A confession: the only Suda51 game I’ve ever played is Flower, Sun, and Rain on the Nintendo DS, which I enjoyed despite having no clue what was happening at any given time (I think it had something to do with The Silver Case?). A second confession: I love—non-ironically—Deadly Premonition, Swery’s 2010 opus that does a lot of individual things quite badly but somehow amounts to something incredible. So I was pretty interested in Hotel Barcelona, a 2.5D action roguelite that emerged—like Athena from Zeus’ skull—from a hot collaboration between the two creators. And then I stopped being quite so interested: reviews weren’t great—the game currently stands at a 56% Mixed user rating on Steam, and critics weren’t in love with it either.
Publisher’s Response to Criticism
In an update published earlier today, Hotel Barcelona publisher CULT seemed pretty abashed by the whole situation. “We are working with White Owls to replace this content in a future patch with fully human-made work. Once patched, there will be no GenAI content in Hotel Barcelona whatsoever,” wrote the publisher. “CULT Games’ stance on generative AI is clear: we are opposed to any professional GenAI use that has disproportional environmental impact, takes work away from real people, or has been trained on unethical datasets.” They expressed sincere apologies for this failure in vetting the game content and extended gratitude to the community for raising the issue so clearly.
It’s not much content, but I admit that any AI-made content leaves a sour taste in my mouth regardless of quantity. Still, the good news is that, in addition to the disclaimer, the developers have stated, “These features are being removed in an upcoming patch in favor of non-AI generated content.” It almost reads to me like—much as 11 bit claimed with the AI-generated content in The Alters—some placeholder material snuck under the wire and into the full release, and the developers are now heaving a sigh and diving back in to remove it. I’ve reached out to CULT to inquire about that, and will update if I hear back. If that is the case, one must wonder if using AI is worth the effort.
