Earlier this week, we reported on S-GAME having to debunk a rumor spreading around about something they allegedly said about Xbox. Today we have new information that seems to bode poorly for how the game industry and games media will deal with AI and misinformation.
For those who aren’t caught up yet, S-GAME is set to release their first console AAA, Phantom Blade Zero. Over the weekend, a report spread that one of S-GAME’s staff claimed that they don’t need Xbox, when asked about bringing Phantom Blade Zero to the platform.
S-GAME flatly rejected the statement, explaining that they have not ruled out any platforms, and stated in their own words that “these claimed statements do not represent S-GAME’s values or culture.”
Since that time, Niko Partners Director of Research and Insights Dan Ahmad, more commonly known by his online handle ZhugeEx, apparently did some sleuthing on where this Phantom Blade Zero story came from. And Dan made quite the discovery. Quoting Dan from Twitter:
“I decided to look into this and I’m about 95% certain at this point that the “quote” was first posted on August 1 by a website that uses generative AI to pump out articles by scraping the internet for news and rumors.
It was then picked up by a Chinese media outlet.
Fwiw I have no way to know if this was actually something a dev on the team said off hand.
It certainly could have been. But the way it was reported (not part of an official interview) and sourced, + the first mention of it being from that AI site, makes me believe it’s fake.”
While we may find that a S-GAME staffer emerges to confirm they said this, and perhaps apologize for it, Dan’s conclusion seems credible at this point. It’s actually not on us to prove that this didn’t happen, but for the people who reported this story to verify that they got in touch with the staffer, or the alleged interviewer, and confirm that it really happened.
What is concerning is how easily this Phantom Blade Zero story spread, even as there were people who rightly saw the red flags in it and chose not to join in. This is certainly not the first time that unsupported and not credible rumors have spread about video games, but it can’t be this easy to pass off AI writing as real reporting.
We certainly won’t claim to be flawless in sussing out suspicious stories and rumors, but we were able to identify the issues with this story. There’s no reason for other games media, and also gamers themselves, to see when a story is made to confirm someone’s priors, rather than to really inform of us things that really happened.
Now that we have seen that AI can effectively gain attention by creating narratives gamers want to hear, it’s up to us to be vigilant from buying into these fake stories. We do our best to make honest reporting at GameRanx, and you our readers help keep us honest, and you should be sure to be vigilant for yourselves as well.
