General
Ironmouse dropped her Neverness to Everness sponso stream after learning about the game containing generative AI and especially after the developers told Ironmouse's team that the game did not include AI
I am locking this post as there are too many angry arguments and comments are generating too many reports as everyone reports each other's comments. The points have been made.
The obvious ones are images and videos. When you go to the in-game Cinema, entire "movies" are AI generated. Don't know about the music or other assets.
The intro video for Pink Paw Heist game mode is AI generated and its one of the best way to earn Fons (not a premium currency but still valuable). You will always see it everytime you play the game mode but skippable.
Wait this explains so much. The reason every character design in NTE feels uninspired and boring is because they were a computer-generated mishmash of random bullshit.
As an example you go into a convenience store in game the snacks/sodas on display may have ai generated images on its wrappers. The billboards, posters and TV shows in the background may be AI generated.
Just imagine Zelda Botw and the Witcher 3 with ai generated assets instead of carefully crafted universes made from concept arts.
That's just how you know some people care for the IP they publish, while NtE is just some pump and dump. ( Not surprising, Hotta fans rejoice because they had their success and can stick it to the other gacha fans who ridiculed them. It's just at the cost of the integrity of ToF which is in a pitiful state and still looks like a 2018 game )
This game is straight-up embarrassing. I mean, stealing someone's work just to run it through AI again? lmao. Does anyone at that company even feel any shame?
They can slander many things about ZZZ but the animation???? Brotha if they're not blind they should willingly gouge their own eyes out, seeing as they refuse to use it.
I play NTE, these devs have zero fucking clue how to direct a cutscene. It's all a jumbled mess of animation techniques thrown in cause they look cool, not because they serve the scene. Honestly the little details they add in to make the world feel more alive is really really well done, but what the hell happened with the stuff that actually matters?
I saw the fight with the weird painting monster, and omg, its so obvious either the animators have no idea how to use impact frames or physics for characters hair/clothes....or its all AI. Impact frames are supposed to be high contracting like 1 or 2 frames...some of them where like 6+ and the frames just had random black and white shapes on it lol.
I've been playing religiously for the past week or so (cleared every quest I can see within like 4 days) and I can say that I see some that are pretty uncanny. I personally can't tell if they are AI for sure but they sure look strange, like the intro animation from the bank heist it just feels extremely uncanny and I can't tell why.
I think people had said they used AI for movie and some posters but I didn't see anything too strange or I haven't paid enough attention.
The bank heist animations are 100% AI, after he points his finger in the animation, the flower from his head disappears onto his shirt, the overalls completely change, and the gem on his neck/collar changes into a different object.
The thing is, even without all that stuff that constantly change, the video also does so many things animators/editors wouldn't do. For one, there's just too much image artifacting going around, which is very indicative of uncurated gen AI videos.
There is a notion where so long they use the money they saved with gen AI doing all these side content into hiring actual people to do the bulk of the main work (e.g. environmental/character designs, model, animation, cutscenes, writing, etc.), it'd be okay because it just means more people are being hired to do more meaningful work rather than painting/modeling packagings, grass or something & it's acceptable since they're not that big in terms of a production team.. But you know, you gave them an inch...
It'd honestly be much less damage if they just come clean about it tbh lol
Lol you know what's funny? NTE's cutscene is also blowing up in twitter rn for the wrong reasons, because it looks SO bad. Apparently they're not doing well on the main work either. People even speculated the storyboard was AI generated before animated by real people.
Yeah I agree, I don't mind AI as much as others do but when one side makes it very clear they don't want to advertise a game that uses AI and the other side confirms that there isn't while in actuality there is then that makes someone like Ironmouse a lot more justified in her actions.
This will also cause other creators and consumers to lose interest in NTE because that was unprofessional.
I don't like AI and I will be honest: if I was told beforehand, I'd just ignore the game. There are other gachas that use AI. I'm not on a witch hunt. But for fuck's sake, be CLEAR about it.
Honestly, same. With how games are nowadays, I'm sure it's not that problematic to have AI help with small stuff such as background and refining small details on character models to make them look slightly better, while saving both time and money. However, lying about not using AI in that case is definitely not the right move
Yep. I don't care one way or another about genAI being used in any form of media, but it is extremely unethical to lie about it, especially to someone that is promoting it.
