...by Ethan Fox

🚨IMPORTANT NOTICE🚨

If you use Notepad++, you need to uninstall it *immediately*, then reinstall the latest version from the website (don't update!).

Apparently their update server was hacked and has been giving out malicious versions for many months now.

Yeah, yeah, they used AI and have now taken down their game because they've apparently realised AI is bad.
Millions of you are talking about it.
Can y'all please go BUY several low cost indie games that refused to use AI from the start, now, please?

Obviously while I make jokes, best of luck to the staff affected. I hope y'all find new jobs soon, it's difficult out there.

So Meta's #VR division is laying off 10% of their Metaverse staff.
Seems surprising until you hear that they have over 15,000 staff - nearly twice as many as ALL of Nintendo.

Laputa.
I saw Laputa in the 80s (a heavily cut version called something like *The Flying Island*) and absolutely loved it, then loved it even more when I got to see the proper version in around ~2001.
It'll always have a special place in my heart.

It's great to see all the people here expressing their opposition to generative AI in gaming.
Can I suggest, though - alongside avoiding games that use it - the Steam Winter Sale is coming up; consider actively buying a few games that don't. Indies really need this.

Designing Trans Characters for Positivity YouTube video by co2goldy

Thought this was particularly interesting:
youtu.be/DFZe-dqQsag

Can we pinpoint the exact era we moved on from this to the "vibes ad" era?
I mean like those ones in the 90s mags where you'd just have a page-3 model holding the box for the game, or something.
Or the one with the bath of blood.

Yeah, I remember this. They did these were they would have 1 episode (sometimes two?) per-tape, and it was built around the idea of subscribing over a year to get the set. They had an internal magazine which you received too, which talked about this month's episodes and so on

Honestly if one of the porn movie studios hasn't done a D&D thing called this yet then they're kinda leaving money on the table

During the last days of the dotcom bubble, we arrived at a weird place where companies saw a bump in share price just for putting ".com" at the end of their name, or referring to a website in a press release.
Even if such things were nonsensical.
Just putting that out there.

MiniDisc deserved better

Oh wow...

Ubisoft...

You were trying to make your games *stand out*?

In the past I've been uimpressed by the way so many of your games have been samey and cookie-cutter, but at least I thought that was an *intentional* decision

Well, crunch is a failure of management planning so either way management has fucked up here

Meme image from Lord of the Rings changed to "Looks like VR's back on the menu, boys!"

#VR #SteamFrame #Deckard

My game company isn't.

We all need to encourage those around us to - from now - treat video the way we treated *all* content on the internet in the 90s; we just assumed it was fake/lies/weird jokes until we got a better source.
It sucks but the alternative is terrifying.

This goes DOUBLY if the video matches their political alignment.

I'm pretty certain that, as of right now, a bad faith actor could use this technology to convince people that a civil war had started in a country, for example.
We've passed that point.

This is a sad day for online content, but we've reached that point where these tools are creating extremely lifelike false content.
And sure, if you look closely, you still see the problems, but people aren't going to look closely.

If they ridicule you, if they're condescending, I'm serious here, you need to get them by the scruff of the neck and *make* them listen. You need to actively, loudly, annoyingly DISMISS any videos they look at or share. You need to spoil their fun at every opportnity.
It sucks. But we gotta do this.

Via Reddit, I've seen the recent developments in AI-generated video.
All I'm gonna say - if you have young or aging family members, you *need* to start making very clear they must *not* trust video anymore, to assume that anything they see online, EVEN a video, is false until proven otherwise.

For the record, that appears to be these games:

store.steampowered.com/bundle/18805...

This news, and that quote, has kinda hit me surprisingly hard.

I want fans of NALE to know, that if I was ever unable to continue the series, I have plans to ensure that you *will* get an ending, even if it's just a write-up and some key art to explain the plot for Chapters V and VI.

a photo of tomonobu itagaki

"I just feel so sorry to all my fans for not being able to deliver my new work. Sorry. It is what it is. So it goes."

RIP, Tomonobu Itagaki.

One curious thing on this site about speaking out against the encroachment of LLMs is that inevitably you get accused of being anti-tech. I don’t hate technology. I’ve used machine learning in my own code before. But I also recognize that oligarchs are so hellbent on pushing this tech for a reason.

Not surprised Ubisoft did this.

They keep making games with massive political overtones (like The Division) but try to back up and say "oh but it's not political".

It's one of the reasons so much of their work has little artistic merit. It's big, flashy, polished... But says nothing.

But for whatever criticisms you can level at Apple (and they are LEGION as far as I'm concerned) they've made some pretty great *looking* sleek, minimalist devices over the years.
What even is that *thing*?!