As someone who used to dig deep into indie/underground music, it's always been the case of finding the good in the gutter. after a while you start recognizing cues. S/o the old blog spaces but usually folks into indie have a good eye of recognizing labels. I imagine it's not much different when it comes to video games.
It's becoming easier and easier to spot the people who are just abusing new technology to make a quick buck. You'll always stand out from them, and there will always be people who value what you do!
As a trans woman who spent the better part of her 30's as a transient person; several of those living on various disgusting couches, and nearly a year living in a tent on unincorporated land not too far off of a major highway, I think those 'homeless' simulators are the absolute height of disgusting game concepts to begin with... Not even counting how devastatingly bad those games are. Now, we all know that the further right your politics are, the less ability to have any creative motive force in the ant farm that an alt-righter might call a 'brain'. Add in the game 'homeless simulator' and we start to see who is actually keeping these AI systems in business. Mark my words, the lack of creative ability, the need to bully, and them pushing AI on everything, plus their insatiable thirst for fossil fuels, scams that burn more energy and promise to break physics, Elon Musk pomising people can die horribly on mars, and the religious right screaming from the pulpit about the end times and that this world is disposable,... These people WILL destroy the world eventually.
@@spacepirateivynova I would agree with you about creativity. The quality of art always suffers when it's done for money rather than love, and when it's made by people with little to no media literacy. And insatiable greed and poor media literacy tend to be far more common on the right!
As a graphic designer AI art has been absolutely unbearable and really affected how i work, i've been forced to use this chrome extension called 'Pre-AI Search' which literally just filters to searches before 2023 (lol) and its the only way i can actually get non-AI reference designs anymore. Can't even imagine what the internet and this industry will be like in a few years.
A friend of mine was one of the developers of Starwhal. It took over a year and a chance encounter at a convention to get it on Steam only for Valve to open the floodgates shortly after and bury all their hard work under a pile of trash made over a weekend.
The scale of the problem is so so bad. My sister works for a toy and media company -- she will go to prestige amusement parks to make sure there's not counterfeiting or infringement going on. But she'll also go to shitty strip malls, and pawn shops... It's heinous that they just let games like these just ... fester.
There was this era of the App Store boom when almost everything on the "Games" pages would be Cocomelon levels of colorful and keywordy, because the whole point of the spam was to trick young children into buying garbage with their parents' credit cards. I think that might be what we're seeing here - a market of kids whose parents don't realize their Fortnite Machine can also charge their credit card.
i can feel the rage behind this one the other facet of AI that really annoys me is how it's kinda ruined google search. for some searches a good chunk of the articles are just AI slop that doesn't actually answer the question. this is especially bad with searches about CS topics, and it annoys me so much that i mostly use manpages or official documentation/specifications over google now. it's just crazy that we've ruined the internet enough that sometimes the best way to learn about things is to learn about them the way we did before the internet.
I still remember back when I discovered Artbreeder and thought, "This kind of thing is neat, I hope people don't ruin it with their greed and duplicity." I mean, I knew it was going to happen, it always does, but *yeesh* is this even more bleak than usual.
I'm worried that the AI slop trend won't die out suddenly like the NFTs did because it seems to be much easier for corporations to get away with using it. You get the occasional massive backlash, but the sad reality is that a lot of people both on and offline just don't really care enough. And that's not even getting into all the scams that you've talked about here and more. I really hope that I get proven wrong on this eventually. I would be happy to be wrong.
Don't worry, NFT's didn't actually die out, people just collectively stopped being upset about it. Eventually AI will be the same way. The folks that enjoy, like, and make use of it will continue to do so, and the rest of you will go on living your lives until the next thing to get upset about comes along.
Jordan, you look positively fucking ETHEREAL here! Thanks for tackling this topic, it's one I ruminate on all too often. Since you mentioned pr0n, I recently found a channel called Sex Positive Gaming that specifically covers that kind of content. I'm too vanilla to explore that subculture much, but I love that it is there for those that are interested!
AI is part of the reason I know I'll never do freelance writing again. It also takes up like 90% of my Pinterest feed and Google Images searches too. I really wish they made it easier to filter it out.
I have three plausible theories for how/why Gilson B Pontes ever made it onto the PSN market: - he's the son/nephew of a high-ranking Sony Brazil executive - it's a money-laundering front for a Brazilian criminal organisation - Gilson "himself" is one of the earliest examples of a "sentient" AI trained on Japanese game devs, cobbling together Unity assets in a vain attempt of the "monkeys with typewriters will eventually create Shakespeare" trial-and-error production method Any and all attempts to even figure out who Gilson B Pontes is, if they're real or not, often ends nowhere or people who apparently know more about Gilson show up and warn them to not look any further. Why all this mystery... 🤔
These AI slop games are out of control!! It’s so frustrating trying to look for a new switch game on sale when they have a billion supermarket simulator DX and hentai paradise puzzle games everywhere!
Art involves trial and error. Art involves decisions, thought, creativity and a desire to bring an idea to life. A machine, nay, a _program,_ cannot do so. Generative 'AI', and I use the term loosely, is not a 'who'. It is a 'what'. To call it Artificial Intelligence insults the concept. C-3PO is an Artificial Intelligence. Data from Star Trek is an Artificial Intelligence. Hal 9000 is an Artificial Intelligence. These programs are just designed to pump out cheap slop like those artificial Krabby Patties from that one Spongebob episode.
