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Two nominations for Kristal Piksel 2023

Our two games, Pawn of the Dead and Omniscient God, are nominees for Kristal Piksel 2023 Awards!

While Pawn of the Dead was released for PC and iOS before the submission deadline of Kristal Piksel 2021, the Nintendo Switch port by Forever Entertainment was released afterwards. Hence, it could be a nominated for Best Console Game this year, not the year when it won Best Modern Adaptation award.

Omniscient God is a short game initially developed for Epic MegaJam 2023. A walking simulator/adventure game that focuses on a sci-fi/horror story. Nominated for Best Narrative.

These games are nominated alongside successful titles from other Turkish studios. Great to see how the Turkish indie game scene prospers.

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New beginnings

We are shelving Presence, the one we were making this year, and start a new game project.

Presence would be a game that you could talk (with your own voice) with randomized spirits powered by ChatGPT. The system did really work.

But at some point, we needed to discard ChatGPT (or any other LLMs). Well, it was possible to create dialogues for spirits with pre-determined questions and answers, but the game became rather bland without its USP.

It’s necessary not to fall in love with your projects and know when to shelve.

I talked about why ChatGPT was discarded in this blog post in this September, by the way.

About our new project (a multiplayer horror game), I’ll start sharing content once it reaches a mature phase.

Stay tuned!

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Some thoughts about LLM’s use in games

“I believe AI will be a part of the future, and believe me, we are already in the future,” I said in April 2023, at the beginning of an LLM based game’s development. It was going to be a Steam game which you could talk with an LLM-powered entity with your own voice.

Well, the system is already developed and working, thanks to ChatGPT and some Unity integrations. But I decided to discontinue LLM feature of the game a few weeks ago after some uncertainties at that time, like Steam’s approach to ChatGPT. Would Steam allow our game? After reading this thread in Reddit, I got certain that I made the correct call.

Honestly, I was feeling like an AI-bro during that R&D, especially when I found myself at the side of the supporters of AI “art” on some matters. It was natural for me to feel that way. Because I had literally became an AI-bro, contrasting with my beliefs of how valuable the actual human creation is. I already had a dislike (maybe “passionate hate” would be the correct word here) against AI “art”, would chat LLMs be ethically any different while I can’t know what it was fed with?

And of course technical problems… Since we didn’t want a paid game to be dependent on a costly server, an LLM running in player’s computer/console seemed like a reasonable solution. Well, I couldn’t find an LLM both capable of running a normal consumer’s computer and roleplay as an NPC of our game without talking about sensitive matters even for a horror game.

And unpredictability that comes both from player themself and the algorithm. I released an experimental game you can talk with ChatGPT powered Ancient Greece mythological figures. Player imagination is something magnificent to behold, players could trick Zeus to write some C# code or believe the player is a stronger god.

I still defend my quote at the beginning of this post. It’s evident that AI is shaping our world for better or worse. And it will keep shaping it even more. But I’d wait for a time when the uncertainties (especially ethical ones) are cleared, before continueing the venture into this tech.

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Hello World (Again)

I have got some news:

I had discontinued Aslan Game Studio in 2021, then continued this passion of mine this year (2023). We are working on a new horror game for PC (and hopefully consoles), it’s yet to be announced.

I wanted to make a new start on various aspect of this business, including its website. Website is recreated after moving to a different host.

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