Saber Interactive has been the subject of a bit of public scrutiny and outrage after its chief executive, Matt Karch, had an outburst over a former writer’s complaint that she was replaced by ChatGPT. Karch didn’t have many nice things to say about the writer but did point out that he’d have been happy to replace her with AI.
Despite this major controversy, which further opened up concerns over Saber’s embrace of AI as a leading technology, the company won’t be changing anything in its communication strategy.
Saber’s chief communications officer, Tim Willits, spoke with PC Gamer regarding the way the company communicates with consumers and fans and resoundingly denied that controversies will impact the studio’s approach.
“Sometimes we ‘say what we mean’ too much,” Willits told PC Gamer, “I’ve been in the industry for so long, and there’s always some dust up.”
“People got mad at Saber because we put World War Z on Epic, and people were like, ‘Oh, Saber’s destroying the industry.’ Now 30 million people have played World War Z. And the games will speak for themselves, even in our experiment with Rideshare,” the executive explained.
Rideshare, or rather Rideshare Stimulator, was the exact point of controversy that involved Karch and former Saber writer Stella Sacco. The game seems to have heavily utilized AI during its production, which Karch said would allow the studio to set a lower price for it. A lot of AI, including an entire AI-generated radio station, remains present in the title.
So I definitely wouldn’t call it just an experiment, because to me it looked like Saber testing the waters to see how many ripples it can cause with AI before anyone notices. And, shocker, a lot of people noticed, and now the company even confirmed it won’t be using any genAI in Space Marine 3 (via IGN).
If Saber could learn from that experience and immediately apply it to their other games, then perhaps the situation with Karch and how he spoke (despite his later apology) should serve as another valuable lesson to the studio.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.destructoid.com/no-saber-says-they-wont-change-how-they-communicate-after-ceo-ignited-ai-writer-controversy/