That is not all they said, though. Here's the full quote:
Yang Lei: Our bottom line is very clear, and our core assets and character portraits will never touch AI. Second-game players buy emotional value, and everyone is very disgusted with spending money to buy industrial assembly line products. We will mainly use AI to run some atmosphere renderings to see if it is the feeling we want as preliminary work for finding references and a lot of trial and error.
They're very clearly implying that they're only using AI in the concept stage, but everything final in the game is actually done by humans. You could argue that the billboards, video ads and movies aren't "core assets", but I don't think that holds any water when they specify how they use the AI in the second part of the quote. And seeing that they use AI even for some cutscenes, it becomes impossible to draw the line between what is and isn't a "core asset".
And lets not even get into how ironic their comments on players buying "emotional value" and being disgusted by "industrial assembly line products" is...
The word "mainly" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. They never said they wouldn't use AI in the final game, nor even that the "preliminary" atmosphere renderings wouldn't be kept, if it felt right. Without defining "core assets," you also can't even get concrete about what exactly it is, outside of character portraits, that they won't use AI for.
Look, I'm not defending Hotta here. I know it's all PR at the end of the day. But "Hotta said they wouldn't use AI" is clearly an exaggeration. If you went into NTE expecting they'd keep it clean of AI, you weren't paying attention.
I think that's worse than anything, even as someone who doesn't 100% hate AI. There's ZERO attempt to be transformative, it's not referential, it's tracing.. stealing. Bar for bar taking from existing works without even being coy about it, coupled with the Devs sweeping it under the rug.
Nothing about it is meant to pay homage, it's just to take existing works and reskins them to "fill in" a world they felt didn't need any personal touches. Reduced to background noise.
saves money and as you can see, people eat that shit up and spend regardless
many gachas rely on making bank in the first few months and abandon it without a care, they can just repeat the operation another time. even if their reputation tanks, they still made bank
as you can see all over socmeds, this company even managed to get loyal bootlickers who will try to deny it, even when given proof of generated AI in 4K
No man it's fine AI is the future man, everyone's gonna use it, it's not a red flag at all that's why we lied about using it, because we have so much faith in the product.
Yep I agree, I don't mind AI but what the management team did was very unprofessional, they knew Ironmouse's stance on AI yet they lied to her that there isn't AI usage while in actuality there is. I don't think that'll kill the game but it will hurt its publicity and will cause players and creators to lose interest.
I think the devs need to make a very clear statement on their AI usage and confirm where they use it and moving forward if we will see more of it or not. From my understanding the devs said they use AI for non "essential" things (which they didn't really define what falls under that), so one can assume that character models, art and story scenes probably don't fall under that.
Feels like a lot of people want to gloss over the fact that they are actively lying about it. Like hate or support it all you want but if you go around lying about it then they deserve whatever backlash they get. How is that so hard for this games players to understand. XD
I swear to god I have gone insane on Twitter by the amount of smokescreen that's been around this issue. Strawmanning, victim blaming, smokescreens. Like no it's not about your stance on AI, it's about basic integrity.
Add in the usual CCs involved in this matter like hound dogs.
Man it's deadass May 2024 with Wuthering Waves again. Except Hotta has been hilariously quiet with the sea of backlash that hasn't only involved AI.
The ai is very apparent. Which 1.1 could or should address. Like the people who don't care, don't care. They're not looking at the ai shit and going "WOOH BABY! AI" but the people who do care will notice that and go "Nah, not interested"
Someone posted on that Twitter post that there is an area of the game where you see an ad for a movie, and the ad is very clearly just the anime movie "Weathering With You" but slightly modified with AI, I am not anti-AI myself, I am anti-stealing/anti-slop, you can use AI to speed up some things, but stealing is where I draw the line.
I don't understand why they put this in the game. They could have just not done this. No one asked for this. ZZZ has a heavy TV theme and it still doesn't bother doing animations. Is it because GTA does it?
True, but i'm actually curious if the hit to revenue is worth it if it meant using AI and saving money, but at the end of the day i think CN's opinion is gonna be the decider as always, Global's revenue is a fraction of that.
