On July 31, the official Shift Up YouTube channel released an AI-generated music video featuring Stellar Blade: Blood Rain protagonist Evie. It was received negatively by many fans, prompting Shift Up CTO and Stellar Blade technical director DongKi Lee to address the matter in a new interview with The Gamer.
“The reason we revealed that music video was to show more of the beauty of Stellar Blade: Blood Rain. We wanted to show the world view and the character Evie. We just wanted to show a little more of each, and we did that as part of the content.”
Lee added that the developers aren’t tuning out fan comments and concerns, and will work to make a clear separation between game-related content and what they call “experimental content,” such as what was used in the music video.
When asked about Shift Up’s views on AI, Lee said that while the technology has a lot of influence and impact on game development, they want to use it in such a way that it “supports the developers’ creativity, know-how, and skills.” As a final note, he said that AI should be “used as a tool” to make a good game.
Stellar Blade game director and Shift Up CEO Hyung-tae Kim posted a statement with a different message back when the music video first released. According to him, the AI used to create Evie did not do so from scratch, but was rendering and presenting her based on a year’s worth of work done by Shift Up artists and modelers. Kim’s statement did not sit too well with many fans however, with many voicing discontent about human animators seemingly being left out of the process.
Stellar Blade: Blood Rain is currently in development.