"It's like 2 Girls 1 Cup, if the girls were Superman 64 and Ride to Hell: Retribution." Jordan. Oh my God. I almost fell off the couch laughing. 😆😆😆 Also, I love that you mentioned Steph Sterling, brought up the execrable Gilson B. Pontes, and watching you talk about how shitty the games were as you showed footage gave me Caddicarus vibes. This was a delightful cross-pollination of stuff I'm interested in.
Thank you so much! That's a pretty good summation :) I really want to do more content like this because it lets me be slightly more lighthearted, so the support is really important ❤️
@deaddomain I get that it's pretty heavy, psychologically, to do a lot of stuff about politics and queerphobia and white supremacy and shit. I appreciate that you do that, but I also know it's *exhausting,* so I'm happy to watch somewhat more frivolous stuff from you. You're entertaining no matter what!
Hope things have been as well as they can be. Its a treat to get some gaming stuff from you (not that I dislike your current usual stuff), thanks as always!
Watching this in the middle of the night fills me with some much anger towards AI again. For years now, I'm trying to publish my first novel. In the meantime, I'm publishing short novels in self-publishing and participate in writing competitions to harness my craft. So seeing all those news about "AI tech bros wanting to release 8000 AI books in 2025" and such fills me with so much dread and anger. In addition, my field of study - Japanese Studies - is also threatened by AI. You can't imagine how often I heard questions like "Translating Japanese? Do we still need that with AI?" or "What can you offer what AI can't in the future?" and it makes me just sad. Both things that give me a meaning in life are threatened by some tech bros and their lazy and uncreative ways. Sorry for the long vent (and also sorry, if my English isn't the best), but I'm angry and tired.
Thank you for spreading some awareness on this. I haven't seen enough people talk about this. Not only is this bad for indie devs but it's also bad for major publishers and the console companies because my virtual shop experience has been tainted and I have seen others say they are less likely to spend money at all when they see all of the slop on the store. There has been a lack of quality control on pretty much all of the virtual videogame storefronts for forever and it is only getting worse with generative AI so it baffles me that nothing has been done to prevent literal fake games, some that even rip off first party intellectual properties, from appearing on the store pages and being digital clutter. The fact that some of them even go up for sale, like the liar's bar rip offs. Insane...
I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It's really cool listening to you talk games as you're so knowledgeable and passionate about them. I've been going back through your old gaming content and really enjoying it too. I'd be happy to see more videos like this as well.
It reminds me of Digital Homicide Studios owned by the Romine Brothers out of Arizona. I wouldn't be surprised if some of could be the Romines right to and including the asset flipping tendency. As in it's the quality of Romine made games, it's the software used by the Romines and given the behavior of the Romines, the only things new would be marketing tactics such as using attractive women to market the games and AI (which obviously they'd probably love to use as asset flippers).
So screwed up how digital pollution has accumulated everywhere so fast trying to drown us all nearly everywhere we look. 1:25 - Awww....Know that you mean a lot to me and all of us all the same. Appreciate everything you do and you just being you. So please keep being you.
This all reminds me of the Digital Homicide debacle almost a decade ago now, who infamously tried to sue Stephanie Sterling - then Jim Sterling - with a whole lot of story surrounding that, which i won't go into too much here. Why doesn't Sony not do anything about these scam games and purge them from the PlayStation Store? Thsy actively harm genuine, honest and hardworking indie developers who are unable to get much visibility on Sony's digital storefront, often unable to afford extensive, lavish marketing like large AAA developers and publishers can. This is whst happens when game development is democratised and made more easier to do by a small team or even just a single person, it is a double edge sword: You either get fantastic gems like Animal Well and Sea of Stars, both fantastic indie games I high recommend to anyone. But you also get merde like these AI Art asset flips and Life of Black Tiger.
I think the reason why Sony ignores it is that MBA's are only trained to think in the short term, so they ignore long term costs and consequences that come from the reputation and lost sales caused by all this slop. Because as far as they're concerned a sale is a sale and besides, "only the big releases matter".
@The_Mess85 Maybe it explains some things, but I refuse to believe that this will not have longer term consequences for user engagement and satisfaction, as well as the relationships with genuine indie developers.
Speaking of indie games (good ones though), I recently played Paradise Killer. It’s so vapourware and made me think of you, so I’m glad that your next video was this, a video about indie games ^^
Have you seen the documentary I made on the making of Paradise Killer with the games developers? th-cam.com/video/xiHOt3nD3xQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=w-5cFUbv20jErNNe
The people hurt most by this are the casual consumer. Hapless children browsing the storefront, adults not connected to the gaming community and not receiving recommendations.
I wanna blame a lot of people... The DOOM community also had a similar problem with SLIGE and OBLIGE making absurd amounts of randomly generated levels flooding the forums. And DOOMWORLD doesn't have a trillion dollars.
4:15 DONT YOU DARE BAD MOUTH BIG RIGS! IT IS AN EXCELENT GAME AND DESERVES GOTY 100%! I MEAN HAVE YOU TRIED DRIVING BACKWARDS IN THAT GAME! THERES NO SPEED CAP IF YOU DRIVE IN REVERSE! THE MAYHEM IS AMAZING!
Laughed out loud at a lot of your descriptions in this one. And particularly hard at the comment about porn on Steam. Thank you! After listening to a few depressing bits of news today, it was much needed.