Even if global is a fraction of it. Think how much they offer global Vtubers and Youtubers to sponsor them vs how much it costs to have there in-house artists who made the character designs make posters and manga covers for the in game world.
They have to spend more on Vtubers for advertising than is saved with ai generating the details of there world.
Yeah, thats why this blatantly use of Gen IA concern me more than should, coz they know they could avoid it all just by spending some hundred bucks to replace the AI art with real art, but if they didn't do that it means they are cutting cost on other areas too and probably they could be using gen AI on other things like characters designs, cutscenes, writing, music, assets and even codding, so the hole probably is much deeper but people are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
It's not some hundred bucks. But they could definitely afford it, they're a gacha company after all. All gacha companies make a fuckload more than anything they ever made costs
Think how much they offer global Vtubers and Youtubers to sponsor them vs how much it costs to have there in-house artists who made the character designs make posters and manga covers for the in game world.
You're significantly overestimating how much it costs to do a couple sponsored streams/videos.
They have to spend more on Vtubers for advertising than is saved with ai generating the details of there world.
And significantly underestimating how much it would cost for example to make 1,000 unique textures for manga covers for the bookstore which 99.9999% of normal players would glance at for less than 5 seconds.
The revenue for TOF was split evenly between global and CN if I remember correctly. I’m honestly expecting the same here since this type of urban setting I think fits US/Japan markets better, there almost zero references to Chinese culture in the game which is pretty rare for a Chinese gacha
Didn't Tower of Fantasy piss off CN multiple times? If so then i would say that made them leave, thus equalizing CN and Global, and would be the biggest reason why they should not piss their player base over there again.
I agree with the Urban setting point, but i'm not sure if that's enough for the gap to be close.
There's more reposting of global drama around NTE using AI on CN social media, than there is actual CN drama around NTE using AI. That should give you an idea of the (lack of) caring, although if the drama goes mainstream on global, maybe there will be more attention to it in CN.
AI usage is least of their worries because the Chinese are VERY mild about the game. Everything is about how bad the character designs are that even NPCs look better and how everything in the game is half-baked and half-polished.
Memes are everywhere about how Ananta breaths a sigh of relief after NTE dropped.
Cn players mostly are indifferent to it. A good game will not become bad due to using AI, a bad game also wouldn't become good with the usage of AI.
If NTE can use AI to lower their cost and forgo the 50-50 pity, then it's an example of using AI in a good way.
Apart from the special advertising that they do not use AI, majority of the games in China uses AI, including mihoyo, the only difference is discovered or hidden (from players).
Hmm as an aside I wonder if that will mean other Eng VAs might speak up on genAI used or if they’ll like ignore it. I only say this because I was thinking about the whole AI Sag aftra thing a while ago with qualms about AI in VA work, but what if it’s like in game development work instead? Would they care
Video game VAs would probably be the first to freak out about any hint of AI, seeing as stuff like random NPC lines would be the first things AI takes over.
AI exists to replace VA's and other artists, so VA's have a reason to fear. I saw another VA speaking about the NTE situation too (forgot her name right now). I'm 100% with the VA's here. They're one of the reasons gacha games are genuinely enjoyable.
it's replacing artists too. there's no reason they couldn't have gone out of their way to hire actual artists instead of cutting costs. but people in the nte sub will dogpile anyone for being upset about AI. Artists are humans too. We work for a living too.
At the very least, have the decency to be open about it. Even assuming if they didn't outright lie about it, staying silent after using AI so prevalently is not a good look.
And the gacha community is dominated by artists. Pretty much anyone who plays gacha games also follows fan artists. This isn't Call of Duty. These games thrive if they manage to create a fanart community.
The hilarious thing to me is the previous Keqing VA seemingly ok with all this AI in the game, especially after the drama with Hoyo and the VA Union over AI protections in the VA contract.
She's the voice of the face of Nikke, the same Nikke that had several AI allegations in the game and pro AI CEO.
Also she didn't strike during the whole SAG AFTRA thing on Nikke, while several dozens other Nikke were "temporarily replaced" due to the strike. A hypocrite through and through.
It's reasonable to assume that without AI, they aren't going to turn to freelancers or new hires, they'll just throw the needed tasks on their existing team. Cost cutting is definitely a thing, depends on where you cut corners.
