When AI reviews videogames, what is even the point?

The swift rebuke of an AI generated review of Resident Evil Requiem is heartening. But the whole fiasco dredges up broader implications for journalism, games and media.

True horror it seems, starts and ends on the internet. Source: Capcom.

Players are in for a good scare when they pick up the latest copy of Resident Evil Requiem. But it turns out the real horror occurred within the first 24 hours of the game’s launch.

In what has to be up there as one of the most dystopian moments ever seen in gaming journalism, long-running UK games website Videogamer published an AI-generated review of the latest in the storied survival horror series amid all the other launch reviews.

It came onto readers’ radar when the review was automatically ported onto Metacritic, a review aggregator that drives significant traffic to websites around the world. Outrage ensued.

It gets worse. The piece is attributed to an AI-generated journalist. Yes, you read that right. Something ripped straight out of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where its main newsreader is revealed to be an AI designed to subtly influence public opinion (sorry for the spoiler there), is now in a rudimentary form, a reality.

To its credit, Metacritic didn’t sit on its hands. Within days, it was removed as part of the site’s AI policy. Surprisingly, so were a number of other reviews from Videogamer, likely also AI-generated, but never flagged to the site.

From a glass half full perspective, the immediate outrage and recoil from audiences globally is a fantastic bellwether on how audiences feel about AI-generated coverage more broadly. This goes well beyond videogame journalism and is something that any newsroom should note.

It makes little sense for work that is taste-oriented and impression-based, such as a review, to be replaced by AI. With videogames, it’s an insult to the often years of work that has gone into creating the title in the first place. It also somewhat offends the intelligence of its readers. Videogamer’s cookie-cutter review of Resident Evil Requiem describes enemies as being part of some kind of “chainsaw cult”.

I’m nearly finished with the game, and can confirm: That’s very much not the case.

This said, the swift rebuke won’t stop AI-generated reviews, or attempts to further undermine videogame journalism with AI.

A study from October last year found that over 50% of all new content on the internet is generated by AI. From a journalism perspective, I’d wager videogame content is at the forefront of this. It’s a high-traffic, high-interest form of media that has essentially ground down its content production costs over time.

A recent extensive investigation from Jackson Ryan for Aftermath delves into this (it’s well worth reading). Videogamer, now owned by Clickout Media, is one of many former online videogame properties converted into content farms to draw eyeballs to gambling content. Australian website GamesHub met a similar fate last year.

Global games journalism: now as run down as the old Raccoon City Police Department building. Source: Capcom.

These sites now heavily leverage AI reporters to populate their pages, attempting to strip out the remaining human cost of videogame journalism entirely. If you were wondering what the worst-case scenario more broadly for journalism and AI looks like, you are looking at it: AI wholesale replacing reporters rather than augmenting them.

All of this underscores why human-led outlets, including this one and many others on this platform, matter.

The challenge, as always, is ensuring writers are remunerated for their work. Especially given there’s currently nothing stopping AI from fast-following human criticism and journalistic work and cherry picking the best parts of it – a question Australia is now actively debating at a policy level.

If Videogamer had waited a day or two, its review could have merged the best insights from everyone else’s coverage and passed them off as its own. That could be its approach going forward.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: does the audience actually care? Those of us who write would like to think so. But are we just the vocal minority? Thanks to the global attention, there’s a reasonable chance that Videogamer’s jargon-laden Resident Evil Requiem monstrosity is its most-read piece to date.

This is an evolving story, that’s for sure. It’s a bit like a boss in Resident Evil: defeated for now, but it’s going to mutate and come back. And who knows what form it’s going to take next.

What do you think about this situation? And the rise of AI and journalism more broadly? Let me know in the comments.