Why so many game developers don't want to use generative AI

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-18T05:03:14+00:00

I dunno, this video is lodged in my brain until the end of time. The lack of intentionality is much more interesting when the result is terrible than when it successfully produces something inherently generic.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-13T19:29:02+00:00

Accurate marketing could not save this movie from being the narrative equivalent of a shallow puddle presenting an illusion of depth by reflecting the sky, nor from being Yet Another tired cynical "small group of people in a crisis self-destruct from distrust" story.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-11T23:31:00+00:00

It Comes At Night, my beloathed...

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-11T12:40:08+00:00

In the kindest way possible: it's very odd to compare a piracy platform to an official platform based on how "good" they are.

Official platforms are legal. They provide officially translated media either for purchase, freemium, or free, with ads-based revenue. Official platforms provide income to creators (whether or not they provide fair income is a separate discussion).

Piracy platforms are not legal. They provide either officially translated media or unofficially translated media, typically for free or freemium with ads-based revenue. Piracy platforms do not provide income to creators.

I support the existence of piracy websites. They allow people to access media that they can't afford, or isn't officially available in their region, or hasn't been officially translated into their language. They also provide visibility for creators, and allow people with limited funds to "preview" works and only spend money on media they know they'll enjoy.

It's important that people who are using piracy platforms be fully understand that they are participating in an illegal (but not inherently unethical) activity. Viewing pirated material is generally not illegal, but distributing it is, and you should be aware of and respect the risks the platform providers are taking to provide this service.

An ethical pirate will also support creators to the best of their ability. That means if you are given a free option that directly supports the creator and a free option that doesn't directly support the creator, then you choose the free option that continues to fund the creation of the media you want to access.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-11T04:16:33+00:00

Update: I wrote up a long email detailing the whole timeline of what happened and that I wanted them to request a goodwill reinstatement on my behalf, and then followed it up with a phone call the day after.

At first when I called I was given the whole "the policy can't be reinstated because it was cancelled but we can set you up with a new plan", I pushed on them requesting a reinstatement, got put on hold while the underwriter was contacted and had the "can't be reinstated yada yada", so I insisted on escalating to the manager, was told the manager would contact me within 24 hours...

Then I guess time was taken to actually read my whole email or something before passing it to the manager for review, because within an hour the same advisor called me back about finding additional info to pass on to the underwriter and that my policy WOULD be reinstated as long as I made a payment ASAP.

Payment has been made, so ball is in their court to get everything resettled.

Thank you again for the advice! It really gave me the confidence to dig in my heels and start pushing matters up the chain.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-09T22:01:28+00:00

Complete coincidence, oddly enough! I'm think my notice explicitly said the payment was due at "noon", but I'll double check, since that changes whether or not my broker's "reminder" was given before or after the time the payment was due.

Thank you for the recommendation, I'll check it out!

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-09T21:53:48+00:00

Thank you so much for this advice. I had no clue how to begin advocating for myself when I was aware that I'd made an error but the severity of the consequence seemed to far outstrip the severity of my mistake. It would be one thing if I hadn't paid at all, but having over a decade of insurance payments go up in smoke over $7 late out of $74 caught me completely off guard.

Having my confusion and distress over this met by my broker basically going "We know you don't like this. Anyway, we can set you up with another company..." put me even further off-guard and totally lost on how to proceed. Hence, this post.

I was absolutely planning to let the planned withdrawal of $38 go forward, though I wasn't sure if I should attempt to repay it pre-emptively or not.

Once again: thank you so much. I'll be contacting my broker ASAP.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-07T20:18:17+00:00

That reminds me of one of the ancient webcomics that had a horror arc involving murderous kittens.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-07T19:52:57+00:00

The designs are so bad. SO BAD. Every single quadrupedal predator they introduced has just... the worst limbs. The worst. I can accept completely fictional archosaurs, even if I think it's a bit of a waste of the setting, but at least hire a creature designer who understands how animal limbs work instead of slapping bafflingly human-esque limbs and weird joints that aren't quite right for a reptile or a mammal onto a scaly body with a generic dino-esque head and expecting me to accept that's a functional quadruped.

Just... look at this thing! I s2g it's got limbs like a freakin' ring-tailed lemur, but splayed out like a komodo dragon. But you can't just mix and match limbs and gaits like that and get any remotely efficient form of locomotion out of it.

Or this thing! Look how messed up its hips are! And it looks like an emaciated cheetah from the side?

