Destructoid Checkpoint: Bright Sides

Next week’s Destructoid Checkpoint is almost certainly going to be dedicated to hard realities and breaking news around layoffs in the gaming industry, so this week I am choosing ot highly indie success and pushback against AI, welcome good news in the ever-turbulent seas of gaming.

Meccha Chameleon is a runaway success

Let’s start with some good news this week, about the little indie game that is currently dominating the Steam charts. In Meccha Chameleon, you play as a little white blobby figure that needs to run and hide in a level, trying your best to ensure the player hunting everyone down can't find you.

Where it gets interesting is that you can paint on your character, so you can stand against a wall and try to paint yourself to match it perfectly, tricking the hunter into never really seeing you. It’s a unique twist on a hide-and-seek style game that has found a passionate audience.

Meccha Chameleon launched on June 10th with a peak of 20,000 players, and at the time of writing, it has an all-time high of 244,731 players, a record it will almost certainly beat this weekend. It is number five in Steam's list of top daily users, number two in the top sellers, and number one on wishlists. By every metric, a tremendous success.

The best part is that the game was made in two months by a single person. We have seen the indie space produce a lot of wildly successful games over recent years, and an argument could be made that talented people with fun ideas have never had access to better tools and education resources to make the games that they wish to play. 

It does beg the eternal question, however, which is why some succeed while others fail? In many ways, game development is akin to alchemy. There are lots of people who claim to know how to do things the right way, but only a blessed few seem capable of turning lead into gold.

Unfortunately, some people are willing to turn to the dark side to try to find their success.

40% of games released on Steam last week used generative AI

Recently, Steam has added a feature that allows developers to self-tag their games as having used generative AI, allowing customers to make informed decisions about what kind of development practices they support. 

Last week, nearly 40% of the 300 new games uploaded to Steam openly tagged themselves as having used AI-generated assets. As such, it seems likely that AI-generated assets are already far more prevalent in new titles than you may first suspect, and it seems likely that this cohort is going to grow larger and larger over time. 

And this is not and will not be limited to smaller titles. According to Stephen Totilo, Sony has updated their business environment and strategy to include a portion on AI, which states, “Sony is utilizing AI to unleash the creativity of studios and further enhance the PlayStation experience.” 

According to the document, Sony sees many ways that AI will fit into its future. They state their aim to improve productivity through the use of AI-powered tools, personalize and recommend content for individual users in the PlayStation Store, push visual fidelity forward, and deliver higher-quality gameplay experiences through continued investments in AI and machine learning.  

It is really up to you to decide what alarm bells go off when you think about that. How long do we think it will take before they flip over into using AI-generated assets, and how do we think those models are going to be trained, and where will that data come from?

I am somewhat heartened by the fact that the internet seems to truly despise AI, and pro-AI groups, companies, and people seem to endlessly self-sabotage by claiming remarkable things that end up being lies, and producing total garbage which they then peddle as if it’s a lost piece by Da Vinci. When the biggest companies on the planet keep failing to find any real profitability through AI, and consistent brick walls when it comes to copyright law around generative AI seem to be keeping us pretty safe, for now.

Here is hoping that it lasts.

What’s happening, Destructoid?

Luci Kelemen dives into Earthworm Jim 3D, 27 years after that most terrible game was released. It was trash then, and it’s trash now. – “Sometimes, games come into your life at the wrong time. Maybe you are too young, too old, too busy, too preoccupied to appreciate them for what they are. Those are the games worth giving another try a few years or even decades down the line to see if your experience has changed. And then there’s Earthworm Jim 3D.”

Overwatch has a new character, a hot robot lady. Don’t worry, though, Scott Duwe has the lowdown on the lore that explains it all. – “First off, yes, Shion is an Omnic, despite her human-like face, which devs confirmed to me is a mask. Lead narrative designer Miranda Moyer explained in an interview last week that Shion is “very, very heavily modified to have the appearance of more of a human” compared to her fellow Omnics like Zenyatta, Ramattra, B.O.B., or Bastion. And there are reasons for it.“

Andrej Barovic spent some time with Empulse, a game that claims to have what Titanfallers crave. I’m not convinced anything will ever match the original Titanfall, but Andrej seems to have had some fun. – “Moving fast and unpredictably is key to Empulse‘s formula. There are bombs to increase your speed, wall-running is usually faster than going over the ground, and there are boosts around the maps to propel you forward. Sliding and slide-canceling are crucial, and moving in a way where your opponent won’t be able to take you down easily is the name of the game.”

And that’s it for this week.