Some of my students have already mentioned what this whole business model is about. Apparently, there are books and courses online that teach people how to trick companies or costumers on buying their services or products that are completely AI generated. In my student's case, he made logos/media kits/visual identity packs for small companies using AI, charging them cheaper than real designers would. Then they supposedly get the money and quickly convert whatever they made with this scam into crypto currencies, which also involves some sort of tax evasion and money laundering, allegedly making it harder to trace the money and to obtain refunds or prosecute their made-up companies.
Clicked immediately to boost the engagement rate and dropping a comment as well for that purpose. But I’m heading to bed now. Will come back and leave a more detailed comment when I’m awake and can watch all the way through. But yes! Please make the AI video cuz I want to be even more depressed about the state of things 😖😖
28:34 if you really want a definitive-ish connection you might look at metadata and do some basic forensics on the binaries they distribute. There may very well be artifacts that point to things coming from the same build environment (or not)
No because the Switch eshop has SUCH a problem with this omfg the way the eshop is built is a problem of its own but omgg if I have to see another ai "dating sim" with some shit golf game in the background I'm gonna freakkk
I would argue that AI "art" is art that has been stolen. Someone's creativity and effort did go into the work that the AI is being trained on without the original artist's consent. Maybe that's pedantic, because I think in spirit we actually agree. :)
Me and my friend absolutely love to go on the PS store and just piss ourselves laughing at all the slop but there are genuinely some disturbing ones out there
its insulting to me that a phenomenal indie game like COMPOUND ends up next to ai generated slop on the store. seriously, how in the seven hells does nobody at sony or nintendo or anything notice that this is a problem???
I’m sure there already is. It’s rampant on wattpad too which is why I’m gonna just stop writing there. As cool of a concept as ai can be this shit is just too much. All it’s doing is stealing from actual artists.
1:20 You will do it if I want!? I want to see a Dead Domain / Some More News crossover episode, but until then I will just play this & the Cody's Showdy (Some More News) AI Media Sucks video from yesterday back to back to pretend that they are already collaborating.
Ok but can we just address how great you look- your makeup brings out your eyes and lips, and your hair tied back with that neckline elongates your elegant neck. I just had to say something✨️
First of all this should have more views wtf TH-cam second of all, I know a lot of slop on the PlayStation store is used for people who want a lot of platinum trophies for clout…
I'm currently working on my own game, so i talk a lot with other small developers and holy sh%@ the amount of people who use AI art for their games and have directly told me they won't mark it as using AI on steam. People start making arguments like "how would they ever know" and "nobody cares if you're using ai" as if it's a discussion and not just them who's breaking terms of service. People know that there are backlash on games containing AI art but they still want free stuff so they just choose not to mark it when steam asks them to.
It's even worse for phone games. There are so many slop thumbnails and obvious rip-offs of more successful games. Even a few games that I played in the past have started changing their icons to redesigns obviously made using AI. It's disappointing and annoying.
I never heard of Gilson B Pontes before, but I'm like 99% sure he's Brazilian (so it's probably pronounced "Jilson"). Guys like him are kind of a running joke among game devs here because there are a lot of them. Brazil has a pretty big gaming market, but for economic reasons we still don't have a solid game dev industry. A lot of people think we need to catch up with international AAA studios so they make these insanely ambitious projects with a fraction of the necessary resources and just try their best to convince people it's a serious product. In college I met a group of 4 people trying to make "Brazilian Persona", but there's also a "Brazilian GTA" in development for over 8 years now, a "Brazilian Dragon Age", etc. It comes from a good place of wanting our games to be respected in the same way that international games are, but they just really miss the mark. The best games to come from Brazil usually lean into the indie aspect and know how to use the resources they have.
9:05 Nooo not solo projects listing every part of the project as a separate role crediting their name separately each time 😭 9:21 _"Lighting supervisor"_ - Who are you supervising mate?
The unsettling, unreal AI slop can have a use I've found - in creepy pasta horror stories. But they usually actually put some effort into trying to make the resulting LLM images look good. Anomaly has been mostly good, though they do get lazy sometimes, but often put decent effort into the story. These though, so shit it's mind boggling Sony hasn't cracked down on them yet for fucking with game sales. But MBA's being MBA's they're discounting the long term costs of slop, in that it makes people avoid interacting with your store front and instead only pick up games via word of mouth etc. Which limits your potential sales in the long run. Valve have partly mitigated this with refining their algorithms to weed out most of the slop, but the low prices can cause the shit to crop up regularly in top and trending. Recommendations can work pretty well, but I usually add stuff from to my ever growing wishlist via trailers and Rock, Paper Shotgun's posts. Not via steam.
As a game dev that had a bad bad incomplete game released through steam greenlight, I will say AI and asset flips are bad. My game was bad because I didn't know what I was doing and hired a programmer that stole codes from other games, and a modeler who never did anything to implement the models properly. I got left holding the bag of an broken game that sterling talked smack on. I have moved on to make other games, only the most completed being released. Ooze Redux is my completes game and House of Nightmares was my bad game. I updated it over and over, only for it to keep getting worse. I dont have control of the game anymore. Never asset swapped models or sounds ever though.