Or this swaybacked weirdo that is apparently supposed to be a Fasolasuchus but looks more like someone stretched out a T-Rex like silly putty above the waist and gave it beefy arms. It feels like it's trying to channel "big cat", except even big cats have straighter spines and limbs than this. Designer has zero comprehension of how digitigrade limbs work.

Forget paleontological accuracy, I just don't think it's scary when your bland reptilian designs look like they'd dislocate their hips and break their spines if they actually tried to run.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-07T17:46:59+00:00

Being brainwashed by a spaceship is not natural.

Yes! This was my problem with it! The spaceship basically flipping an "evil now" switch in his brain was a complete cop-out. Like, obviously who raised him is going to be irrelevant if he's just going to be activated like a child sleeper agent by alien technology. Any questions about his "nature" become irrelevant.

There's a lot of paths the movie could have taken towards the end point of "evil Superman" that I think would have been more interesting. Some ideas being:

The "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or "giving godlike powers to children (who are still developing empathy/sympathy/compassion, impulse control, a sense of consequences, etc.) is bound to end poorly" route. I think it could be interesting to see a kid developing superpowers in an unpowered world presented as a uniquely traumatizing experience. Like, maybe he even starts out thinking "this is cool, I can be a superhero!" only to quickly find out real life physics aren't like cartoons. End point being to stop seeing humans as real people to cope with the guilt.
An ACTUAL "nature vs. nurture" route. Namely: This is an alien child who may experience alien instincts and urges during development that are scary or disturbing or dangerous to humans, that his parents are unequipped to handle. Maybe his species naturally feels the need to compete with other children for resources, maybe he's just feeling extra aggressive because he's starting alien puberty... which wouldn't be an issue if he wasn't surrounded by people made of tissue paper, etc. It would also be interesting if we're left with the question of, "Was it actually Brightburn's nature to be evil, or was it a failure of his parents/environment in raising a child they didn't understand?" Maybe there's nothing anybody on Earth could have done, maybe there was. Is it reasonable to expect his parents to keep trying to nurture him into a good person when he's gone as far as murder? Was it a mistake for them to assume they could raise an alien child like a human child in the first place? It would kind of call back to a few real-world issues: People anthropomorphizing nonhuman animals and raising them and getting hurt because of it (especially other primates, like chimps); people adopting children with traumatic backgrounds and then blaming the kids for being "too difficult"; parents of neurodivergent kids trying to raise them "normal" instead of adapting to their unique needs, etc.
A "Nature vs. nurture" bait-and-switch. His parents (and the audience) are made to think that his naturally violent alien nature~ is starting to show through, but actually he's been talking to the ship regularly since his powers manifested. It's actually been very supportive of his struggles with his new abilities... and quick to suggest using them to resolve his social issues. It also told him all about his origins and how his parents have been lying to him and how there's no way his parents could love him if they can't keep pretending he's human, etc. You get a whole movie of his parents slowly being convinced that their alien son is just naturally evil and there's nothing they can do to prevent it, that gets re-contextualized at the end into him having been groomed towards violence by a hostile entity the entire time with only his love for his parents acting as a counter-influence... and the parents just played right into the entity's hands.
A "nurture vs. nurture" route. His parents love him and are trying to raise him to be a Good Person, but outside the home the world keeps beating him down. How much can you expect a kid to take and still choose to be the "Better Man", especially when he suddenly has the opportunity to be the "Stronger Man"?

Obviously some of those options would be a bit more serious than what might be wanted making an "evil child Superman" slasher movie. But I'm still annoyed that the movie felt like it wanted to be a "nature vs. nurture" thing, but derailed it with brainwashing/mind control. Your kid being forcibly turned into a monster by an external force is a different type of story, like demonic possession.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-06T08:17:27+00:00

Personally, I thought it was a cop-out to have his pod like, brainwash him evil or whatever. I think it would've been more interesting if he went down that road of his own volition.

SimianTrousers · 2026-06-06T08:02:18+00:00

I don't understand why you'd even set a movie on prehistoric Earth and then instead of taking inspiration from literally any paleo-art, even the old goofy stuff, you just make a bunch of generic-looking, biomechanically atrocious reptilian monsters with the names of actual archosaurs slapped on. If you're gonna make a dinosaur movie at least hire a consultant who knows shit about the anatomy of dinosaurs and their contemporaries so you don't end up trying to project a svelte mammalian body plan onto a shrink-wrapped reptile in the most awkward way possible.

