Sundays are for looking upon my DIY works and despairing. Strewn sawdust, spilled paint, and hunks of broken MDF litter my living room kingdom. When will it be over? When will I be free? When will I be able to reassemble my sofa, sit down with a cup of tea in hand, and admire my books, unpacked and arranged on perfectly fitted alcove bookshelves?
"Today?" I whisper hopefully in response to a paragraph of rhetorical questions. "Probably not," snaps back Reality. Especially if I don't get out of bed soon. Still, here in bed I can read the best writing about and not about games from the past week.
Inside our Gchat walls, there is a growing exhaustion with genAI stories. Every day another gaming boss talks about the inexorable march of the tech before putting out a trailer filled with blurry text and six-fingered characters. I don't doubt the tech is getting better, but it's not inevitable. As such, Rob Fahey's latest GI column is something of a balm:
There is currently a concerted and not-so-subtle campaign underway to try to manufacture consent for the use of AI in game development.
At its core, this is about presenting AI as a fait accompli. Every week or so we get a new report making dubious claims about almost every development studio already using AI. The message to developers is "you'll be left behind if you don't use it too"; to players, it's "this is already done and there's no turning back". Consume like good little consumers. Shut up and eat your slop.
A further tonic comes from Merritt K, who writes for Aftermath about the technological improvements rolling through Karaoke.
Doesn't it feel like everything — especially everything Big Tech touches — is getting worse? Generative AI, not merely content with robbing humans of our craft and jobs, has escaped containment into physical reality in the form of shitty event flyers and small business signage. Hugely profitable industries like video games and film are being torn apart by the financialization of the economy as shareholders seek ever-increasing short-term profits. Algorithmic pricing of rent and groceries threatens to further punish the working class for the crime of not being born rich.
But in the heart of despair, we must reach for that which is good and pure and — dare I say it — better than it used to be. Karaoke is one of those things. And it is better not because of the disruption of tech giants, but, as is often the case, thanks to the work of enterprising maniacs toiling in obscurity, purely out of the love of the game.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-sunday-papers-834