Tensors the digital mathmatics behind this "A.I." trend cannot make intellect, creativity, nor art. But they can multiply an artists output in adding greater details or allowing an scriptwriter to write in the character and what they know and what diction, what thier feelings on subjects would be etc and make an more immersive world then we are used to from videogames.
haven't-finished-watching-comment; but I'm still glad Greenlight existed. Might have been just a handful of big hits that made it through, but I think people have like always been downplaying how many really good games got onto the platform thanks to Greenlight. Ans sure, they're part of the flood alongside trash (such as the Ubermosh games that were drowned out among all the other games around 5:00 ), but I don't think that well, the economy, would have allowed many of those great small games by not-established developers to have made it onto the store in any way that doesn't also allow trash. Maybe I'm kind of excusing the actions of the stores. But as long as we got capitalism, I don't think they would ever put proper, human review processes in place. It might be best if they did, but they won't.
I was seeing a lot of those grocery store simulators on PlayStation 5 and was wondering why there's so many of them and why do they look like bad Dreamcast games. Because of this video, I see why. AI is ridiculous, it's bad and I'mNOTusing AI. I am working really hard on my game and today marks the 5th anniversary of me being a game developer. I'm striving to have my game to be a triple A title. For the life of me, I don't know why in this day and age they come out with bad looking games. Seeing what I see and knowing what I know, it is lazy on their part to publish a game that looks that bad.
It must be really frustrating for indie devs to have their hard work buried in slop. I hope the stores will eventually do something about that.
It's been over 15 years...
It’s terrifying how much it might be choking the market yet nobody notices or cares
For now it seems we have to rely on word-of-mouth and publicity.
If you find an indie game you like, please remember to tell others about it!
As someone who used to dig deep into indie/underground music, it's always been the case of finding the good in the gutter. after a while you start recognizing cues. S/o the old blog spaces but usually folks into indie have a good eye of recognizing labels. I imagine it's not much different when it comes to video games.
A lot of indie devs fled to the Switch Store in its early days, but even that one's drowning in slop now.
I really want a career in art but in the rise of AI it's just going be harder than it is already. You're gorgeous as always
Awh thank you. And don’t give up your dreams because of AI, you’ll always be more valuable
It's becoming easier and easier to spot the people who are just abusing new technology to make a quick buck. You'll always stand out from them, and there will always be people who value what you do!
As a trans woman who spent the better part of her 30's as a transient person; several of those living on various disgusting couches, and nearly a year living in a tent on unincorporated land not too far off of a major highway, I think those 'homeless' simulators are the absolute height of disgusting game concepts to begin with... Not even counting how devastatingly bad those games are.
Now, we all know that the further right your politics are, the less ability to have any creative motive force in the ant farm that an alt-righter might call a 'brain'. Add in the game 'homeless simulator' and we start to see who is actually keeping these AI systems in business.
Mark my words, the lack of creative ability, the need to bully, and them pushing AI on everything, plus their insatiable thirst for fossil fuels, scams that burn more energy and promise to break physics, Elon Musk pomising people can die horribly on mars, and the religious right screaming from the pulpit about the end times and that this world is disposable,... These people WILL destroy the world eventually.
@@spacepirateivynova I would agree with you about creativity. The quality of art always suffers when it's done for money rather than love, and when it's made by people with little to no media literacy. And insatiable greed and poor media literacy tend to be far more common on the right!
As a graphic designer AI art has been absolutely unbearable and really affected how i work, i've been forced to use this chrome extension called 'Pre-AI Search' which literally just filters to searches before 2023 (lol) and its the only way i can actually get non-AI reference designs anymore. Can't even imagine what the internet and this industry will be like in a few years.
Is there a similar extension that works on Firefox? (I'm gonna look.)
A friend of mine was one of the developers of Starwhal. It took over a year and a chance encounter at a convention to get it on Steam only for Valve to open the floodgates shortly after and bury all their hard work under a pile of trash made over a weekend.
YEP! If a game doesn’t have a GREAT marketing plan or just so happens to get played by someone with a platform, it’s basically doomed.
Oh! I’ve played starwhal. It’s a pretty fun couch game!
@marissa17489234 Nice. My friend designed the speed challenge levels.
"they got porn on there... yeah! they got some good stuff"
We want your recs. Also, the delivery of that line was ULTRA
CUTE
Suuuper cute!
@@Jagonistdai very yes
The scale of the problem is so so bad. My sister works for a toy and media company -- she will go to prestige amusement parks to make sure there's not counterfeiting or infringement going on. But she'll also go to shitty strip malls, and pawn shops... It's heinous that they just let games like these just ... fester.
There was this era of the App Store boom when almost everything on the "Games" pages would be Cocomelon levels of colorful and keywordy, because the whole point of the spam was to trick young children into buying garbage with their parents' credit cards. I think that might be what we're seeing here - a market of kids whose parents don't realize their Fortnite Machine can also charge their credit card.
YEP! They’ve clamped down a bit on the quality control side of things, but not nearly enough.
The look is low key giving Astarion, I’m living for it
Awhhh shucks thank ya
Is this what we can expect from Elon Musk's AI game studio?
No, it'll be worse.
Just wait until their legally distinct Stellar Blade, then we'll see what they're really made of
Oh god, imagine this but somehow worse.
Nah, it's way worse than that, I'm kinda concerned about all this ai bs of Elon Musk.
