Pragmata's New York Was Made by Humans to Look AI-Generated
Look how the tables have turned.
Capcom
With companies trying to cut costs by giving tasks to AI, it's surprising to see something completely different: Pragmata's New York City, a "mix of various cultures, like Madrid or Seoul," was "painstakingly" created by human developers to intentionally look AI-generated, according to the game's director Cho Yonghee and producer Naoto Oyama.
Pragmata is a sci-fi adventure focusing on an astronaut and a young android making their way through the lunar research station. This New York is a 3D-printed not-quite-copy, controlled by a nefarious AI.
“For Pragmata, we set the premise as ‘a fake New York generated by AI,’” said Cho (via Automation). “When familiar locations appear, players can relate more easily. On top of that, to make it clear that this isn’t the real New York, we wanted something slightly distorted.”
“It mirrors reality, but its unique appeal comes from the setting errors and how they feel out of place, such as taxis sinking into floors, or buses sprouting from walls. Although the premise is that it generated by AI, actually, our human developers painstakingly worked to incorporate mechanisms that express this AI-like uncanny feel,” Oyama added.
Capcom
Interestingly, making AI errors is no easy task: it required careful consideration and balancing to make the visuals interesting but not too distracting.
“Distortion is when something takes a shape that people have never seen before, and things unseen before are considered unique. But if the shapes are too unusual, players might think they’re related to puzzles or that the terrain has some hidden meaning. Balancing distortion to be both unique and merely background was difficult,” Cho explained.
Capcom
Pragmata offers other cities “somewhere else on Earth,” which you will see when the game gets released on April 17 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
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