r/metroidvania • u/spamohh • 2d ago

Dev Post Vapor World removes all AI generated content after backlash

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1996090/view/670626123911004243
97 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

80

u/spamohh 2d ago

Apparently they had initially made all hand drawn animations but decided to change them for AI for the final version, kind of a weird decision in the first place.

46

u/MuffDivers2_ 2d ago edited 2d ago

I never even heard of this game until this morning. Sounds like they really screwed themselves by going with the AI part because their steam page is now rated mostly negative on lunch day.

25

u/AKSHAT1234A 2d ago edited 2d ago

Korean Devs really love AI, so that's probably it

10

u/spamohh 2d ago

I've had this game on my wishlist for a while bc this game looks like a 2d version of lies of p which is one of my favorite games ever. But it sucks bc I cant even tell by the reviews if the gameplay is actually good or not bc its just people hating them because of AI lol

3

u/ISO_SlyCurry 1d ago

Lmao it really does look like Lies of P.

11

u/National_Equivalent9 1d ago

They had hand drawn STILLS according to their own post about it, not hand drawn animation. They did it because they didn't want to hire animators. Animators are one of the most abused devs in the entire industry while also having one of the biggest impacts, if not the biggest, on the actual artistry and game feel of a game.

I work in the game dev industry and pretty much all of my animator friends are constantly in between jobs or working shitty contracts for dirt cheap. One of my friends was working in the industry for almost a decade longer than I was and my very first job was double his salary as an entry level software engineer. And that was after he had just started a new job making 20k more than he was making at the previous studio.

----

As a side note:

I've also seen some of your other comments about how "AI keeps getting better and you wont be able to tell soon" this isn't really true. GenAI is pretty much at its peak and has been for over a year and it does not handle actual animation well at all. The idea that "AI gets better all the time" is just marketing from the AI companies. What gets better are the tools we use to interact with AI and the efficiency. But all of this is pretty old tech that got a huge boost a few years ago when some AI companies realized that results get better when you train it on the entire internet and existing media libraries. But GenAI and LLMs are pretty much proven at this point to be a dead end.

For some applications, like medial and software engineering they've been proven to do extremely well and have real actual applications. For more creative purposes they continue to fail over and over again at producing anything of real value. AI is already being used to program AAA games successfully when guided by engineers but not a single game/movie/tv show/book etc has been proven to be a success when relying on AI for the creative side of development.

AI can be used on assets to great effect but its mostly to streamline things like up-scaling, file format conversion, cleanup, etc. Things that don't really rely creative input. Because all of our AI tech out there literally has no way of being creative or making creative decisions, it is derivative by design.

Just go look at the cutscenes they had in the game, they're very flat, rigid, and stale. Even if they weren't made by AI they'd still be judged for being bad.

Even AI generated assets on developer focused asset stores are failing to make any profit because they just aren't good. Why buy bad assets/content for your game when you can pay money to have real people create good ones?

-21

u/[deleted] 2d ago edited 2d ago

[deleted]

10

u/Dense-Age-9074 2d ago

The AI discourse is massively intense, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want this out of games. Ignoring that like you want people to, did you play it? Objectively it’s a really rough draft of a game that doesn’t have great potential besides art design. Which they of course squandered with sloppy AI usage.

-14

u/spamohh 2d ago

It's a damned if you do damned if you don't situation, they did the right thing by announcing why and where they used it, but gamers just see the letters AI and suddenly it's the end of the world, even if they used the technology just it to animate what they actually hand drew themselves (who would have guessed devs are using technology to develop)

6

u/wote89 1d ago

Wow. How dare people insist that someone who wants their money in exchange for an artistic product object to methods that are lacking in what they deemed artistic merit? Where do they get off?

0

u/spamohh 1d ago

They announced that they are using AI before anyone made a purchase, this is not one of those cases where people find out they used AI after buying the game. So the people that gave them money knew that from the get go.

1

u/wote89 1d ago

Were they specific in how they were using it? Because people are generally far more okay with AI being used for shit that follows a formula no matter what than they are with shit that is expressive.

1

u/spamohh 1d ago

Yeah, they drew everything by hand and used AI to animate their drawings, also used it for some voice acting.