@@KaiganGhost THE GOONTRIX
i can feel the rage behind this one
the other facet of AI that really annoys me is how it's kinda ruined google search. for some searches a good chunk of the articles are just AI slop that doesn't actually answer the question. this is especially bad with searches about CS topics, and it annoys me so much that i mostly use manpages or official documentation/specifications over google now.
it's just crazy that we've ruined the internet enough that sometimes the best way to learn about things is to learn about them the way we did before the internet.
Generative AI just ruins everything it touches
I knew the AI Slop infestation was bad on Switch's eShop but I didn't know the PS5 was just as bad...
Ohhh it’s unbelievable. It’s continued getting worse even since I recorded this footage months ago.
First thing I noticed on the PS5 shop lol
Its start on xbox too some bad AI "game" every weak buy the same "studio"
coupled with nintendo's eshop being sooooo laggy, it's unbearable scrolling through 80% AI games on that app.
I still remember back when I discovered Artbreeder and thought, "This kind of thing is neat, I hope people don't ruin it with their greed and duplicity." I mean, I knew it was going to happen, it always does, but *yeesh* is this even more bleak than usual.
1:30
How DARE you assault me with kisses... more please. Thank you.
Out of topic but this look is so preeeetty
Thank youuu :3
Right?! Stunning 💅🏻✨
FR, i clicked and i got jumpscared by how pretty DD is in this one, they cooked and they cooked hard
I'm worried that the AI slop trend won't die out suddenly like the NFTs did because it seems to be much easier for corporations to get away with using it. You get the occasional massive backlash, but the sad reality is that a lot of people both on and offline just don't really care enough. And that's not even getting into all the scams that you've talked about here and more. I really hope that I get proven wrong on this eventually. I would be happy to be wrong.
Don't worry, NFT's didn't actually die out, people just collectively stopped being upset about it. Eventually AI will be the same way. The folks that enjoy, like, and make use of it will continue to do so, and the rest of you will go on living your lives until the next thing to get upset about comes along.
4:23 ah yes the certified hood classic, The Slaughtering Grounds
Jordan, you look positively fucking ETHEREAL here!
Thanks for tackling this topic, it's one I ruminate on all too often.
Since you mentioned pr0n, I recently found a channel called Sex Positive Gaming that specifically covers that kind of content. I'm too vanilla to explore that subculture much, but I love that it is there for those that are interested!
Ooh! I’ll have to check that out, that sounds right in my wheelhouse
AI is part of the reason I know I'll never do freelance writing again. It also takes up like 90% of my Pinterest feed and Google Images searches too. I really wish they made it easier to filter it out.
I know what you mean, it’s completely taken over.
I have three plausible theories for how/why Gilson B Pontes ever made it onto the PSN market:
- he's the son/nephew of a high-ranking Sony Brazil executive
- it's a money-laundering front for a Brazilian criminal organisation
- Gilson "himself" is one of the earliest examples of a "sentient" AI trained on Japanese game devs, cobbling together Unity assets in a vain attempt of the "monkeys with typewriters will eventually create Shakespeare" trial-and-error production method
Any and all attempts to even figure out who Gilson B Pontes is, if they're real or not, often ends nowhere or people who apparently know more about Gilson show up and warn them to not look any further.
Why all this mystery... 🤔
It feels like either #1 or #2 for Gilson. It's a bit too polished for AI alone, but terrible enough that it wouldn't be worth the $25+ a copy.
These AI slop games are out of control!! It’s so frustrating trying to look for a new switch game on sale when they have a billion supermarket simulator DX and hentai paradise puzzle games everywhere!
I barely touch on it here because they’re just worthless, but the sheer GLUT of hentai garbage anime asset flips are astounding.
Art involves trial and error. Art involves decisions, thought, creativity and a desire to bring an idea to life. A machine, nay, a _program,_ cannot do so. Generative 'AI', and I use the term loosely, is not a 'who'. It is a 'what'. To call it Artificial Intelligence insults the concept. C-3PO is an Artificial Intelligence. Data from Star Trek is an Artificial Intelligence. Hal 9000 is an Artificial Intelligence. These programs are just designed to pump out cheap slop like those artificial Krabby Patties from that one Spongebob episode.
Love the consistent use of dead rising music across ur videos
"It's like 2 Girls 1 Cup, if the girls were Superman 64 and Ride to Hell: Retribution."
Jordan. Oh my God. I almost fell off the couch laughing. 😆😆😆
Also, I love that you mentioned Steph Sterling, brought up the execrable Gilson B. Pontes, and watching you talk about how shitty the games were as you showed footage gave me Caddicarus vibes. This was a delightful cross-pollination of stuff I'm interested in.
Thank you so much! That's a pretty good summation :) I really want to do more content like this because it lets me be slightly more lighthearted, so the support is really important ❤️
@deaddomain I get that it's pretty heavy, psychologically, to do a lot of stuff about politics and queerphobia and white supremacy and shit. I appreciate that you do that, but I also know it's *exhausting,* so I'm happy to watch somewhat more frivolous stuff from you. You're entertaining no matter what!
Sounds like the worst of the Roblox Devs escaped when they got old enough to graduate out of it
Love the Steph Sterling shout out!
Love their channel!
This is such a great merging of the types of content you do on this channel. I hope this video does well and I'm doing my part by liking and sharing.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate the support on this one 👍
Hope things have been as well as they can be. Its a treat to get some gaming stuff from you (not that I dislike your current usual stuff), thanks as always!
Thank you for watching! I’m always glad to share a bit of gaming content.
