This is unacceptable at this point": Activision faces backlash over AI-generated images in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

[Windows Central]

Call of Duty has come under fire from its community for handing out in-game event rewards that may have been AI-generated.

This is unacceptable at this point": Activision faces backlash over AI-generated images in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 : Read more

 

[fjtorres5591]

Okay: since nobody has bothered to bring this up, exactly how many players are upset about this? Is their active player count going down due to this? Or is it a few pearl clutchers with nothing better to do than Chicken Little over every triviality that offends *them*?

Generative software tools are real.
They are useful. As in, they cut costs in some areas, add new capabilities in others.
And in a gaming industry where ballooning costs and delays are costing jobs and causing studio closures, those tools are needed to stay afloat.

Studios either adapt or get run over by Studios and publishers (Tencent) that have no problem with using every available tool.

Pick your poison.

 

[Cole Martin]

The active player count doesn't have to see a significant drop to determine if people to have strong feelings about something. I love COD. Put thousands of hours into it a year. I don't want to be rewarded with AI generated trash. It doesn't even look good. I've never been shy about spending money for bundles that I want, but if I see a bundle with AI-generated muck, I'm not buying it, no matter how much I like everything else in it.

It looks bad, and it's shameful for a trillion-dollar company to release a subpar product, regardless of how it is created. Sending out slop to save a few bucks on paying some of the best artists in the world who are already on the payroll a couple extra dollars is what it is. It's shameful.

 

[fjtorres5591]

The active player count determines the impact of a choice. And the impact determines the value of the plaints. Because there will always be complaints. Nothing ever satisfies everybody. What is unacceptable to some is a trivial glitch to others.

Shipping a game with a bug, for example.

If the bug makes thousands stop playing (Cyberpunk 2077 or more recently, Stalker 2) the publisher will respond ASAP. Given notice that a game crashes or is so unbalanced to be well-nigh unplayable, other gamers might opt not to buy until it is playable. Cash flow matters.

If its a few dozen souls complaining about how they are entitled to lovingly crafted human art for a picture in a temporary event, maybe not.

Teapot tempests typically die out in a week or less, after all.

Some gripes matter, others can be blown off. Especially if everybody else ignores it and keeps on playing. The concern of the many outweigh the concerns of the few, or the one.

Patching a game takes time and money to recode and then more time and money to validate that the recoding didn't break something. Management decisions are all about the impact to the bottom line, and the bottom line is why they make the game to start with.

Simple rule: if it saves time or money over the alternative, it stays.
And generative software does both, just like buggy releases in need of day one patches. Both will stay with us. No griping will change a thing.

Accept it or walk away, because they know "you can't please every one, so you might as well please yourself". (Rick Nelson, 1972)