China is just big in the AI bubble and chinese consumers dont care as much as us about it. In the case of this game I'm not gonna quit it just cuz a few posters and random movies ill never look at use AI. The rest of the game is amazing but its clearly damaging its reputation and losing them money so it would be for the better to just get rid of it. it cant be too expensive to hire ppl to make the art or buy it from ppl making fanart already
The MC’s voice actor also tweeted his displeasure with the situation. I think this is growing to be a bigger problem than they expected, they need to adress it asap before CN also catches wind of it
Ruining a good game with some lazy ass posters and a 5 second cutscene is insane, just replace it
Depends. CN is generally ok with AI for fan works and non-profit content, but they don't like seeing AI replace workers. There's actually been talks in China about passing a law to prevent AI from being used solely with the intent to replace workers, and even NetEase started cracking down on studios replacing workers with AI after backlash from Identity V players in regards to that studio replacing artists with AI.
China's relationship with AI is a little murkier than "Pro/Anti".
Welp, Shylily just found out that the game uses AI while streaming and now plans to stop playing it even tho she had alot of fun with it in the last week. Oh well.
Honestly that's kinda the issue tbh, NTE is a pretty good time and has some really well developed stuff in it, but going into a book store and it's just rushed AI generated manga covers is so fucking lame. Like if they just replaced it all the game would just feel so much more polished
its almost like they knew they needed to hide all the AI stuff behind a week long exp grind to minimize people running across it during sponsorships...
A lot of streamers and users during CBT1-3 were pretty vocal about it. Not sure why it blew up now or that it’s new info. Kinda confused why this wasn’t so apparent.
I assume during beta, even if people pointed it out, most chalked it up to placeholders that will be replaced with proper stuff on release. And obviously on release the game hit a much wider audience that knew almost nothing about the game beforehand.
I do know a healthy chunk of people avoid pre-release and public test stuff for spoilers. Then also the algorithms will not pick it up and push it to other people because they are new terms and it has not 'learned' that the anti ai/pro-ai crowed will react to those keywords and increase engagement.
That's the main crux of the issue when it comes to NTE, it's just lacking. They have attention to detail in some aspects, but then proceed to completely lack it in others. For example, cars use the turn signals when you move around the city. Meanwhile, the cosmetics all make the characters change their body proportions as they're not properly sized to the actual character putting it on.
The reality is that a lot of these modern eastern games use generative AI in their workflow, especially these gacha games. However, most of them use it as a form of placeholders, and they're always removed before a proper release.
NTE just kinda... Didn't do it. As for why, who can say, maybe they're rushing, maybe they're just dumb. They don't have any major competition yet, as the "GTA" like gachas aren't coming out anytime soon, and their prior game, Tower of Fantasy, really showed how uh... incompetent they can get.
Who knows. Lying about it to the people they want to sponsor them is just awful though.
I think it's like, if no one noticed it then they wouldn't remove it and would continue using it. Why else did they still keep them even after release?
Plenty of people noticed it, it's not exactly hidden lols. Even the people who ardently defend the title, start their arguments by acknowledging it's existence. It's genuinely everywhere.
Which makes the first proper boss of the game incredibly funny, as you're fighting a sentient art portrait that "only wanted to be acknowledged for it's work".
That's the thing, it just feel so stupid and greedy. But i already expected that low considering this is from ToF's devs and never really interested in it in the first place. I also heard NetEase also gave them some money (idk the term, not my first language) for development and they've been pushing AI for a few years back too.
Saw on some post in the nte sub that the game is made using only 24 million or something like that which is extreme low budget for a game like this. Not surprised they cut some corners here and there. Their last game Tof was also a very unpolished rush job in 1.0 that mostly banked on rushing out the before other competitors came out with their games. The fact that NTE isn't Tof 1.0 all over again probably is already a testament to how much the studio has leveled up.
Your character can interact with a wine glass to take a drink and most characters have normal animations but if you do it with any of the shorter characters,instead of adjusting the animation for them the game just stretches their models so the tall animations fit them
Honestly have no idea why they even bothered with the ai billboards and videos and shi like bro the game is great you could have put a blank billboard and I would not have given two shits and just continued fucking around the city.