Watching this in the middle of the night fills me with some much anger towards AI again. For years now, I'm trying to publish my first novel. In the meantime, I'm publishing short novels in self-publishing and participate in writing competitions to harness my craft. So seeing all those news about "AI tech bros wanting to release 8000 AI books in 2025" and such fills me with so much dread and anger. In addition, my field of study - Japanese Studies - is also threatened by AI. You can't imagine how often I heard questions like "Translating Japanese? Do we still need that with AI?" or "What can you offer what AI can't in the future?" and it makes me just sad. Both things that give me a meaning in life are threatened by some tech bros and their lazy and uncreative ways. Sorry for the long vent (and also sorry, if my English isn't the best), but I'm angry and tired.
Please don't get hurt at the inauguration. I wouldn't even risk it, personally. It just sounds really dangerous.
Another day in our speedrun to the dark age of technology...
Thank you for spreading some awareness on this. I haven't seen enough people talk about this. Not only is this bad for indie devs but it's also bad for major publishers and the console companies because my virtual shop experience has been tainted and I have seen others say they are less likely to spend money at all when they see all of the slop on the store. There has been a lack of quality control on pretty much all of the virtual videogame storefronts for forever and it is only getting worse with generative AI so it baffles me that nothing has been done to prevent literal fake games, some that even rip off first party intellectual properties, from appearing on the store pages and being digital clutter. The fact that some of them even go up for sale, like the liar's bar rip offs. Insane...
I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It's really cool listening to you talk games as you're so knowledgeable and passionate about them. I've been going back through your old gaming content and really enjoying it too. I'd be happy to see more videos like this as well.
Thanks for checking out my older stuff! I’m planning on doing more stuff like this!
Good work as always Jordan!
Thank you so much ☺️
It reminds me of Digital Homicide Studios owned by the Romine Brothers out of Arizona. I wouldn't be surprised if some of could be the Romines right to and including the asset flipping tendency. As in it's the quality of Romine made games, it's the software used by the Romines and given the behavior of the Romines, the only things new would be marketing tactics such as using attractive women to market the games and AI (which obviously they'd probably love to use as asset flippers).
Honestly I wouldn’t be too surprised if they dipper their toes into this garbage pile
So screwed up how digital pollution has accumulated everywhere so fast trying to drown us all nearly everywhere we look.
1:25 - Awww....Know that you mean a lot to me and all of us all the same. Appreciate everything you do and you just being you. So please keep being you.
Never been a better time to live offline
This all reminds me of the Digital Homicide debacle almost a decade ago now, who infamously tried to sue Stephanie Sterling - then Jim Sterling - with a whole lot of story surrounding that, which i won't go into too much here.
Why doesn't Sony not do anything about these scam games and purge them from the PlayStation Store? Thsy actively harm genuine, honest and hardworking indie developers who are unable to get much visibility on Sony's digital storefront, often unable to afford extensive, lavish marketing like large AAA developers and publishers can.
This is whst happens when game development is democratised and made more easier to do by a small team or even just a single person, it is a double edge sword: You either get fantastic gems like Animal Well and Sea of Stars, both fantastic indie games I high recommend to anyone. But you also get merde like these AI Art asset flips and Life of Black Tiger.
I think the reason why Sony ignores it is that MBA's are only trained to think in the short term, so they ignore long term costs and consequences that come from the reputation and lost sales caused by all this slop. Because as far as they're concerned a sale is a sale and besides, "only the big releases matter".
@The_Mess85 Maybe it explains some things, but I refuse to believe that this will not have longer term consequences for user engagement and satisfaction, as well as the relationships with genuine indie developers.
Speaking of indie games (good ones though), I recently played Paradise Killer. It’s so vapourware and made me think of you, so I’m glad that your next video was this, a video about indie games ^^
Have you seen the documentary I made on the making of Paradise Killer with the games developers?
th-cam.com/video/xiHOt3nD3xQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=w-5cFUbv20jErNNe
@ I haven’t! I’ll definitely have to watch that when I’m more awake ❤️
It’s not one that got a lot of eyes on it, but it’s one of my favorites so I hope you enjoy it!
squirty play is far and away my favourite let's play series, also ai shovelware titles releasing "collectors editions" is cracking me up
Oh yeah, I watched a TON of those videos during my Game Informer intern days. Good times.
The people hurt most by this are the casual consumer. Hapless children browsing the storefront, adults not connected to the gaming community and not receiving recommendations.
i'm glad my boy Gilson is finally getting the recognition he deserves 😤
1:30 This. THIS. INJECT THIS INTO MY BLOODSTREAM RAHHHHHH.
I'm playing a "found object and slide puzzle" game on my chair right now
God I remember the shovelware epidemic of the Wii and WiiU.
Ohhh it’s arguably worse now
@@deaddomain Your video definitely proves it
Love your documentary/investigative work.
Thanks! It’s always fun to dig into the investigative bits of tech
I wanna blame a lot of people... The DOOM community also had a similar problem with SLIGE and OBLIGE making absurd amounts of randomly generated levels flooding the forums. And DOOMWORLD doesn't have a trillion dollars.
Very informative. Also I have to say I love those earrings.
