Literally Nobody Asked For This

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #186. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

———

Here’s the Thing is where Rob dumps his random thoughts and strong opinions on all manner of nerdy subjects – from videogames and movies to board games and toys.

———

Everyone’s favorite (that was sarcasm) hype guy, “Dorito Pope,” recently tweeted about how Microsoft made an “AI-generated replica of Quake II that you can play in your browser,” with every frame being generated separately based on what the algorithm thinks the player is doing or looking at. Here’s the painfully obvious thing: This is astronomically fucking stupid on every conceivable level.

Call it bias if you want; Unwinnable unanimously chose to stand against the use of generative AI for any and all work submitted to the magazine, as we all despise it on personal and moral grounds [As such, these pix are all of the 2023 Quake II remaster – Ed] . But that doesn’t make me wrong. Even if you ignore the immense amounts of baggage under the surface – though it’s more like viscous pus constantly bubbling over from geysers as far as the eye can see, really – like the environmental impacts, outright thievery, gleefully firing creatives for shortsighted gains (that always end up biting everyone in the ass, naturally) and the fact that even its proponents admit it’s kinda shit, generating an approximation of Quake II in real time like this is a complete waste of time and resources. And, you know, like, really important environmental resources that had no reason to be burned up for the sake of someone’s pathetic vanity project.

This isn’t like Doom, where it’s become a fairly popular meme to get it running on increasingly absurd platforms. Cramming Doom onto outdated (or even questionably abstract) devices is about seeing just how little hardware and complexity is needed. Generating Quake II over an internet connection one frame at a time is the antithesis of that. But like, in an ignorant and kind of capitalistically evil sort of way.

I really don’t want to ignore the much more pressing issues of this whole thing, seeing as Microsoft itself is proud to admit that every single frame is being generated by what we all keep incorrectly referring to as “artificial intelligence” (it’s just an algorithm – a more complex and less accurate form of predictive text) that wastes a fuckton of energy. But again, even without all of that, this is one of the most absurdly pointless things I’ve ever seen come out of the industry in the past 40+ years. And yes, that includes paying for horse armor.

For one thing, it’s shit. Not in an “Oh this is rough but it just needs time” sort of way, but in a “This barely does what it’s supposed to do, and even then, only for a few seconds” sort of way. It’s a fucking mess. A mess that, as a reminder, is wasting an exponential amount of energy with all that constant computing (and across who knows how many individual browsers as people check it out for themselves).

Then there are the far less pressing concerns, but concerns nonetheless. If it’s generating each frame on the fly, how will it be able to keep up with someone trying to speed through the game? Will it follow the same level layout and use the same enemy placements as the actual game? Hit boxes? Health and ammo management? Sound and music? Hello? Bueller?

Also, I’m really curious to see what the breakdown is between people who are actually excited about this in any way and people who consistently bemoan the need for an internet connection to play particular games. I’m one such bemoaner, of course, but seriously, you have to play it in a browser and Microsoft’s wannabe lemming-brained “AI” is slapping this whole thing together as you play – of course you’ll need to be online for it to function.

This is not “curation,” which many have become increasingly vocal about over the years as more and more companies erase entire parts of their libraries from history. Or buy a company that owns the rights to a property, sit on those rights doing fuck-all with them, then going out of their way to make archiving these games all but impossible. Frankensteining a Cronenbergian amalgamation of what kinda sorta looks like a familiar game, one frame at a time (which means every single person attempting to play gets a separately generated frame) is not “preserving” the game. It’s making a mockery of it – and of the people who take this very important shit seriously.

I’m just . . . so tired . . . Everyone with the ability to think clearly, with even an ounce of empathy and care for anything outside of their personal sphere, knows how harmful this particular grift is. It’s a blatant lie (“just wait six months”); it’s demonstrably causing environmental damage at a point where the world seriously needs to not do that; it steals from artists, musicians, actors, programmers, etc.; and for what?

“Making ____ (drawing, composing, programming, whatever) ‘more accessible?’”

Bullshit.

“It’s just a tool?”

Complete bullshit.

Nobody in the world needs an “AI-generated” Quake II, or any other game, whether it exists already or not. This isn’t just a fool’s game, it’s a dangerous fool’s game. One that we have absolutely no reason to play in the first place. But Microsoft sure is gonna give it a go anyway, huh?

But on top of everything – all the waste and hubris and misplaced confidence and trend-chasing and greed – Microsoft was recently added to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) boycott list in part because it’s using its “AI” tech and Azure cloud services to help Israel with its still-ongoing genocide in Palestine. Microsoft is literally working with the Israeli government, military and prison system knowing how the technology is being used to hurt, torture and murder innocent people. It’s so bad, BDS calls Microsoft “… perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal apartheid regime . . .”

So yeah, fuck this Quake II “AI” abomination. But more than anything, fuck Microsoft for all of its amoral – downright evil, honestly – greed, too.

———

Rob Rich is a guy who’s loved nerdy stuff since the 80s, from videogames to Anime to Godzilla to Power Rangers toys to Transformers, and has had the good fortune of being able to write about them all. He’s also editor for the Games section of Exploits! You can still find him on Bluesky and Mastodon.