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.
Quality control, for one.
Artifacts like this would be unnaceptable if they were from CGI or whatever, but somehow generative models get a pass? That makes no sense to me, yet it happens all the time; heavily distorted output somehow meets the bar for publishing.
Honestly it has nothing to do with “AI.” It would be worth calling out however it was made. But for some reason generative diffusion models always seem to lower the standards of output for user.
If it was indistinguishable from CGI and fit the rest of the hand-painted style, the argument would be very different, IMO.
Totally fair, I’ll admit I didnt actually see the cutscene.
Sort of highlights the chasm between actual human gamers, the studios, and also the media ostensibky reporting on it that washes the story to the point they’ve made the customers the villain and leaves you with the seed of “its not that bad” I guess
Scary times
Well it is actually complicated. It appears the tiny studio ran out of time/budget trying to get usable CGI, so they did some diffusion real-quick as an act of desperation, and got slop as a result.
Not everyone is exactly up to speed on diffusion, either. I bet they Googled and used the first video diffusion service they found, and hence got bad results, but its also fair to criticize them for publishing them. They either didnt bother to proof the output, or they did and knowingly published anyway.
Im not sure anyone is the villain here. But I dont like people leaning into outrage culture, and trying to paint it as black-and-white.
It kinda feels like the game customers are being subtly shamed for having a justified reaction to something departing from what they were initially sold from the demos or whatever and that they had the abillity to immediately correct it the approaching weekend.
Its like, if it was possible then why not do it. Anyway, they seem to have at least sort of learned the hard way, hopefully they have a decent redemption arc and this can be a positive lesson to the industry maybe.
I mean, the customers are the ones with the purchasing power here, and most of the shame was put on the studio.