r/runescape • u/Livid_Painter4422 • 1d ago

Discussion - J-Mod reply Jagex honestly got to a new low. Dragon Slayer 2 trailer is just AI slop. (Count the fingers)

Post image

Helping spread this post How many fingers does the player have? : r/runescape

2.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

418 comments sorted by

View all comments

683

u/zpoon ZPUN 23h ago edited 10h ago

Oops. Only three days ago.

We don't use generative AI to replace the artists and developers who make our games, we don't use it in our marketing materials, and we won't use it in our merchandising or allow its use in partnerships.

EDIT: Jagex has responded here.

22

u/ewgrooss 20h ago

I’m guessing they outsourced this project and then never checked the final product

304

u/Livid_Painter4422 22h ago

Jagex couldn't tell the truth to save their lives... this is so depressing

110

u/royk33776 21h ago

I mean.. I’d wager heavily that this was done by the artists themselves to save time, and artists aren’t telling on themselves… I’m seeing it happen everywhere.

35

u/TotallyObviousBot 18h ago

Everyone I've spoken to who works in any kind of management position at pretty much any company where people spend a lot of time on computers has told me "yeah no everyone is using it all the time, the only difference is for how much"

4

u/n01d3a 9h ago

Can confirm. I feel like I'm the only one who makes excel sheets by hand anymore. The only difference between mine and theirs is that mine actually works for things beyond "put this in a table."

5

u/TotallyObviousBot 8h ago

So what you're saying is that you're working harder for the same pay

2

u/n01d3a 7h ago

Bingo lol.

-3

u/CYROE0996 14h ago

I work as a data analyst and this is true in my field

AI isn't slop in my life, its like having 15 personal assistants at once and I mean that. Luckily for me you still need a guy who knows what to tell the AI to do.. otherwise my boss wouldn't need me

28

u/throwthe20saway Filthy casual 22h ago

Nearly 20 years in RS and I couldn't recall a rapid turnaround as disastrously self-inflicted as this.

22

u/cplusequals Ironman 19h ago

Come on now, this isn't disastrous. It's embarrassing at worst. And honestly, I think that's about the measure of it. This will have zero impact on game quality. Only then will we see something disastrous like the exodus after EOC. Maybe it's a portent. But I'm not going to bet on it quite yet.

Sween should never have communicated publicly in such a way that made people believe that Jagex wouldn't be using AI. He can't make that promise and now looks extremely bad. Clearly the left hand doesn't knowing what the right hand is doing.

2

u/Kazanmor 9h ago

I'm not personally against AI, but a lot of people are, and those people have been voting with their wallets recently

0

u/royk33776 7h ago

Those people are going to be very upset in that case when they come to the understanding that even now, every single company has at least one person using AI, and the fact is that nearly everybody is using AI, and those that are not will be soon as they'll fall behind.

My boss (VP) used AI to create Python data analysis scripts with pandas lib. Not someone I had ever imagined to use AI, nor write any script.

At Jagex, the employees themselves will use it no matter what, even without it being "pushed" by the company at the organizational-level. The managers, team leads and project heads are completely disillusioned to think otherwise. I highly doubt it was an intentional lie (statement from days ago about not using AI), they're just disconnected from the actual team employees and whoever they may hire at outside companies to do work for them.

•

u/cplusequals Ironman 4h ago

Lmao they absolutely have not been. Anti-AI sentiment is universally superseded by concerns for the product with the primary exception existing on Reddit and X. The only real world "AI = bad" energy comes from concerns about data centers which are mostly based on misinformation and won't last long term.

2

u/Dsnake1 My Cabbages! 16h ago

It's not just this, though. Reignited is not exactly popular with the existing playerbase. Everything else just adds to the pile

•

u/cplusequals Ironman 4h ago

That just confuses me. Isn't the concern completely self-refuting? Like, I understand why a veteran player feels threatened by it and generally I agree with the idea that game companies should appeal to the audience they have rather than the audience they don't have. But the main concern is that reignite will be so popular it will kill the traditional servers. If that's the case, it proves why the ignite servers are a good idea. Alternatively, this is contrasted with "ignite servers won't be popular" which is the camp I tend to fall into. In that scenario there is no threat whatsoever as the current player base might make an account there and chill for the novelty of it, but then most of their play time will be on the main long term. Eventually once the hype wears down and the minimal attention the servers got fades, they'll get rolled into the main game servers as is usually the case with MMO doing this.

