Exhaustion gets the best of all of us, and sometimes, one is too tired to even realize one is too tired.

How I looked yesterday trying to finish my article on time

Yesterday was a complete shit show, and I’m surprised everything turned out as well as it did. I’m guessing due to burning the candle at both ends, my exhaustion helped to completely gum up the schedule something fierce, so my normal routine was greatly disrupted through lethargic speeds that dragged me down hard. By the time I needed to bust out an article and some video content to post, I was basically out of time. I actually still have to go clean up that piece, as it represents a withered husk of the article it was meant to be. The only saving grace about yesterday, is that the content did get posted, even if in an exceedingly less than state, granted. Normally such a thing wouldn’t be a big deal, but when one is on a 157 day streak of posting articles daily, one tends to get a bit raw about these kinds of things. Not that any of this truly matters now, after the fact, bur I felt it necessary to explain myself. When my standards fall, there is a great pain the befalls me, and the only appropriate remedy is an airing of grievances for those stricken by the faltering.

As far as vibe check ins are concerned for where I’m at in Expedition 33 (E33), without spoiling anything of course, I am definitely making headway into some bizarre territory, and many questions linger within me. I feel as if E33 does an excellent job of hiding relevant details unspoken of, yet in plain sight, unsuspectingly mocking players who aren’t more dubious about the bigger picture at large. The ramp up towards a greater reveal continues to be of great intrigue, so I’m curious to see how well it all coalesces when all is said and done. If this game does continue to carry itself beat for beat in the vein of Final Fantasy, there is a little cause for concern, as even the better FF stories tend to get a bit fucking wacky by the end. So we shall see if E33 is able to avoid going absolutely Looney Tunes by stories end.

I feel as if I’ve been fairly doting of E33, quite honestly, which I find odd, as I’ve played many a game recently, some of which are from some of my favorite series, as well as just straight bangers, and yet I think I was still quite gruff in my approach with even the qualities to note about said titles. Not sure why E33 seems to have me feeling so breathy and effervescent within its proximity, outside of the notion that I haven’t played an RPG in such a long time, that one which largely has its shit together truly is a breath of fresh air, so fair credit where credit is due.

To that point, and not as if out of some wanton necessity to hoist some hostility upon the throne of E33, but more so in address to the “fair credit” I speak of, I was surprised to see that E33 had essentially disqualified itself a rightful victor, by the Indie Game Awards (IGA), as having achieved their humble offering of Game of the Year, only to have the respectful nod redacted entirely, once the IGA committee had discovered Sandfall Interactive had used AI in E33’s creation. The whole thing gets even more complicated, cause apparently, it involved assets for the game, that came in the form of background textures, and not only that, but ones that had been patched out of the game, and replaced with man-made created elements only days after launch, so the offending content wasn’t even in the game anymore. All things considered, quite the winding tale of woeful intrigue, in how E33 so easily claimed just one more GOTY, before just as easily losing it for a contentious reasons.

It’s a topic that has generated a lot of conversation, so I thought it worthwhile to mention it as such in passing here on ATE, as I generally like to keep apprised of current affairs, even if my constant coverage of the news has been more lax as of late, in the name of longer form gaming deconstruction. I think, there is definitely a bit to unpack here, as I’m surprised the people in charge of the IGA have such a hardline stance against use of AI in video game creation, not because this practice isn’t more often than not, something of an existential crisis for the industry at large, with many people having lost their jobs due to AI usage and implementation, but more so the enforced perception of a black and whiteness of the situation at hand. Don’t get me wrong, I have lobbed severe criticism for awhile now at the immergence of AI, and how foreboding it’s presence ends up being for the grand majority of us. Having said that, there are so many reports of games that have used AI in some shape or form, I’m wondering if every single one of the uses of the practice has been in bad faith, which I posit more so in a grey area type of situation, alongside the notion that many notable devs have proclaimed in using AI (Kojima, Sakurai to name two huge names), the rational use of it in development, and that the technology is here to stay, and we are all going to have to find ways to play nice in accepting the reality of the situation. It is with all that said, that it is hard for me to believe that any massive body of people in the gaming industry at large is going to be able to reasonably protest the use of AI in games for any serious amount of time, given these cirumstances.

Keeping in mind that I have prefaced the existence of AI prevalence as existential, and therefore, quite dire as a result of this observed truth in worst case scenarios, I did also land on a notion awhile back that “the choice of AI usage should ultimately be left up to the developers”, as the inherent, or at least, most immediate and overwhelmingly concerning portion of AI implementation, is the diluting of pure creativity and threats to the well being of human related jobs in the field. If the devs are the ones who are able to make the judgement calls, on what counts for “fair play” in the practice of AI implimentation, in the way it is used minimally, and not as a destructive cudgel to harm those who could stand to lose employment over such things, then that goes a long way in “defanging” the rabid dog that is AI usage in video games. Though, obviously, in this case at least, rules are rules, and if the IGA maintains there standards of forbidding the practice of AI usage in their ruleset related to awards, rules are rules.

As is the case with so much in our world, I think the AI issue is indeed, not necessarily a black or white issue, however existentially concerning poor implementation can be, and I think there are ways it could be utilized by the right people for appropriate reasons, as long as those involved were just mindful about the practice in question.

But I suppose precarious reasoning, and the rationality that goes along with it, is apart of the problem to begin with, as people are rarely mindful to begin with.

-Pashford.