After getting quite a bit of criticism with regards to the use of LLMs in the development of The Alters, developer 11 bit studios has released a statement through a lengthy post on social media platform X. In its post, the studio admits to making use of AI-generated assets during development on a temporary basis. “Our team has always prioritized meanigful, handcrafted storytelling as one of the foundations of our game,” posted the studio.
“During production, an AI-generated text for a graphic asset, which was meant as a piece of background texture, was used by one of our graphical designers as a placeholder,” the studio explained. “This was never intended to be part of the final release. Unfortunately, due to an internal oversight, this single placeholder text was mistakenly left in the game. We have since conducted a thorough review and confirmed that this was an isolated case, and the asset in question is being updated.”
The studio also wrote about the licensed movies that can be seen by the in-game Alters in the social area of the base. These movies were made for the game by an external team, and were added to the game late into its development. According to11 bit studios, there were “extreme time constraints” which led to the studio ultimately using LLMs for the translation work to get them done in time for the game’s release.
“It was always our intention to involve our trusted translation agencies after release as part of our localization hotfix, to ensure those texts would be handled with the same care and quality as the rest of the game,” wrote the studio. “That process is now underway, and updated translations are being implemented.”
The studio also explained for some context that, of the game’s entire narrative layer, the movies accounted for around 10 thousand words out of the 3.4 million across all languages in the game. This translates to around 0.3 percent of the total amount of text in the game.
“The alternative was to release those specific dialogues in English only, which we believed would be a worse experience for non-English-speakers,” explained the studio. “In hindsight, we acknowledge this was the wrong call. Even more so, no matter what we decided, we should have simply let you know.”
The fact that The Alters made use of AI-generated text in some of its translations was spotted by players just last week. One player had also noticed some background text in the game that included prompts that one would typically feed into an LLM to get results.
“Seriously, leaving parts of an AI prompt in the lockit?! Talk about spitting in the face of your international audience,” wrote game localisation specialist Lucile Danilov about the use of AI in The Alters. “According to the OP, some parts of the [Brazilian Portuguese] translation are also riddled with errors and inaccuracies, which is appalling considering how the whole game revolves around an intricate narrative.”
The Alters is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review for more details.