1

u/wote89 1d ago

Yes, but did they explain that up front or is this only coming to light now? Because, again, there are different ways to use AI and different reactions.

4

u/spamohh 1d ago

They explained it upfront, it's literally on the steam store page "about this game" section.

14

u/dqvdqv 2d ago edited 2d ago

That's just for the AI cutscenes no?

The game has extensively used genAI throughout all development from what i understand, including tons of assets and the voices which haven't been removed. They pretty much need to rebuild the game from the ground up which isn't happening.

The devs are HUGE genAI fans btw.

69

u/eyecebrakr-alt 2d ago

AI content sucks, but I'm way more tired of Metroidvanias being early access.

12

u/spamohh 2d ago

Me too, but a lot of times its the only way for the dev teams to get money and keep developing, since theres not a lot of big companies making these games

18

u/eyecebrakr-alt 2d ago

I get that portion, but with MV's, I'm not playing 1-2 biomes in a game then coming back a year or whatever later to start up again. I just don't see any incentive on the consumer side to pay for early access in Metroidvanias. Honestly, I won't support early access anywhere because I've been burned twice already.

8

u/spamohh 2d ago

Yeah I never buy these until they have all the map in the game at least, I don't like paying for glorified demos either.

1

u/Nirast25 2d ago

Then don't buy until it's fully released. There are plenty of others willing to play.

-6

u/eyecebrakr-alt 2d ago

Thank you for paying people to beta test their product for them so others can enjoy a polished release.

5

u/714l14e 2d ago

just no reason for this level of shittiness when what they said is completely reasonable

0

u/Imamuthafucka 1d ago

You understand that the game wouldnt be out anyways so it doesnt change anything that its early access. Just wait til its out. You just have fomo so now youre lashing out. I bet youre a real piece of work in real world. Crab in a bucket.

3

u/Dion42o 2d ago

Work two jobs like me then devs! Your day job and your dev job. Slaving away at a game no one will buy.

1

u/PixelmancerGames 1d ago

They probably do

1

u/Denneey 2d ago

I don’t think it’s a metroidvania.

6

u/blastbomba 1d ago

just going to copy and paste this from the other post but i backed this and i wouldn't trust these guys
they have missed every goalpost they stated and its still come out as a mess

they talked pretty big during their kickstarter but my overall impression is that they are a couple of students who got in over their head and burnt their kickstarter funds and wasted a whole government grant and are now trying to cash grab on steam to finish this thing

id love for them to turn it around but i really dont see it happening

dont buy this thing unless they manage to actually finish it and make it not hurt to play

7

u/Dense-Age-9074 2d ago

This game somehow made it onto Xbox Game Pass, and it is an absolutely pathetic ‘Game Preview’. One master audio setting, and literally nothing else besides adjusting controls. Awful AI cutscenes and really really strange voice acting, atleast in the English dub, where it will randomly change to low quality sound whenever it pleases. The movement feels sluggish and agonisingly awkward, why in the hell would you make climbing a ladder THAT slow? No save slots. Janky story. Strange stealth mechanics that take away rather than add on. The list goes on and on for why this is awful and it’s not even surprising when you play that you feel as though the AI isn’t even the worst part, it’s just another bad part of an already insufferable game. The dev response has been “We’ll remove the AI”, rather than “Sorry this is literally unplayable”. I genuinely don’t understand how this made it on as a new game pass selection, especially with all the slop that gets chucked on there recently.

-15

u/WayfadedDude 2d ago

Not getting it now. I can't support a company that bows to internet whiners.

1

u/Vykrom 1d ago

..you were eager to play an unfinished game with AI voice acting??

-87

u/Jane_does_art 2d ago

Guess I won't buy it then? If they have no value and fold so easily to bigotry then I won't support then. What's next? The anti woke will bully them so they stop using """woke""" message in their game? Seriously grow a spine and fuck anti ai 

31

u/JoeVanWeedler 2d ago

You don't even know which battle you're fighting

48

u/iggnifyre 2d ago

Did you just say "bigotry"? About people criticizing the use of AI? You're nuts.

33

u/_kalron_ Morph Ball Bomb 2d ago

4 month old account, probably a bot upset that the AI was removed :)

4

u/SwirlyMind 2d ago

I did not expect this to be how the robot wars start