Twice, in the span of a week, I heard the phrase “the genie is out of the bottle” spoken by two different coworkers. Of course they were talking about AI. The idiom is clear to most people with a Disney-level understanding of the genie myth: a powerful force or idea has been unleashed, it’s unstoppable, it can’t be undone.

Admittedly my understanding of the story isn’t far beyond that same Disney-level, though mine is filtered through the zeitgeist of 1990s Hollywood and television. I had enough of a superficial understanding to know there was more nuance to it though I too remained naive. Hearing that expression made me want to clear that naiveté and, thanks to the internet of old, read a version of The Fisherman and the Jinni in classic unbound pure HTML.

There’s a couple points that I was dense about. The first is that, angry at the millennium of imprisonment, the genie did not grant wishes but, instead, chose death to its liberator¹. The Djinn’s only mercy was that the liberator would have a choice in how he died.

Faced with this fate, the fisherman that discovered the bottle uses his wits, and the Djinn’s hubris, to trick the Djinn back into the bottle. The very thing the idiom says can not be done.

Those that speak of AI’s inevitability have a lot to gain from it. They too can be easily tricked. In a just world the CEOs releasing this genie upon us all would have a free choice of their own.

I’ve always been to the far periphery of GDC. I’ve watched some of the talks that trickle out publicly, I am aware of other presentations and goings-on, but I’ve never attended so the internals of the conference are under a fog of war. The Verge summarizes an aspect of this year’s GDC that I too felt from a distance: AI was everywhere at gaming’s big developer conference — except the games. I see this top down AI push coming from the tech-cos, Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc, who seem to use GDC as a way to legitimize what they’re doing, while the actual game studios, and especially the people doing the creative work, are massively against it.

The majority of game players despise it. When the AI does dribble into a big game it causes such a scandal online that studios often apologize or find excuses (“oh it was an asset that wasn’t meant to go out”) and fix it. 

There’s a canyon wide disconnect between the creator class and the executive class. “Man up” says a former Blizzard and Microsoft exec. Microsoft Exec Asks: Why Aren't More People Impressed With AI? Microsoft CEO Begs Users to Stop Calling It "Slop". The level of defensiveness from the execs pushing this on people is so, so telling. Meanwhile, employees actively hate it. Myself included.

The battle between those making and those taking is particularly pronounced in video games because they exist at that cliche intersection of culture and technology, artistry and capitalism. And right now those that are making are losing. Layoffs at Epic. Layoffs at Crystal Dynamics. Ubisoft. Red Storm. Even the ones at Meta, at the studios it purchased to make content for its future hardware, which orphaned entire communities: The People Left Behind by the Metaverse².

That’s why I admire those in the video game industry trying to make it better and resisting against this shit. A lot of tech and mar-tech companies are accepting the slop, whether the employees want it or not, with their agents, and “second brains”, and openclaws, and breaking things in the process. I’ve seen things, man. Idiocies I can’t begin to explain. 

The embracing of craft amongst game developers, in the face of all the above, gives me hope in the chaos. The threat is there, for jobs, for the livelihoods of many, but the genie can be fooled again. Throw that bottle into the sea from whence it came.

1. "But the full century went by and, when no one set me free, I entered upon the second fivescore saying, 'Whoso shall release me, for him I will open the hoards of the earth.' Still no one set me free, and thus four hundred years passed away. Then quoth I, 'Whoso shall release me, for him will I fulfill three wishes.' Yet no one set me free. Thereupon I waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and said to myself, 'Whoso shall release me from this time forth, him will I slay, and I will give him choice of what death he will die.'

2. Look. I know everyone is clowning on the “metaverse”, justifiably so, but Horizon as a platform was materially no different than an XBox or Switch and did have an ecosystem of small developers that have been completely screwed by this. The big failure is that Meta didn’t treat it as a platform like an XBox or Switch, but instead as a gateway to some fantastical future everything space. Meta’s lack of strategic vision for content has effectively alienated a community of small devs.

Related Links

When someone with journalistic connections writes about video games, as is the case with Keza MacDonald’s Super Nintendo (which I need to pick up one day), it always results in publications not known for writing about video games having to acknowledge their existence:

• Owen Hatherley, Consoling — Sidecar | New Left Review

• The Origins of One of the Most Beloved Video Games of All Time | Literary Hub

Expedition 33 : Between Nationalism, Misoginy and Fear of the Strange(r).

This critique of Expedition 33, last year’s darling, by a French YouTuber has been linked a bunch. For all its reported faults it’s still a game I hope to play one day.

The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you

Year old video about the chess video game on the seat back entertainment units on Delta flights which, by this guys calculations, has an ELO in the 2350 range.

Call of Duty co-founder claims Activision put "very awkward pressure" on Infinity Ward to make a game about Iran invading Israel | Eurogamer.net

Listen to this

YAAND is the project of composer and intermedia artist Anda Kryeziu. Born in Kosovo and now based in Berlin, Kryeziu works across experimental electronic music, blurring the boundaries between concert performance, installation-like environments, and club culture.

IYKYK | YAAND

from the album Body in Space

If you paid attention to my previous recommendations and listened to the first five seconds of the above, you will instantly know this is definitely for me. I recommend good headphones with a strong bass response, volume up. The rest of the album is great, though this track in particular has a kind of dark sexual energy that propels the track through some deep corridors.

I don’t know man I’m trying,

sometimes.