Ah, yes. The dream of procedural content generation. Even BioWare went through several iterations of this: “what if we didn’t need every conversation to be bespoke?” Unlimited playtime with dialogue being procedurally created alongside procedural quests!
Each time, the team collectively believed - believed down at their CORE - that this was possible. Just within reach. And each time we discovered that, even when the procedural lines were written by human hands, the end result once they were assembled was… lackluster. Soulless.
Was it the way the lines were assembled? Did we just need more lines? I could easily see a team coming to the conclusion that AI could generate lines specific to the moment as opposed to generic by necessity… an infinite monkeys answer to a content problem, right? Brilliant!
In my opinion, however, the issue wasn’t the lines. It was that procedural content generation of quests results in something shaped like a quest. It …
“Metal Gear Solid 2” would proceed at a smooth pace up until its launch in November of 2001. At that time, I was also engaged in promotional-related activities for the game. The depiction of game’s themes and its numerous similarities with the real-world events on September 11 rendered it unfit for release at the time. After consulting with lawyers, the end result was that the game required revisions in 300 spots. It goes without saying that we were crisis mode and it was threatening the release and sale of the game.
I was called in to speak with the board of directors and after explaining the story details everyone’s facial expression had a look of “This is not good.” Since the plan for the game was to have a worldwide release the idea of shelving the project altogether would have a tremendous impact in terms of business.
I thought to myself, “The game shouldn’t be released at this period in time. I have no other choice but to take …
Copied from: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/13wjkis/valve_has_blocked_ability_to_access_or_download/
de_voyna is map published by Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.
At first look it looks like a normal defusal map, but it contains a hidden room which shows uncensored information about the war in Ukraine. 3kliksphilip made video about it when it was released; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLcpNHnh_zo
Now Helsingin Sanomat has learned that Russian IP addresses cannot no longer see the map in Workshop, and they cant access it or download it. Meaning that Valve has blocked access to it from Russian IP addresses.
HS asked Valve for comments, but at least at the time of writing this, Valve are yet to answer.
Article in Finnish; https://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000009623031.html