I love how 90% of those defending this is "other companies do it too" but somehow ignore the fact that incorporating AI into the workflow to speed things up and GenAI art slops are two completely different things.
Yeah I don't think many care if AI or whatever is used in the workflow, people care if that slop actually makes it into the final product, it just shows how much the devs don't care or proofcheck their work and then proceed to lie about it
People make fun of gachaspace like it's just a bunch of horny people with no standards.
But nah, the reason ZZZ / Genshin / WuWa and such spark devotion is because people love the art direction which includes character design AND environment AND character writing. Genshin's huge art community is one of the reasons the game blew up.
the key part is creative direction, even if it's just for small things like in-game billboards and manga covers, a game like ZZZ uses those things to have some worldbuilding through background information, prime example being Astra Yao getting teased through posters, Lemnian hollow having russian like Cosmonaut propaganda, Many Starlight Knight merch and toys just scattered around, AOD having a rival group etc...
It might be just small and unnoticeable, but all those things add up to shape the bigger picture of the world, so to see NTE using A.I. for small things like this, it makes it feel like you're getting almost nothing after looking into the small stuff, cuz well it's A.I. can't really be sure what's the creative directiom there other than just filling it for the sake of supposed more "content"
Very well said. It's why exploration in procedurally generated games never feels as exciting as in a handcrafted map. Why would I explore that cave or look around some rocks when I know there was no dev intention to add a secret or reward there? Likewise, I have no incentive to look closely at the little details in NTE, because there's no intentionality.
Maybe it doesn't matter to other people, but for me, the more little details you strip away, the more you break the illusion of the world, and the more everything starts to just feel like a shell around a gambling machine.
You've hit the nail on the head for me. Those games have meticulous lore and drip-fed possible, long-term characters and locations.
AI goes nowhere and is no different than a placeholder.
For those who like ZZZ / Genshin / WuWa, it's because they hint and build upon their in-game stuff. NTE cannot market to that crowd and expect good results.
Agreed, and I will add that gacha games SPECIFICALLY market themselves as more visually appealing than other games. They sell themselves mostly on visuals. You're meant to be emotionally invested in this world so even if your pulls turn out shit, you'll keep playing because you like the world enough. That's why Genshin keeps making a lot of money. People genuinely love the world.
If people started seeing gennedAI backgrounds or art in Genshin you'll see an uproar.
And yes, it does make me want to play NTE less. It does make me less interested in just looking at NTE's environments, while in WuWa or ZZZ I love taking screenshots and soaking up all the detail.
Fuck we literally just had AK's 7th anniversary drop on CN, with the limited unit having an entire MV dedicated to the love of human art that was so fucking beautiful that it made the fanbase at large cry for a good solid week over it. Like we can shit on gacha games all we want, but we can't pretend that the biggest ones out there right now aren't showcases of some of the best human made art in gaming right now.
I think it's just trendy to shit on gacha monetization as if it's in itself bad. It's not. 'Wanting to make money' is not bad either. These games should be criticized when they're being unfun or stingy, not because they 'want to make money'.
But yes, gachaspace is heavily driven by fanart and fan creations. Gameplay is often casual and easy. People fall in love with characters for their design, story and voice acting. If you told me Cantarella or Yinlin got replaced by AI voices, that would kill the fun of WuWa.
I wouldn't play any Gacha game if they weren't so damn strong with their designs. That's why I got into ZZZ and that's why i'm also upset with ZZZ right now (lol), the talent that goes into these games should be appreciated, scuttling that for some quota is the most annoying shit man.
Yeah exactly. These games do look stunning visually and not just on a technical level. They're filled with good visual ideas and design choices. I still think Burnice is an amazing character design where they made all the right choices for her character.
Despite the common stereotype, gachaspace is really one of the worst places to use AI.
NTE character designs is one of its weakest parts. I enjoy the game, and even character dynamics itself - but NONE of the characters seem appealing due to ALL of them being direct copies from somewhere and in inferior model/animation quality.
I played like two hours of the game over the week end and the game is absolutely devoid of art direction in comparison. All of the characters I encountered were bland, boring and visually just not compelling or interesting. I’m not claiming those were ai generated or anything but there’s no obvious personality or design philosophy behind them.
