reward system. And yet here we still are with a $20 Season Pass, with a new game mode dependent on having X epics in your collection, which means you can’t dust them to craft new expansion Legendaries that single-handedly win games on the spot. And Battlegrounds Perks is another whole layer of season pass-ness that exists for no rea$on.
Disgusting is the word that keeps coming to mind. Not exploitative, not greedy, but disgusting. Charging for MMO hotbars or lootboxes with 0.6% rewards are terrible, pernicious things to game design. But Blizzard’s Hearthstone “strategy” feels like strange hands slipping into pockets, groping about, feeling for loose change. What the fuck, Blizzard. This is a CCG, just sell some packs, Jesus Christ.
The Outer Hype, part 2
When I started playing The Outer Worlds back in December, I was not impressed. Having just completed the game yesterday, I can report that the game did not particularly redeem itself.
To be clear, the game may have been rigged from the start, so to speak. This was Obsidian, makers of Fallout: New Vegas! With a brand new IP! Like some kind of Mass Effect x Fallout space western! Except it wasn’t. At all. Like not even remotely close.
Was that Obsidian’s fault? Probably not, but they suffer the consequences of the hype just the same.
Regardless, the game did not improve. I was playing on Hard difficulty and the combat was just a mess from start to finish. Companion AI is tough to get right in any game, but here they are glorified abilities that you press once per combat, as they typically die immediately after they use them. Exploration was pointless, rewarding trash consumables or weapon mods you never have need of using. The whole Tinker/Upgrade system for level-based gear starts out as a promising way of keeping unique weapons (etc) relevant, but the escalating cost of doing so spirals out of control. When it’s easier and cheaper to just buy guns from a vending machine rather than try to upgrade the super-special gear you spent time exploring/questing for, you know things have fallen off the rails.
Quest-wise, things did not improve either. If you treat the game overall as a comedy, things might play out better from a tone perspective. And indeed there is some witty dialog to be had. Aside from that though, there was precisely one moment towards the end of the game in which I was surprised at the visual impact of a particular decision. Arguably though, it was surprising precisely because nothing else was ever taken seriously.
Overall… well, I was going to suggest to give this game a pass, but I myself played it for a whole dollar via the Game Pass, so… do what you want. If you get past the first planet and aren’t feeling it though, don’t feel bad about moving on. It’s not going to scratch a Fallout itch, a Mass Effect itch, a BioShock itch, or any itch beyond a bizarre one for BBB Unreal engine comedy games.
And if you have one of those, you might want to see a dermatologist instead.
In An Age 
“Normal People Don’t Care”
Dec 18
Posted by Azuriel
There is a minor, ongoing media kerfuffle with the internet-darling Larian Studios (makers of Baldur’s Gate 3, Original Sin 2, etc). It started with this Bloomberg article, wherein Jason Schreier writes:
There are possible charitable and a not-so-chartable takes on those words, and suffice it to say, many people chose the latter. Vincke responded with a “Holy fuck guys [chill out]” Twitter response, with clarifications and emphasis that they only use AI for reference material and other boring things, and not with actual content. Jason Schreier also chimed in with an original transcript of the interview, as a response to others suggesting that what Schreier wrote was itself misleading.
As a side note, this portion of the transcript was extra interesting to me:
I suppose I should take Vincke’s word on the matter, considering how he released a critically-acclaimed game that sold 20 million copies, and I have… not. But, dead? Larian Studios has over 500 employees at this point, so things are likely different at these larger scales. I’m just saying the folks that made, you know, Silksong or Megabonk are probably going to be fine without pushing AI into their processes.
Anyway, all of that is actually a preamble to what sent me to this keyboard in the first place. In the Reddit comments of the second Schreier piece, this exchange took place:
do not engage… do not engage… do not engage…
Guys, it’s hard out here in 2025. And I’m kinda all done. Tapped out. Because SexyJazzCat is correct.
Normal people don’t actually care. We know this because “normal” people voted the current administration back into office. Normal people don’t understand that measles can reset your immune system, erasing all your hard-fought natural immunities. Normal people don’t understand that every AI data center that springs up in your area is subsidized by increases to your own electric bill. Normal people don’t understand that tariffs are taxes that they end up paying for. Normal people don’t understand that even if they didn’t use ACA subsidies, their health insurance is going to wildly increase anyway because hospitals won’t be reimbursed for emergency care from newly uninsured people. Nevermind the, you know, general human misery this creates.
Normal people don’t actually care about AI. But they should. Or perhaps should have, past tense, because we’re far past the end of a very slippery slope and fully airborne. Normal people are just going to be confused as to why computers, phones, and/or videogame consoles are wildly more expensive in 2026 (e.g. RAM crisis). Or if AI successfully demonstrates real efficiency gains, surprised when they are out of a job. Or if AI crashes and burns, why they also still lost their job and their 401k cratered (e.g. 40% of S&P 500 value is in AI companies).
The only thing that I still wish for these days, is this: people have the kind of day they voted for.
Posted in Commentary
3 Comments
Tags: AI, Capitalist Dystopian Hellscape, Jason Schreier, Larian, Normal People, Reddit