Publishers are pushing genAI and hoping gamers will accept the slop

There’s an old adage about bad relationships: a sandwich may look absolutely delicious, but if there’s a little bit of shit smeared in there, it doesn’t matter what the ingredients are or how hungry you are: it’s now a shit sandwich. One can play devil’s advocate: What if you were starving? What if you couldn’t taste it? But we all have a natural revulsion to the very idea.

Forgive my crude metaphor, but all of this comes to mind when I look at the current controversy surrounding Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Arc Raiders, and the on-going debate about AI in video games. Right now, it feels like some of the biggest companies in the space are testing the shit sandwich theory: how much are consumers at large willing to accept this lifeless, sterile slop in their games? 

While some draw a line at the use of any AI — for me, it’s a big reason why I didn’t check out the otherwise lauded game The Alters — it’s clear that many people are fine with at least a little bit of AI. After all, they may be making their grocery lists in ChatGPT or looking at AI videos of cats already without really thinking about it, like the infamous boiling frog. On Nov. 10, Eurogamer published an excellent review of Arc Raiders written by Rick Lane that praised the gameplay and social experience, but critiqued the AI voices and the tonal whiplash they added to the narrative.

This kicked an ant’s nest of discourse, ranging from bad faith videos by the usual set of grifters to more considered discussion on the topic, but the most interesting take is from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who replied to the article with “Political opinions should go into op eds folks.” and later clarified in a reply to another user: “This technology increases human productivity in some areas by integer multiples, and views on whether this is a net good and should be rewarded, or bad and should be fought against, are speculative and generally distributed along political lines.”

What is most notable to me is that Sweeney does not interact with the meat of Lane’s argument about the effect AI voices had on his experience. Instead, he speculates on some future application of AI voice acting that could be great. For now, it looks like a very sizable audience does not care about the debate, since the game continues to blow up on Steam. But it’s worth noting, I think, that none of the defense is “But it’s actually really good — as good as a human performance!” and more “Ehhh, it’s just this...” or “But the technology is evolving so quickly!”