Aw thank you! I love them too ☺️
@@deaddomain I'd love to know where I can get a pair
4:15 DONT YOU DARE BAD MOUTH BIG RIGS! IT IS AN EXCELENT GAME AND DESERVES GOTY 100%! I MEAN HAVE YOU TRIED DRIVING BACKWARDS IN THAT GAME! THERES NO SPEED CAP IF YOU DRIVE IN REVERSE! THE MAYHEM IS AMAZING!
also, lookin gorgeous today, love the hair
Awh thank you so much! Just got it done in time for the DC trip 😌
Laughed out loud at a lot of your descriptions in this one. And particularly hard at the comment about porn on Steam. Thank you! After listening to a few depressing bits of news today, it was much needed.
Thank you! This was a nice reprieve to work on after some of my more dark/serious projects
Have a happy new year Dead Domain
Happy new year!
Some of my students have already mentioned what this whole business model is about. Apparently, there are books and courses online that teach people how to trick companies or costumers on buying their services or products that are completely AI generated. In my student's case, he made logos/media kits/visual identity packs for small companies using AI, charging them cheaper than real designers would. Then they supposedly get the money and quickly convert whatever they made with this scam into crypto currencies, which also involves some sort of tax evasion and money laundering, allegedly making it harder to trace the money and to obtain refunds or prosecute their made-up companies.
Gilson B Pontis is a pioneer, managing to make AI slop before AI slop was a thing
In some ways it’s almost impressive
Only but hard copies and you'll never even have to look at the slop.
7:09 Nobody deserves to get jumpscared by Johnny Turbo.
Clicked immediately to boost the engagement rate and dropping a comment as well for that purpose. But I’m heading to bed now. Will come back and leave a more detailed comment when I’m awake and can watch all the way through. But yes! Please make the AI video cuz I want to be even more depressed about the state of things 😖😖
Thank you so much! This one is definitely going to need some help
@ 🤗🤗
28:34 if you really want a definitive-ish connection you might look at metadata and do some basic forensics on the binaries they distribute. There may very well be artifacts that point to things coming from the same build environment (or not)
No because the Switch eshop has SUCH a problem with this omfg the way the eshop is built is a problem of its own but omgg if I have to see another ai "dating sim" with some shit golf game in the background I'm gonna freakkk
It’s entirely unusable at this point. You either search for exactly what you want or just don’t bother lol
I would argue that AI "art" is art that has been stolen. Someone's creativity and effort did go into the work that the AI is being trained on without the original artist's consent. Maybe that's pedantic, because I think in spirit we actually agree. :)
AI upscaling is also ruining movies that were previously not AI, like the True Lies AI upscale just makes the movie look weird and uncanny now
Me and my friend absolutely love to go on the PS store and just piss ourselves laughing at all the slop but there are genuinely some disturbing ones out there
its insulting to me that a phenomenal indie game like COMPOUND ends up next to ai generated slop on the store. seriously, how in the seven hells does nobody at sony or nintendo or anything notice that this is a problem???
YEP! I’m so curious how it’s just…allowed to keep happening
Do I just not pay enough attention (a very strong possibility) or is the Shadow the Hedgehog plush in the background new?
It’s relatively new yeah. I got it at the theater when I went to see Sonic 3
Is this the year we get a Dead Domain and Jauwn crossover?
kentucky route zero mentioned, hell yeah.
15:16 lol he looks like he's from a Tekken 2 ending fmv
Omg ps1 game stillbirth 😂 my god that’s the best description anybody could have
I generally do pretty ok 😌
@ you crush it! ☺️ I’m mad I haven’t found your channel sooner but glad I’m here! 💜
video game crash videdogame crahs video game market crash i want it to crash pleease i am beggin you crash the games again i love the 80s
I couldn't help noticing that he put "Lightning Supervisor" lmfao
Off topic but your outfit and makeup is absolutely gorgeous. ❤
Thank you so much! 🥰
What next, ai fanfics on AO3?
I’m sure there already is. It’s rampant on wattpad too which is why I’m gonna just stop writing there.
As cool of a concept as ai can be this shit is just too much. All it’s doing is stealing from actual artists.
1:20 You will do it if I want!?
I want to see a Dead Domain / Some More News crossover episode, but until then I will just play this & the Cody's Showdy (Some More News) AI Media Sucks video from yesterday back to back to pretend that they are already collaborating.
Awh thanks! Feel free to bother them about it on social media.
this reminds me of the era of nintendo ds shovelware but extra bad. incredibly unfortunate
Sighing disappointed at cynical manipulation of gaming marketplaces vs. Nodding positively at DD's new look.
Nodding in approval yet still shaking your head to let everyone know you don’t approve
Ok but can we just address how great you look- your makeup brings out your eyes and lips, and your hair tied back with that neckline elongates your elegant neck. I just had to say something✨️
Remember folks, this is what Leon Skum wants to use to make gaming “great” again.
First of all this should have more views wtf TH-cam second of all, I know a lot of slop on the PlayStation store is used for people who want a lot of platinum trophies for clout…
Feel free to share and help get this video out there! I’d love to do more stuff like this but these kind of videos don’t generally get many views!
I'm currently working on my own game, so i talk a lot with other small developers and holy sh%@ the amount of people who use AI art for their games and have directly told me they won't mark it as using AI on steam.
People start making arguments like "how would they ever know" and "nobody cares if you're using ai" as if it's a discussion and not just them who's breaking terms of service.
People know that there are backlash on games containing AI art but they still want free stuff so they just choose not to mark it when steam asks them to.
I feel like I'm going to wake up one day and find out there are no humans online anymore. Just bots.
