Ugh... Activision

Apparently, in an attempt to do market research, Activision has been
posting AI-generated images of popular brands, hoping to gauge
customer interest by how many people click on the links.*

There's nothing really wrong with market research, really, but the
method Activision chose just seems... slimy. First of all, the AI art
is just awful; its so low-effort. Its utility is also debatable; it is
likely that as many people clicked on the links to say how terrible
the art was as to show interest in the brand. There's an unlikable
dishonesty to the whole thing too, since the ads suggest a new game is
coming and then bait-n-switch to a survey. Sure, it'll fill in some
numbers on a spreadsheet, but I've little faith that those numbers
reflect reality in even the littlest way.

Apparently it's a common practice in mobile-games land, but it's sad
to see it migrating to PC gaming. Not only does it cheapen the brands
(in a, "Hey, let's associate our IPs with low quality AI slop!" sort
of way), but it suggests that the company has no vision or ideas of
its own; it's just throwing chum out in hopes of seeing what is
popular.

It's just a bad look all around, but I guess that's where the hobby is
right now. As this practice shows, the triple-A publishers especially
have no clear idea of what they're doing, and are all in
follow-the-leader mode, with no capability to innovate or lead.




* story here
https://i.imgur.com/NiKeV3N.png