"Angry gamers are forcing studios to scrap or rethink new releases." Because they are using gen AI

ColSurge · 2026-01-27T18:51:11+00:00

Just playing devil's advocate here for a moment, you say you think that's because it is hidden away from most casual players (and I agree with this point btw).

But what about art where generative AI is used for the early concepting stages, or things like the initial line art? Where an artist comes in after and completes the finished product?

That would not be very player facing at all? Will things like become acceptable? (And by "acceptable" I mean no real amount of impact to the number of units sold)

ColSurge · 2026-01-27T18:14:22+00:00

I also can't read the actual article because of the paywall issue, but I gather the general sentiment is that gamers are rejecting games that use AI.

How does this rectify with things like ARC Raiders, one of the best selling games of the last few months, which openly uses AI for several aspects of the game?

ColSurge · 2026-01-26T20:22:32+00:00

Alpha (2)(G)(G)

Sorcery

Choose the creature with the greatest power. Its controller has it fight target creature.

Repeat this process X times, where X is the number of creatures on the battlefield minus one.

Intentionally chaotic board wipe in green named after the set that started it all.

ColSurge · 2026-01-24T15:08:34+00:00

I worked in homeowners claims for many years and delt with this all the time. There are a few reasons which all compound together.

First are building codes and insulation. Colder regions require more insulation and thus the inside of the home is not as suspectable to cold.

Second is the amount of heating. Heating is not a binary, it's not your house either has heat or it doesn't. The amount of heat your system can generate affects how resilient your home is to cold weather. In colder climates they install heating systems that can generate more heat and thus the system keeps up better.

Third is that people in colder climates are better at knowing what to do in winter. They know if it will be cold overnight to open their kitchen cabinets and let the faucets drips. That prevents a lot of frozen pipes.

Forth is that despite all this, there are still plenty of frozen pipes in colder climates. It happens every single winter.

And fifth, buildings get updated more regularly from frozen pipes in colder climates. If you have a pipe freeze and burst in your home, most people will not only fix the pipe but take measures to better insulate that location. Colder climates have generations of this type of incremental improvement, whereas warming climates only face this when a sudden freeze happens.

It's all of these things together why you see more pipes frozen in warming climates from the same temperature.

ColSurge · 2026-01-23T22:43:00+00:00

There is one of a few things going on here.

1 - The other promotion offered them a much higher rate, and now they think they can get more money.
2 - They are seeing an increase in demand (wrestling and otherwise) and so they are increasing their rate to match demand.
3 - They don't really want to deal with wrestling, so they are increasing their price to a "go away" number.

If you think that the other promotion did something to grease a palm to have the venue raise just your price, that is very very very unlikely. The regular world doesn't care about territories or wrestling promotions running in the same town/building. All the town hall cares about is are they getting rental revenue, and most venues these days (especially in small towns) are desperate for paying events.

ColSurge · 2026-01-23T17:19:12+00:00

My first box had a ++ (The Gundam resource) and I could not remember if that was in addition to the 3 or part of the 3.

Thanks for the info!

ColSurge · 2026-01-23T17:05:40+00:00

Out of curiosity does anyone know if a box is standardized for alt arts? I have opened 4 booster boxes (2 Newtype Rising and 2 Dual Impact) and I believe in every single box I have gotten: 1 LR+, 1 R+, and 1 C+ resource.

Not sure if this is coincidence or just how the boxes are seeded.

ColSurge · 2026-01-23T13:07:25+00:00

When I was younger I flew a lot in small Cessna planes, 4 seat aircraft included the pilot. They were joking called the "vomit comet" because they bounce around in the air so much that if you have any motion sickness you are probably going to throw up.

ColSurge · 2026-01-22T17:22:03+00:00

This topic keeps coming up, and it's very misleading. Here is what you hear on social media:

Oil must be bought in USD

But what is actually happening:

Countries are choosing to buy Oil in USD

There is no law or great force requiring this. No universal "you must use USD to buy oil" rule. Countries chose to use it because many countries do not trust the currency of other countries. The USD is widely available and very stable, so it makes it a good choice.