Life is going to be one series of Fortnite lobbies filled with bots that act like humans.
Was not expecting a Bubsy 3d to be referenced
As always you have to EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
It's even worse for phone games. There are so many slop thumbnails and obvious rip-offs of more successful games. Even a few games that I played in the past have started changing their icons to redesigns obviously made using AI. It's disappointing and annoying.
God I wish there were literally any safeguards from this slip taking over everything
Not to be parasocial, but I'm down so bad for you that what you said at 1:28 actually got my heart racing -_-
Whomst, me?
The only AI worth bothering with is the Steven Spielberg movie of the almost same name.
Hell yeag
AI is building up to pop up levels
I never heard of Gilson B Pontes before, but I'm like 99% sure he's Brazilian (so it's probably pronounced "Jilson"). Guys like him are kind of a running joke among game devs here because there are a lot of them. Brazil has a pretty big gaming market, but for economic reasons we still don't have a solid game dev industry. A lot of people think we need to catch up with international AAA studios so they make these insanely ambitious projects with a fraction of the necessary resources and just try their best to convince people it's a serious product.
In college I met a group of 4 people trying to make "Brazilian Persona", but there's also a "Brazilian GTA" in development for over 8 years now, a "Brazilian Dragon Age", etc. It comes from a good place of wanting our games to be respected in the same way that international games are, but they just really miss the mark. The best games to come from Brazil usually lean into the indie aspect and know how to use the resources they have.
Obvious but it gotta be said, looking GORGEOUS.
Whomst, me??? Thank you cher 😘😭
Ugh 😫 If this is the content we can expect from AI, it's gonna be a Mess!
Ohhh it’s gonna be so much worse eventually 💕
I thought Nintendo DS had the worst shovelware problem. I stand corrected
Oh DS was LEGENDARY, but it’s not quite that bad.
9:05 Nooo not solo projects listing every part of the project as a separate role crediting their name separately each time 😭
9:21 _"Lighting supervisor"_ - Who are you supervising mate?
The unsettling, unreal AI slop can have a use I've found - in creepy pasta horror stories. But they usually actually put some effort into trying to make the resulting LLM images look good. Anomaly has been mostly good, though they do get lazy sometimes, but often put decent effort into the story.
These though, so shit it's mind boggling Sony hasn't cracked down on them yet for fucking with game sales. But MBA's being MBA's they're discounting the long term costs of slop, in that it makes people avoid interacting with your store front and instead only pick up games via word of mouth etc. Which limits your potential sales in the long run.
Valve have partly mitigated this with refining their algorithms to weed out most of the slop, but the low prices can cause the shit to crop up regularly in top and trending. Recommendations can work pretty well, but I usually add stuff from to my ever growing wishlist via trailers and Rock, Paper Shotgun's posts. Not via steam.
(Guy in thumbnail) That is one good-looking Fallout ghoul.
As a game dev that had a bad bad incomplete game released through steam greenlight, I will say AI and asset flips are bad. My game was bad because I didn't know what I was doing and hired a programmer that stole codes from other games, and a modeler who never did anything to implement the models properly. I got left holding the bag of an broken game that sterling talked smack on. I have moved on to make other games, only the most completed being released. Ooze Redux is my completes game and House of Nightmares was my bad game. I updated it over and over, only for it to keep getting worse. I dont have control of the game anymore. Never asset swapped models or sounds ever though.
I’ll have to check out ooze redux! Where can people find it?
"The economy is broken. Nothing will ever be the same again." 💔💔💔
Womp wompppp. Little did I know it was actually just 2025 simulator
This also applies to Nintendo eshop
I haven't seen you in quite a while, I just wanted to say, you are looking fabulous today!
Aw, thank you! 💕
all these "games" feel like a feverdream...
Tensors the digital mathmatics behind this "A.I." trend cannot make intellect, creativity, nor art.
But they can multiply an artists output in adding greater details or allowing an scriptwriter to write in the character and what they know and what diction, what thier feelings on subjects would be etc and make an more immersive world then we are used to from videogames.
I really enjoyed this video! Good middle ground between your video game stuff and your political videos.
Thanks so much! I hope it's something that'll appeal to more people.
Cattywampus? :) My new favourite insult.
haven't-finished-watching-comment; but I'm still glad Greenlight existed. Might have been just a handful of big hits that made it through, but I think people have like always been downplaying how many really good games got onto the platform thanks to Greenlight. Ans sure, they're part of the flood alongside trash (such as the Ubermosh games that were drowned out among all the other games around 5:00 ), but I don't think that well, the economy, would have allowed many of those great small games by not-established developers to have made it onto the store in any way that doesn't also allow trash. Maybe I'm kind of excusing the actions of the stores. But as long as we got capitalism, I don't think they would ever put proper, human review processes in place. It might be best if they did, but they won't.
I was seeing a lot of those grocery store simulators on PlayStation 5 and was wondering why there's so many of them and why do they look like bad Dreamcast games. Because of this video, I see why.
AI is ridiculous, it's bad and I'mNOTusing AI.
I am working really hard on my game and today marks the 5th anniversary of me being a game developer. I'm striving to have my game to be a triple A title.
For the life of me, I don't know why in this day and age they come out with bad looking games.
Seeing what I see and knowing what I know, it is lazy on their part to publish a game that looks that bad.
Proud of you for five years and I hope everything goes well with your game!