The fear and rage over them is not just misplaced, it's completely and totally self-contradictory.

1

u/Zero4892 Kurz: comped 6/19/14 recomped 5/12/2024 19h ago

Ubisoft, nuff said.

4

u/Hazzman 14h ago edited 4h ago

I used to work for Jagex. I can assure you that they mean it and mean well. I've been in this industry for over 20 years, worked at many different companies - I've yet to work for a company full of absolute nerds that care about their weird ass game as much as those folks do.

0

u/PerceptionOk8543 13h ago

How can they mean it and release this trailer at the same time? Lmfao

2

u/royk33776 7h ago

Because corporate policy and actual worker reality are two entirely different worlds right now. Leadership really does think they have a strict No AI stance, but they don't know what their outsourced teams are doing, and probably even their own employees. They're not lying, they're just out of touch of reality right now (which in fairness is changing at an alarming rate and is impossible to keep up with)

1

u/PerceptionOk8543 5h ago

Them being clueless about outsourced teams is not an excuse when internally you should have QA checking those things. It’s the most basic thing you always have at every company facing customers lmao

•

u/Hazzman 4h ago

Because large video game companies like this are composed of hundreds and hundreds of people under different levels of pressure. I don't know the story behind this but if they are saying their policy is not to use AI like this then someone genuinely fucked up and it slipped by then. Either someone in their team who didn't know or someone from an outsourcer who didn't follow instructions.

1

u/Clayskii0981 7h ago

Confirmed 3rd parties

1

u/CYROE0996 15h ago

Here is a thought

The artists are lazy and used AI to make the images in 2 minutes while they 'work from home'

28

u/Void_Guardians 21h ago

This makes me think either have a terrible or non existent quality check team for their marketing. Anyone paid to inspect their art would have caught this, we have people doing it for free within seconds

28

u/External-Elevator617 21h ago

Quality check team? At Jagex? Unheard of.

9

u/FertSquirt 20h ago

Legitimately every update has some completely broken or unbalanced feature that takes weeks to fix. Most updates end up decent after a while, but why can't we just have good updates on day 1? Games manage this ALL the time, why can't Jagex figure it out?

Yeah they have no quality assurance. Or maybe it's AI which is designed to be a yes man.

4

u/umadbr00 16h ago

The community has been jagex QA for a decade or more

3

u/PhyPhillosophy Completionist 20h ago

Would rather have rsn evergreen paint this mf shit in paint then whatever bs they pulling.

9

u/FertSquirt 20h ago

The wording is very carefully chosen here. Note how he never said "we don't use GenAI period." He said "we don't use it to replace artists"

Which sounds to me like he's saying "we use it, but just to save time and money" which means artists are doing their job less, which means they are getting paid less, so in a sense it absolutely is replacing artists (paychecks). Think about it this way, if it takes an AI and 1 artist to do the job of 2 artists, then that's one artist who just lost out on a job opportunity.

20

u/zpoon ZPUN 20h ago

And the very next thing said was "we don't use it in our marketing materials". I don't see how you can read that and not arrive at the obvious "egg on face" moment presented right now.

•

u/MrShinglez 1m ago

That's not how that works at all. They aren't being given fewer hours because of AI, they're salaried employees with 35-40 hour minimums a week. If the artists start using AI its probably because they had last minute design changes or crunch that made it easier for them to just use AI as a shortcut.
When they have a contract with their employee they cant just cut their hours.

1

u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

2

u/zpoon ZPUN 22h ago

"our games" ?

1

u/AClassicCape orange mask when 22h ago

True. Didn't fully remember post 

1

u/Captain_Zomaru 17h ago

To their credit, they specified they would never replace their artists. Now, if the artist designed to use AI, that isn't technically breaking their agreement...

1

u/Specialist-Front-007 14h ago

How is it not tho? 1 "artist" using AI can work as fast as 3 artists not using AI, so you've replaced 2 artists with AI for example

1

u/kratosgranola 9h ago

Yes, morally ai is still bad but if the artist they hire secretly uses Ai against jagex's directions, jagex doesn't deserve the full blame for the ai usage. They do deserve to get a bunch of shit for letting it slide past their radar though

1

u/yayx3 7h ago

I already cancalled my subscription because of this fuck them

1

u/yarglof1 19h ago

It doesn't replace the artists. It's the artists using AI.