NTE_WL

NTE Drama I’m writing this post because of the massive number of DMs from players asking for refunds over claims that the game was made with AI. We need to clarify a few points, as the situation is escalating quite a bit. The game wasn’t made with a simple ChatGPT prompt like “make me a game, please.” It was created by programmers, musicians, voice actors, artists, writers, and many other staff members who have been working on it for years. If it were truly a soulless project in such a competitive industry, it simply wouldn’t stand out the way it has. We can’t deny that AI may have been used for certain types of assets that do not represent the final product, but that still doesn’t fully address the underlying issue. As for an official statement from Hotta Studio, we have already reached out and are currently waiting for a response. This may take some time, as it is currently Golden Week in China, which includes several non-working holidays. Regarding the sponsorship situation and the denial of AI use, it’s important to clarify that each department operates independently. This falls under the marketing department’s responsibility in terms of communication with influencers, and the situation was not handled with complete transparency. We are currently awaiting an official statement from the staff regarding the controversy that has emerged. The situation is delicate. While the issue originated in Asia and was actually received fairly positively there, it has now escalated to the point where forums in China and Japan are discussing the controversy being stirred up by the West over what many consider to be a minor issue. Many influencers are protesting and have stopped creating content, which worries players who are genuinely enjoying the game, as they fear this situation could negatively affect its future. Let’s hope for the best.

Hey, I wanna talk a bit about NTE and the AI things we found in it, might be a long post sry teehee Just wanna start by saying that for now I will continue to play the game and I will give my reasons So the problem is that genAI has been used in some of the ads you can find in game in the town, on buildings, etc I already saw those ads during the beta but I was told those were just placeholders that would be replaced with actual artwork So, to sum up, they used GenAI as a draft for certain details of the city Now that the game has been released, I’ve noticed as a beta player that some of the genAI "arts" has been removed from the game, but sadly not all of it, even tho it's small details, it's still a problem for me So I had the chance to give direct feedback to a staff member, and things are looking good for the future, so I'm going to wait and see I was also told that GenAI wasn't used for the main parts of the game, such as the characters, the story, etc Next, I’d like to talk about the support they give to artists, Content Creators, etc, through NTE Support that people didn’t mention in their posts For each event leading up to the game's release and for the release itself: - They commissioned a large number of artists and cosplayers to promote the game - For the game, they hired real voice actors in several different languages (compared to some recent games) - They hired singers for the music in all the trailers and PVs they produced - They have a program to support content creators and artists, even the smallest ones - For the art part, they held plenty of fan art contests with prizes I personally never seen before Of course, you might say that all the points I mentioned above are normal for a video game, but unfortunately that’s becoming less and less the case, most companies use genAI to save money, and it’s becoming the norm when it shouldn’t be Just because you don’t see an image of a character with six fingers in your favorite game doesn’t mean they aren’t using it behind the scenes That’s why I plan to keep playing the game for now, they’ve provided a lot of support to artists in general and I don’t want to badmouth the developers, their art team, etc for something that must have been decided by higher-ups who wanted to save a little money And also knowing that it will be replaced by real art, hopefully soon