After backlash over the controversial Stellar Blade: Blood Rain AI music video, Shift Up’s chief technology officer says the studio has been taking concerns “seriously,” and now wants to “make a clear separation” between what it considers “experimental content” and its main “game-related content.”
Following the Stellar Blade sequel’s reveal during Summer Game Fest, an official AI-generated music video starring new protagonist Evie was released and met with immediate vitriol. Shift Up wasn’t attempting to hide anything – fine print at the end of the video stated: “This video was created using the Game resource from Stellar Blade: Blood Rain and regenerated with AI support.”
But honesty wasn’t the concern here. People have many reasons to dislike AI, from its general laziness to the environmental concerns that persist regardless of whether someone is feeding their own work into the machine (it’s a whole other issue if it’s reproducing the work of others). In a new interview with The Gamer, Stellar Blade technical director and Shift Up CTO DongKi Lee has explained why the video was made in the first place and the studio’s thoughts on using the technology moving forward.
“The reason we revealed that music video was to show more of the beauty of Stellar Blade: Blood Rain,” the dev says. “We wanted to show the world view and the character Evie. We just wanted to show a little more of each, and we did that as part of the content.
“But then we do take seriously and importantly what the fans have been saying, and the concerns they have been expressing about the music video, and from now on we definitely want to make a clear separation between the two, like game-related content and what we would call experimental content, like what we are experimenting with,” he continues.
Shift Up CEO Kim Hyung Tae previously responded to the backlash over the music video himself, although perhaps not in the way Stellar Blade fans were hoping for. At the time, he stated that “Evie, the character at the heart of this video, was created from head to toe by our talented artists and modelers through more than a year of dedicated work,” and that “the AI is not creating her from scratch,” but rather “rendering and presenting the character based on the data, designs, and craftsmanship our team created.”
The thing is, as folks pointed out at the time, this was never really the worry. In fact, one of the main sentiments of the initial kickback from the video was the idea that using AI to regurgitate Evie’s design was an insult to the studio’s human artists, and that the company had the talent available to create something like this without turning to the slop machine.
The CTO’s latest comments do, at least, seem a little more open to the negative feedback, but anyone hoping for the studio to drop the technology like it’s a burning turd might still be disappointed.
“AI has a lot of influence and impact on game development,” he continues, adding: “But when we are using certain technologies or tools, what’s important is the direction and purpose they serve. It needs to be used in a way that supports the developers’ creativity, know-how, and skills.
“It should be used as a tool. That’s the direction, and its purpose would be to make a great, high-quality game.”
This sentiment shouldn’t be too surprising, however. The Shift Up CEO previously expressed his belief that AI is a necessary tool for South Korean studios to compete with larger studios in the US and China, so the Stellar Blade creators are clearly in favor of using the tech when it can.