Catalyst Game Labs has long been a company that's lowered the barrier to entry for BattleTech. BattleTech has enough barriers to entry. You can download the instructions for play from their website and proxy any kind of physical object (as long as it has a clear front facing) for a BattleMech and go ahead and play. They have free fiction and free scenarios and all kinds of great tools for players.
One of the best tools is the Master Unit List(MUL), a website which lets you look up and select 'mechs for a force. It can be classic battletech or alpha strike, you can search by era and tech base. They made it very easy to select a group of relevant 'mechs and make a force out of them.
A while back, CGL took down the MUL with a promise of "a new and improve site." For those of us who are familiar with how unreliable CGL's BattleTech webpage was or who remembered Magic: the Gathering's similar Gatherer tool's long hiatus, this was not encouraging news.
But on August 13th, a video from CGL dropped announcing the new MUL and going over its features. It was a fairly dry video–and I have to give CGL points on realizing how little charisma their staff has–and they decided to spice it up with some shots of BattleMechs in action. And there their troubles began.
For those of you who can't/don't want to watch the video, it's-presumably–a staff member with a callsign of Knightmare describing new and returning MUL features like improved speed, random assignment tables, and customizable Alpha Strike cards for every unit type. Cropped images of those features in use are a visual aid. At four intervals, the video cuts to 2D images animated into 3D action scenes of BattleMechs in combat (Do we have a name for that?). The sounds are evocative, action is fine, and the animation is about as good as using 2D images to make 3D animation can be.
In fact, I wouldn't have seen anything odd about this video if it hadn't been for the accusations of AI use that came out later and prompted me to take a closer look.
There are 3 Exhibits.
Exhibit 1: At the 0:28 mark, a Marik Grand Titan turns its head and another antenna similar to its primary antenna appears in what seems like a hallmark AI fuckup.
Exhibit 2: At the 0:58 mark, A PackHunter–I think in Sea Fox livery–descends from a jump. As it does, its shoulder-mounted PPC barrel changes shape slightly. It appears to be distorting in what appears to be a classic case of AIs failing to maintain constant shapes when moving. It then throws up sand which rises in front of it and perfectly morphs into the sand rising up behind it.
Exhibit 3: At the 1:18 mark, a Grand Titan charges a Capellan MechWarrior. As strobing fire from both sides illuminates the battlefield, the end of the Grand Titan's arm dips into shadow and back again. Each time it becomes visible, it's different, morphing from hand, to flat slab of armor, and into a third medium laser.
Folks online noticed and Catalyst Game Labs performed an investigation. CGL has a policy against using AI art assets and they take it seriously.
On August 19th, they released the results of their investigation, making it explicit that they would not be doing so for other investigations in the future, but were to assuage fan concerns.
Link: https://www.catalystgamelabs.com/news/catalyst-game-labs-ai-investigation
So at this point, you don't have to read any more of this blog post. You can watch the video yourself and read the investigation and make up your own mind. Everything else is my explanation and my understanding.
Before reading it, I made some assumptions. As a former and sometimes freelancer, I get that sometimes, you have to take jobs that aren't in your wheelhouse or are on a dicey timeline because you're in a dry spell, you want to say "yes" to a potential employer. You would be surprised what you can do when you're pushed into the deep end of the water…or you sometimes need money.
God forbid it's out of your wheelhouse AND on a dicey timeline.
I assumed this was the work of a freelancer, and the events went like this:
CGL wanted to launch the new MUL ASAP–it should have been launched simultaneously with the old one going down. They made a script, shot a guy talking, added some SFX with visual aids, and then looked at the result. They suddenly saw they had a boring video to launch the new MUL and wanted something better. CGL has some talented, regular artists on tap and they started looking for someone to do it fast, good, and on-budget.
Image courtesy of business.com
In this scenario, those regulars said "no."
They, reasonably, never revealed the artist's name, so we'll call them "Artist." So they turned to Artist. Well, probably a lot of people before Artist, but they were the one who said "yes" first.
So Artist has got this big job, was in over their head, and used some AI. I don't know how much, but I believe it's in there. Because that's what I'm seeing.
CGL saw that the product was good, slapped it into the video, and shipped it. And if it had been for a fanbase less morally obstinate or anal-renentive, no one would have noticed.
If the goal was to make sure Artist and the AI tool in their belt never worked for CGL again, I think the whole thing would have been a success. I feel that the hubub alone was enough to ensure that CGL and ARTIST won't be working together again. From both ends. I don't think freelancers like being called back for investigations and that companies don't like doing an investigative song and dance because of freelancers they hired in a self-imposed* time crunch.
But that was just my set of my presumptions going into this.
The nature of the investigation is that they asked the Artist what happened. Artist, explained that they were a UI/UX specialist and that they took this job on a short timeline and made mistakes.
For Exhibit 1, Artist said that they'd layered a copy of the BattleMaster's antenna while deciding on composition and forgot to remove one. The second antenna remained and only appeared with the second illumination.
That seems strange to me.
It wasn't a whole BattleMaster, I just like the joke.
The thing is that it seems like it would be difficult for AI to create an antenna so similar to the first one though. An AI might add a second antenna, but I don't know if that might be an error that more advanced video AI might make.
Exhibit 2: Apparently when Adobe's puppet tool mesh distorts 2D images to act 3D, it can create a spiral effect on round objects similar to what was seen on the PackHunter. I don't know enough about how those tools work to really say.
Exhibit 3: The story is that Artist didn't know about BattleMechs having specific loadouts and thought that showing a new laser coming online would be cool.
I don't buy that for one second. You can see that hand mutate between lighting intervals. There's not an unpowered laser in those first two flashes. I don't get it for a second.
I've heard that Artist was internal to CGL and assigned to this job. I don't imagine it would go any differently than if they were a freelancer, except that they could continue their primary duties without ever worrying about being put in that position again.
In conclusion, I guess I'm not happy, but I am satisfied.
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