Apparently it was all the marketing department's fault.
The reaction to the clearly AI-generated trailer for Ark’s upcoming underwater DLC Aquatica was divided, in the sense that some people hated it and some people really hated it. “This is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourselves” is the first comment underneath the trailer on YouTube, and it comes from an Ark YouTuber with more than a million subscribers.
The Aquatica DLC is being made by Snail Games, as opposed to Ark’s original developers at Studio Wildcard, who are focused on Ark: Survival Ascended and have been quick to distance themselves from the controversy. “ARK: Aquatica is being developed by Snail Games USA Colorado, please follow them for more updates,” they posted on the hatesite formerly known as Twitter. “Studio Wildcard remains entirely dedicated to the production of ARK: Survival Ascended & ARK 2, and we’re excited to bring ARK: Lost Colony to you later this year!”
Now the developers at Snail Games are putting some space between them and the trailer as well. As lead game designer Matt Kohl told Pocket Tactics, “The marketing department used still images of some of our assets to create an AI-animated trailer. That was not part of the development team; we did not know that they were doing it.”
With a voiceover that sounds like it comes direct from a brainrot video on TikTok and characters whose feet seem to become fins at random, it’s not a great representation of what anyone was hoping for from Aquatica. The generic underwater scenes make it look like the Subnautica from Wish dot com, while the constant smearing and sudden octopus are hard to take seriously.
Kohl also explained that Snail Games has not used AI tools in Aquatica’s development, and that the finished DLC won’t resemble the trailer. Which rather makes you wonder what the point of the trailer actually was.
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