In an interview with TheGamer, Lee Dongyi, the technical director of Shift Up Studio, said that he was trying to eliminate negativity in the promotion campaign for the sequel to the Star Blade action game Star Blade: Blood Rain. The studio previously faced harsh criticism from fans for releasing Wanna be in LOVE, a neural network-generated film featuring the protagonist Evie. Viewers do consider this footage to be the clearest example of neurological tilt.
The studio acknowledges the validity of the community’s claims. According to Li Dongyi, the purpose of the film is just to “show the beauty of the world and Ivie’s character.” Now the team plans to strictly separate the official information of the game itself from internal “experiments” to avoid misleading players about the quality of the sequel. The technical director emphasized that the studio has not given up on technology, but only regards AI as an auxiliary tool:
Artificial intelligence has a huge impact on game development. But the goal is important: technology should support developers’ creativity, skills, and expertise, not replace them. Our goal is to make great, high-quality games.
Previously, studio head Kim Hyun-tae defended the video, saying that the 3D model of Evie took the artist more than a year to draw, and the neural network just compiled the completed data. In addition, Kim has repeatedly said it is crucial for Korean studios to master artificial intelligence to make up for labor shortages in competition with Chinese and American giants.