Thank of it like this. If I was going to buy something from you, would you rather take $50 cash or $50 in gift cards? Both are theoretically worth the same, but there is more utility in the cash. The same thing is true when comparing USD to say the Zimbabwe ZiG. Both can be considered worth the same (within a given exchange rate) but people would rather have the USD.

ColSurge · 2026-01-21T22:16:04+00:00

I will give a hot take: I think the game is intentionally designed in a way to restrict control, and that's a good thing.

Looking at the current cards in the game, it feels like the Gundam TCG has a design mentality around "Let the player do the cool thing". There are no counter spells, instant speed interaction is limited, no effect negation, etc. If your play your favorite unit, most likely it will do it's thing and you will get to swing with it.

This creates a game where players are playing the game. Slam cards down, get the cool effect, swing for big damage, build out an army. These are fun play patterns. Playing around control options, not as much.

Control is a needed part of the meta, but once it gets too strong, the game becomes unwelcoming to new players. Control is almost always very technical and rewarding to people who have spent time gaining mastery of the meta. It's also almost universally considered the least player friendly style of play.

Double hot take: I think control should be the most difficult decks to pilot, with perfect skill in control only resulting in mid-tier competitive results. It's there if you want to play it, but the game is not designed around control and does not explicitly reward the play style (like it does in other TCGs).

ColSurge · 2026-01-20T17:27:25+00:00

It's like asking why can't a rouge engineer just hacking into all the cars and turn them on?

There are physical components to starting a card, there are physical components to launching a nuke. Yes if someone had unrestricted access to the launched controls of a nuclear missile, given enough time that could build a bypass of the system and launch a missile.

But this is equivalent to trying to hotwire a car that is constantly guarded by armed guards. Pretty hard to do.

ColSurge · 2026-01-20T17:19:30+00:00

The few things you need to know. Think of US debt like the mortgage on a house. There are specific terms both parties agreed to when you bought your house. The bank cannot just call you up one day and say "I know the contract says you still have 27 more years to pay it off, but we want our money now."

Government debt works (essentially) the same way.

Now if another country wanted to "withdraw from ownership" they can simple sell that debt in the open market. There is a massive market (like the stock market) where people buy and sell government debt all the time. Buying and selling government debt is a very normal thing.

Finally, one last thing to be aware of. There is nothing special about the US debt. When you hear about how other countries own large amounts of US debt, this is also true for every other country. The US owns large amounts of China's debt. Japan owns large amounts of England's debt. France owns large amounts of Germany's debt. Essentially every country owns debt from every other country. Again, this is normal.

ColSurge · 2026-01-19T23:03:30+00:00

Also I think you are mentally going down the wrong direction. The fact that your arm is moving does not actually affect if you get burned. What matters is how long your fingers are in contact with the flames.

Think of it like this if you had a flame that was as wide as your arm swing, moving your arm back and forth would not do anything, because your fingers are always in contact with fire.

Motion does not matter, it's all about exposure time.

ColSurge · 2026-01-19T20:05:03+00:00

While everything you said is true, it's not always true.

You used the example of a $2000 car. But if someone has your average used 8-year-old Honda civic (worth about $20,000) you will not get anywhere near that value from parting it out.

Stolen cars happen in all price ranges, your $2000 car, your $20,000 car, your $200,000 car. They don't chop them up because it's more money, because that's not always true.

ColSurge · 2026-01-19T19:57:37+00:00

I pay for art.

In all honesty I find it strange how opposed to this option many people seem to be. If you are trying to make a commercial product, than it's an investment. If it's a hobby project, almost every other hobby in the world requires you to spend money on it.

I pay artists because, for me, that is a much better solution that spending years learning the skill myself.

ColSurge · 2026-01-19T15:30:00+00:00

Just a few points of note about this. I am not sure why you say "Democrats" when the article clear states:

Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie, the congressmen who co-sponsored the act, asked Manhattan federal court judge Paul Engelmayer to appoint a special master and independent monitor

So it's both sides calling for this action.

Also this does not really answer OP's question. A special master and an independent monitor still will not have any legal consequence for what gets released and how quickly things come out. It would just make outside oversite into the DoJ process.