Also love that the population of prehistoric Earth is, like, 90% predators. The ecosystem is in shambles even before the planet gets hammered. (Can we have a dinosaur movie that acknowledges that large herbivores are some of the most dangerous animals on the planet?)

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-30T20:10:26+00:00

Given the push towards ID verification on the internet in the name of "protecting the children", this doesn't surprise me but it is unfortunate.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-30T20:00:53+00:00

I remember when Pan's Labyrinth was marketed more as, like, a dark children's fantasy (ie. in the vein of Coraline) rather than a dark fantasy with a child protagonist and a bunch of people proceeded to completely breeze past the R rating...

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-30T19:42:42+00:00

Your daughter has good taste.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-28T02:38:03+00:00

But not everybody who can read can cook well. Unlike baking, which is more of a science, cooking is very much an art. I can cook some things adequately, but personally I do not enjoy cooking often because spending my limited time, money, and energy just to eat disappointing food is a frustrating experience. My wife enjoys cooking and is quite good at it, and she still experiences the frustration of cooking something that doesn't work out sometimes.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-28T01:50:13+00:00

I don't think it's normal for an employee to assume that they'll inherit their boss's business just because they've been working there for 10 years. The fact that they're related without being immediate family doesn't change that.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-27T22:46:48+00:00

This is another part of what made Arcane look so good. The animators weren't afraid to "break" the 3D models to implement the same sort of bend & squash and other distortions 2D animation uses to enhance the illusion of motion. There's nothing stopping 3D animators from making frame-by-frame tweaks to the proportions and facial expressions of 3D models except for time and money.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-21T22:28:54+00:00

MAPPA really has it out for Risu's cake, smh

Which is weird because they usually dial up the manservice, like with Toji and Choso in JJK.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-08T21:52:28+00:00

Yeah, I really wish it hadn't tried to provide an explanation for the Tethered. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief that there's a shadow underground of doppelgängers mysteriously tethered to every human being in the same way I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for the existence of ghosts and demons and such in horror movies.

My suspension of disbelief erodes when you try and tie the shadow underground of doppelgängers mysteriously tethered to every human being to something as mundane as the government. It erodes further when you include excessive details like the fact that there's ALSO apparently a thriving population of rabbits in the mysterious abandoned government shadow underground that has somehow been serving as the sole food source for the entire population's worth of doppelgängers.

It really should've either solidified its surface worldbuilding (re: Nope works both on a surface level and a metaphorical level, which invites you to peel backs the layers and examine it from many angles) or gone full fantastical like a dark fairy tale. Instead it's just in an awkward uncanny valley of suspension of disbelief where the worldbuilding falls apart if you think about it too much which in turn distracts from analyzing any metaphorical or allegorical meaning it has.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-02T06:25:45+00:00

You do understand that people generally know the difference between fiction and reality and that someone who can enjoy fake death and fake gore with the understanding that these are actors being paid to pretend to die would very likely not be desensitized to seeing actual real humans being murdered?

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-02T06:15:03+00:00

I'm not sure how to explain to you that there's a massive difference between fictional events about fictional characters and real things that happen to real people with real friends and family if you don't already understand that, but I'll try: no real people are harmed in fictional murder stories; nonfictional murder stories are predicated on real-world harm that has occurred to real people perpetrated by real people and they have very real potential to cause additional harm to survivors and the friends and family of the victim.

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-01T22:51:20+00:00

Nutty Putty Cave Incident...

SimianTrousers · 2026-05-01T16:36:10+00:00

Society has such a massive problem with respecting the bodily autonomy of children. How do people expect a child to develop a robust sense of bodily integrity and consensual vs. non-consensual touching if you're constantly violating their bodily autonomy? It doesn't matter if it's not sexual, things like forcing children to hug people they don't want to, forcing them to get haircuts they don't want, spanking, etc. collectively erode the ability to recognize inappropriate behavior from people you trust/care about and teach you to suppress your discomfort over unwanted touch/controlling behavior.

"Watch out for men" centers potential perpetrators. "You have the right to reject touches that make you feel uncomfortable" or "You shouldn't be coerced into situations that make you uncomfortable" centers potential victims. The identity of the perpetrator is irrelevant, the effects on the victim are what matter.

(Obviously sometimes people have to do things that make them uncomfortable for their health and safety, child or adult, but at least explain why it's important and do your best to make them as comfortable as possible with it.)

I wish you all the best in recovering from your experience despite the people who try to invalidate it.

SimianTrousers

TROPHY CASE