Classic Mobile Game Has Been Hit With AI Writing Accusations

Over the recent years, AI has started to become a major player in the development of the video games we know and love. It’s certainly a fair assumption that most of us hate the concept of what Artificial Intelligence brings with it to the games industry and mostly, what it takes away. But, it seems as though it’s unfortunately not going anywhere fast, and we’ve already seen the likes of Nvidia’s AI tool for the beloved game Portal receive major backlash.

Now, a classic game brought to mobile devices, published by Tencent Games and developed by its subsidiary TiMi Studios, has been accused of using AI to describe the shooter on its homepage, leaving players confused about its purpose.

The beloved and classic Metal Slug series has made its way to IOS, Android and PC this week to give a new generation of players that retro vibe in a bid to keep the genre alive. Once seen on many arcade machine screens, Metal Slug transformed itself into Metal Slug: Awakening by revamping everything that has kept the franchise so popular over the last 28 years into the palm of fan’s hands.

Awakening brings a new 2.5D take on Namco’s classic arcade game, but instead of rejoicing, many fans can only feel disappointed by what looks to be the use of AI on the mobile game’s homepage. In the ‘About Metal Slug’ description, the continuous use of words such as “run n’ gun” is repeated several times in such a short paragraph and the same can be said for the usage of “Metal Slug”, again, repeated countless times needlessly. It’s certainly giving off AI vibes and honestly, not very good ones at that.

Now, of course, this could be an honest description and, somehow, it’s been lost in translation, or it’s some kind of badly put-together SEO ploy, but fans aren’t buying it. “Someone asked Open AI to make them an SEO-rich description on metal slug, its developer, and its genre…chatbot pulled the old keyword stuff.” said one unamused user on Reddit. “Quick question: is Metal Slug a “run n’ gun” game?” replied another sarcastic response, while another user said they would bypass the game entirely due to its alleged use of AI. “AI makes it easy to identify low-effort games to pass up.”

Some Redditors are even going as far as saying that not only is the description AI-generated, but so is the artwork. “Is the image AI generated as well? Because the door looks weird.” and “Guy on the left only has one leg, and the play button isn’t aligned with the middle of the screen (not to mention play buttons don’t belong on arcade games but on video players). Definitely gives AI vibes”

The developers of Metal Slug: Awakening, TiMi Studios, haven’t commented on these allegations so at present. that’s all there are, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that it’s just a case of bad editing on their behalf and not the use of a really poor attempt at AI to cut corners.

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