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.
“if that choice hurt your experience, the fault is not in the tool. It is in our own shortcomings.”
The director literally outright says it’s their fault for using the tool.
And what do you mean “got caught”? It’s very obvious. They mistakenly thought most audiences would enjoy it, not that audiences wouldn’t notice. Which makes sense given the overwhelming difference in the perception of AI between SK and the West. He even outright says he expected people to notice: “I expected some of you would be disappointed by our use of AI. I did not expect it to become this big.”
The very first thing you need to become an artist is a sense of taste. Everything builds from that. If in his judgment he thought that art looked good enough then what does that say about him as an artist.
What game with slop have people ever enjoyed? They are not that stupid.
If using a “tool” is wrong, then the fault is the “tool”.
Please open this article, Ctrl+F down to “% who say the increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life makes them feel …”, and tell me which country is at the very bottom, with 16% “more concerned than excited”, 66% “equally concerned and excited”, and 22% “more excited than concerned”.
It’s like you’re refusing to understand the concept of a cultural barrier.
I guess that’s a problem for the Korean game industry then. If you want to sell to the international market, you’re going to need to do some research. Not doing so is wilful blindness. No one in gaming doesn’t know that globally players absolutely hate detectable AI anything. Just including AI in your process makes people uncomfortable. Expecting a major part of your game to be entirely generated content and that just being overlooked takes some pretty delusional confidence.
All that matters is rabid AI bad.