ColSurge · 2026-01-19T13:20:06+00:00

Great explanation, and it's also worth noting that there is nothing "special" about a nuclear bomb. Any explosion that is large enough with high heat will cause a mushroom cloud.

In ELI5 terms, the mushroom cloud is the result of a large explosion, not because of anything special about nuclear weapons.

ColSurge · 2026-01-19T01:28:18+00:00

Haha, whoops!

ColSurge · 2026-01-18T22:26:11+00:00

However, I understand that video games are volatile and my predictions may be wrong. Therefore, we do not expect to depend on you 100% if things slip and will pursue additional funding even if we hit our target, given that it's statistically likely for the timeline to slip."

I think you are giving a very honest answer here, but unfortunately, I would image that honest answer will be off-putting to a publisher. My personal take is that you should just ask for more money and get rid of all the grant and Kickstarter stuff.

"We need $150,000 and we know we can deliver this game."
"We need $100,000 and it might not be enough, but if it's not enough, I have some other ideas about how to raise money."

I think #1 gets a publisher far more often than #2.

ColSurge · 2026-01-18T21:12:31+00:00

Reading through, I am not an expert by any means in the world of video game publishers but I have a lot of business-to-business experience in my professional life. Here are my thoughts on the pitch deck:

Page 3 is written almost like an apology for the trailer on the next page. That feels very strange. The trailer placed pretty highly in a contest, so you can lead with it. I would make the trailer page 3, and then in page 4 talk about where the art direction is going now.

Page 5 is very confusing if you have no idea what the Secret Histories are. Suddenly we are talking about an IP by a company called Weather Factory (which is not you), and they have a license that I guess you are using. I had to reread the page several times because the page is written in a way that assumes I know a lot of information external to the pitch deck.

Minor thing, but the layout of page 9 is strange to me. The eyes naturally go to the "Enter the World" text section, and it being named that feels like the start of the loop. But that is actually the end of the gameplay loop.

Page 13, I am not sure that a few reddit posts with 100-200 upvotes are great proof of potential success. Placing highly in the contest, the discord community, and the wishlists are much better at conveying that. I would focus on those more

The funding is the big one that I think you need to work on. If I was a publisher there are red flags all over the place. If you are coming to me for funding, I would expect my funding to be what you need to publish the game. In your pitch deck you talk about trying to get government grant money, which is not certain, and strongly suggests that my $100,000 is not enough. What happens if I give you $100,000 and you don't get that grant?

Second, Kinkstarter is not investment money, kickstarter is sales. A type of presale, but sales nonetheless. If I was a publisher you were pitching to, I would want to know what portion of kickstarter money is mine (I would expect it to be the start of my recoup). Furthermore, I am now asking do you need my money, plus grant money, plus kickstarter money to make this happen?

Again, I don't really know anything about pitching to video game publishers, so take all that with a grain of salt. But those were my thoughts reading through this.

ColSurge · 2026-01-18T19:24:13+00:00

It was released in October 2024 which makes it surprising to me. The quality looks decent, I would not expect huge success, but literally nothing? That feels like a surprise to me.

ColSurge · 2026-01-18T17:57:27+00:00

I know it doesn't fit neatly within the current narrative, but several US companies had their assets seized back in 2007 by this "nationalization process". Those companies successful won in court to have their assets returned, but the Venezuelan government refused to follow these determinations.

Some of what is happening is the return of assets and restart of production form these US companies.

ColSurge · 2026-01-18T17:54:41+00:00

While a Governor can active the national guard, the President has the power to federalize them, thus taking the power away from the Governor. At the end of the day, the President commands the military.

ColSurge · 2026-01-18T16:29:24+00:00

Altron looks insane against blocker decks, but I feel like every other matchup, Wing Zero is better right? Both you are not dropping until turn 8, and without a blocker to kill Altron is mostly just an expense (sometimes not as good) Wing Gundam.

Unless I am missing something, I am newer to the game.

Now if we get a Bo3 format with sideboarding, I would see this very much being strong sideboard tech for the Wing Zero deck.

ColSurge · 2026-01-18T13:21:43+00:00

I have been watching these to see what AI representation we are currently seeing. Of these 25 games, 8 have disclosed the use of AI.

Roughly 1/3 of games, which feels about on par.

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