What would otherwise have been a fairly minor announcement is the news that some are old Duke Nukem Games Coming to an Evercade Handheld exploded after it was quickly discovered that the bundle’s promotion contained a slew of horrific machine-generated images.
Above is one of the now-deleted images as first shared by Evercade. It shows Duke standing on top of a pile of…something and firing two big guns at…something else. I know they are a video game publisher and a hardware company, not an art studio, but certainly someone somewhere I stared at this image for more than three seconds because just by looking, you can see at least half a dozen red flags.
Human legs don’t bend like that! Why is there a patch of gray paint between his right arm and the gun? Why does the stock of the gun in his left hand curve around his forearm like that? Where’s his left foot? Why are the flames coming out of the gun bending? What’s going on with his trigger finger??
Even a cursory glance at the portfolio of Oskar Manuel, who is responsible for the plant, should have set off alarm bells. You describe yourself as a “hybrid artist” Her portfolio consists almost entirely of machine-generated imagery.
Following outcry from fans and artists, Evercade’s parent company deleted all promotional material that Manuel had provided (whom they said was “very talented” and “award-winning” in a since-deleted tweet), as well as an apology and a Statement They “remove the graphics where possible” (apparently this graphic was for promotional purposes only and is not used in the games themselves).. A statement from their CEO reads:
Over the last 24 hours we have been overwhelmed with support and excitement over our latest cartridge announcements and our partnership with Gearbox to bring the Duke Nukem franchise to Evercade.
As part of this, an artist was commissioned to produce a main image for the new game Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered, which is being developed by Blaze Entertainment. It’s clear from the reactions on social media that the work on this commission fell short of fans’ expectations and standards due to the artists’ use of AI.
We will promptly remove the artwork where practicable and will in due course announce a replacement order that better meets the expected high standard.
We want to apologize to all of you fans who have been passionate about this and rest assured that we are working to remedy this. We would also like to thank everyone who has worked on the project so far for their contribution.
The speed at which games appear to be captured using AI certainly sucksbut if there’s any consolation, it’s that every time it’s discovered, fans make it clear that it just isn’t good enough.