While I do think there is an art direction there, I think using genAI simply makes you lose sight of it. Artists who spend time on details and character design have to make 1000 choices. That's how an art direction is built. By relegating that stuff to genAI, you're letting in a lot of slop.
So yes, NTE won't survive if they'll keep using genAI. Gacha games live and die by art direction.
Not just CZN, Marvel rivals also consistently uses AI in their event art, and many other CN games
A lot of western games are using it in their development processes too with multiple developers admitting to it
We’re gonna see a lot of this exact reaction for the next 5 years on every big launch lol
CZN got a lot of flack on launch and before launch, but the reality is, most of the people who cared already left and moved on, leaving the people who don't really care unless it impacts their enjoyment of the experience.
Also, CZN's a bit smarter about it. After getting so much flack before and on launch, they've been a bit tighter about quality control, so even though the art is still kind of bland and generic (Outside of enemy designs, those were great) it looks like stuff that could be drawn by a skilled human artist, so there's less friction.
Most companies are better at hiding it. Hotta is an exception.
Nikke and CZN (both from Korean companies) are pretty blatant about it, but their player base largely does not care. South Korea is very pro-AI, and while there are some companies that oppose it, it's accepted as something needed for Korea to compete vs. China, the US, etc.
In China, sentiments are generally also pro-technology and pro-AI, but it's a bit more sensitive as China has a youth unemployment problem right now. So companies are not as likely to boast about it. Nonetheless, tons of companies including all of the top gaming companies are actively hiring generative AI talent so it's obvious where the wind is blowing.
In the West, and particularly in the US, there appears to be some sort of industry specific hypocrisy.
Like generative AI technical work (via Claude Code, Codex, etc.) is actively embraced and CEOs across the industry are encouraging all technical work to be done via AI. But in contrast to this, the creative industries are very opposed to AI and a **** storm starts whenever someone high up is accused of using it. Since games are considered a creative industry, generative AI is looked down upon in the Western gaming community, but nobody cares if these games are coded using AI - they just care if the games are voiced, scored, or drawn by AI.
My main issue with the game is the ai art and ai videos it uses. Heck if they wanted to use ai stuff so badly at least do a better job making it convincing, the video with the heist made it look like they are being morphed in the main story.
I hope this game does well cause I don’t have any ill intent towards it. It has potential.
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I'd say this is a much bigger deal than some AI sloppa
but for some reason the mods refused to approve my post about it on this sub
I didn't notice the AI use on the posters and ads until someone pointed it out, but the AI videos are so fucking obvious and look like shit. Every single movie in the theatre is AI, every video ad on billboards is AI, the TV I bought for like 100,000 only plays AI, whenever you do the repeating bank heist mode, it plays an AI cuphead ripoff video. It just looks so bad, I have no idea what they were thinking. They really could have just played like cutscenes or trailers from their other game and it would have been 100% better.
The worst thing is not even AI usage, it's that they blatantly lied about not using it for their "core assets" then proceeded to plaster the game with it in such obvious ways lol.
If they blatantly lied to people's faces like that, who tf knows what they are doing behind the scenes.
Atp it's just a matter of how good they are at hiding their AI use. Most if not all games nowadays use AI at some point. Despite how pro-AI Shift-up CEO is, a lot of Nikke's playerbase are still giving them the benefit of the doubt just because Shift-up is a bit better at hiding the fact that they use AI (and the players are also horny so they don't bother reporting that shit to their fav vtubers).
I was almost okay with NTE using GenAI for small assets like book covers and such (except for the Weathering with You issue which is unacceptable) because they aren't a product actively being sold (example of that would be using GenAI for gacha characters) and because I've heard that Hotta has a precedence of replacing their AI stuff with real art.
But bruh, cs straight up lying about their usage of AI? And to a big CC no less is really cringe.
Ironmouse took sponsorship from Nikke who's dev team were found guilty of rate manipulation and fined by the korean commision. Nikke use more ai than NTE. Nice grandstanding Ironmouse, hope to see you also call out Nikke pmsl.
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u/Mayor_P Waifu > Meta May 06 '26
I am locking this post as there are too many angry arguments and comments are generating too many reports as everyone reports each other's comments. The points have been made.