cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/28095114
Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.
But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.
Sure, but which movement are you drawing a parallel to?
The ones that promise to catapult humanity into a golden age of AI if only we turn over control to their weighted random generators, inspiring a cult of followers zealously overturning all social norms of respect and transparency, complain about attempts to protect your art from being stolen and requirements to disclose the use of AI?
Or the ones expressing their concern at the reckless fervour with which the former seek to sacrifice our future, our humanity and our lives to their silicon gods?
I haven’t seen any of the sceptics equate the AI used for surveillance or to rob humans of their livelihood with other types of machines. I’m sure there are some that would eliminate all forms of automation, but I don’t get the impression that the bulk of people is opposed to bots in general.
Hell, there is a significant subset of the anti-AI communities I’m in that acknowledges potential applications of LLMs. It’s when humans suffer from their abuse, paying the price for other people’s delusion and greed, that we take issue.
In this instance, the game gets hate because it’s a product of a technology we consider harmful. We don’t want to encourage use of that technology. Is that what you mean by Jihad?
Two of the three, one of which you didn’t describe and is raking this indie studio over the coals and trying to destroy them. I’m concerned about the tech bro cult who think they can fire their human employees and have AI make brakes for airplanes without human supervision. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be used at all.
I’m a solo dev working on a boomershooter and there are brutal screams I want from the monsters when they burn that I’m just not going to get from human voice actors off of Fivver, with my no-string budget. I stumbled upon some AI videos with the screams I want and see it as a possible path to fulfilling my vision. But with this raging Butlerian Jihad, looks like I’m going to have to give up on that vision and settle for something much much much less.
There needs to be a level headed middle way of thinking about AI but the world today is constantly being divided into a false dichotomy, a black and white Manichean battle between good and evil. Judicious use of anything, including AI, is possible.
Yes. Because the tech isn’t harmful. Just because there’s a bunch of psychos who kill people with hammers doesn’t mean people who use them to build houses should have their construction company financially destroyed. That’s mindless and cruel and it’s the wrong hill to fight for.
I should be more precise: The thing I consider harmful is the use of GenAI in producing media content.
I get that a small budget is an issue, if you can’t find volunteers helping you out. The problem is that the same method you’d resort to as a substitute for expensive human work is used to put humans out of jobs by people and companies that could afford that expensive work, but don’t want to. It cheapens the end result because it takes a shortcut around the work other people would have put in, and it harms people’s livelihood along the way.
I’ve seen endorsements of GenAI for mockups, a quick way to visualise ideas and see if that’s a direction you want to head in. Once you’ve found something to work with, using it as inspiration for human creative work is fair game. Ultimately, that’s what artists do anyway, whether they want to or not: taking inspiration from the sum of other people’s work they’ve seen and engaged with. The important part is that the result is crafted with human care and effort, and that we appreciate that effort.
That last bit is what Alive Inc. is being dragged for here: They couldn’t figure it out with human work, so they gave up and took the shortcut. And when called out, they didn’t understand that it’s not about the quality of the result alone (though that leaves a lot to be desired as well), but about the value of human creative endeavour.
Is GenAI really the only way to your vision? Sound effects have been able to achieve insane things long before GenAI became so popular. I obviously don’t know what you’re aiming for, but isn’t there some way to work with distortion, layering, pitch shifts or other sound editing methods to produce the kind of scream you want through human effort instead?
If you can’t find a human way to get that effect just the way you want it, that sucks. I get the dissatisfaction of falling short of your expectations. Note it down for a potential future update if the game nets you enough to pay someone for it or catches the eye of someone willing to contribute out of enthusiasm. Until then, as the various comments in this comment section have asserted, people will probably prefer authentic human imperfection over fake excellence.
In conclusion, the “Jihad” comparison only works if you think AI-generated content is equal to human made in value. From that position, people hating on machine work are doing so mindlessly. But that’s a difference in premises we need to be aware of: It’s not that we’re missing the mark, it’s that we’re setting the mark differently.
So if there’s a point to argue, it’s whether people are right to consider GenAI-usage for producing content harmful (and I’ll concede that my previous wording was too general; the issue is ultimately that human work is being bypassed rather than augmented).