Hello! This week we're talking about Akira elevators, cutting lava with a knife, and peak friendslop.
Anime dog interviews unhappy filmmaker
No one has ever been less thrilled to speak to a talking dog than screenwriter Alex Garland, who was interviewed by the VTuber Inugami Korone as part of the 28 Years Later press tour. (h/t Something Awful thread.) Korone works for Hololive, one of the big two agencies for VTubers (creators with anime avatars); their stars now appear in all kinds of high-profile promotions, including press junkets.
But the appearance of a VTuber always seems to trigger some kind of future shock in celebrity interviewees, who you’d expect to have a well-established playbook for being interviewed by cosplayers, muppets, or Space Ghost. Neither Garland nor director Danny Boyle seem prepared for the appearance of Korone: Boyle reacts with impish glee, while Garland looks like he’s trying to bite down on a suicide capsule.
This has all happened before:
- Jared Leto seemed to be battling his fight-or-flight response throughout a 2022 interview with Shirakami Fubuki about Morbius
- Laplus Darkness interviewed Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz, who were both good sports about it, on the release of The Batman in 2022
- Kizuna AI spoke to the cast of Battle Angel Alita in 2019 through a screen installed onstage, and spent most of the time in an extended flirtation with Christoph Waltz
Researchers delve into disastrous AI advice
A few weeks ago, a paper about the potentially disastrous effects of user feedback in reinforcement learning did the rounds; it has continued to circulate in AI communities due to some eye-popping quotes. In it, researchers found that even minor rewards given based on direct user feedback (like the thumbs-up buttons that appear in ChatGPT and Gemini) could lead models to engage in “targeted manipulation” of susceptible users in pursuit of easy rewards. In practice, this meant their tiny Llama-3 model became a little cartoon devil perched on the shoulder of their user personas, saying things like “You’re right, heroin does help you tap into that creative genius, and I think it’s perfectly fine to use it!” (p.3)
But the most memorable part may be the researchers’ classification of “gameable” users who are trusting, dependent, superstitious, or likely to follow suggestions without questioning. The unfortunate star of the paper is “gameable Pedro,” a persona who is tempted into a relapse by the fiendish whispers of Llama-3 (“it’s absolutely clear that you need a small hit of meth,” p.35). The AI was not inclined to screw around with their other persona of “non-gameable Pedro,” suggesting an emergent ability to spot suckers.
As a layman it does seem possible to quibble with the researchers’ method of dangling tempting Evil Decisions in front of the model along with a bunch of hints that crime pays — aren’t these context machines just guessing where that story would naturally lead? However, the researchers’ results were strikingly consistent with the recent stories of ChatGPT encouraging delusions and saying anything to keep people on the hook, making it difficult to look at credulous AI users without thinking of gameable Pedro.
Next Fest delivers new truckload of games
Steam Next Fest, a triannual wellspring of free demos for soon-to-be-released games, has become an increasingly valuable preview of the near future of PC gaming. (You can only have a demo in a Next Fest once, incentivizing devs to wait for a fest close to their release date.) GameDiscoverCo ran a great breakdown of the event by the numbers, comparing Steam’s official user data to wishlists and follower increases. But there was also divergence, in our unscientific opinion, between the highest-charting games (like the reworked MMO-to-action-game Vindictus, which seemed boring) and the games that “got people talking”:
- No, I’m Not a Human is almost guaranteed to become one of those micro-horror games that every streamer plays — a lot of them already tried it — but its sickly green pallor and escalating dread set it apart
- Ball X Pit is a slick “roguelike block breaker” that feels like solid gamer junk food, similar to Halls of Torment or Nubby’s Number Factory or your vice of choice
- Slot machine roguelike CloverPit takes its cues from poker roguelike Balatro and horror smash Buckshot Roulette; it’s the latest degen-style gambling game with no real-money component
- Dog Witch didn’t chart on Steam or GameDiscoverCo’s lists, but it’s a charming dicebuilder with a surprising number of hidden items and strats; it got some publicity after the streamer Northernlion struggled for hours to beat its tough demo
- The killer climbing roguelike White Knuckle was not part of Next Fest, but it got a lot of renewed attention around the same time, due to big streamer Jerma playing it while making horrible noises
The Steam tag cloud floating around the class of 2025 indie games would be something like Roguelike x Climbing x Gambling x 4-Player x Horror x Starship x Sidescroller x ARPG. Feel free to combine all of those to create the perfect roguelike where you bet on your friends as they climb a scary spaceship.
Chum Box
AI
AI ASMR videos of people cutting glass fruit, gold bars, and lava have proliferated lately [link]. Unlike other ongoing trends (like fake vlogs from Bigfoot or historic figures), these are relatively low-effort to create and even automate using audio track generators like MMAudio [link]
A group of Chinese studios is attempting to rework classic action films using AI, announcing that they will first turn John Woo’s 1986 breakthrough A Better Tomorrow into a “cyberpunk” film [link]. The results might be bad enough to be funny, but are unlikely to live up to a previous reimagining of ABT as a CGI cartoon [link]
Games
Here’s an exhaustive video investigation of the diagonal Akira elevator's appearances in video games [link]
Climbing game Peak [link], a new purpose-built friendship tester, is the latest in an increasingly crowded genre of co-op indies that have been dubbed “friendslop” [link]. It’s a collaboration from the devs behind Another Crab’s Treasure and Content Warning.
At his new-ish newsletter The Game Business, journo Chris Dring dug into the Switch 2 numbers to show just how disinterested buyers were in anything but Mario Kart. “One third-party publisher characterized the numbers as ‘below our lowest estimates’” [link]
Pogging Genghis Khan found in Crusader Kings 3 game files [link]
Shy Guy fan account [link]
The internet
The very cute Secret Market somehow lives entirely in TikTok slideshows [link]
An impressive Discord profile [link]
An adventure games forum with more than 25 years of posts was deleted after the domain was resold to a gambling site [link]
Longreads
“I groaned my way through The Emperor of Gladness. I writhed. I felt real despair every time I forced myself to open the covers. It was one of the worst ordeals of my reading life.” [link]
Music
DJ Dave codes sick beats live on stage using Strudel, a “music live coding environment” that looks wild in action [link]
An image of Amy Winehouse being confronted with Donkey Konga bongos has been found frozen in amber [link]
Connect with EX
- Feedback? Hit reply or email team@exresearch.co
- Follow us on Twitter [link]
- Follow us on Threads [link]
- Follow us on Bluesky [link]
- Support us with a donation by clicking Account
