The Idles artwork has been generated using genAI. The rest of the product including the app Babll is 100% human made, unfortunately. This is a product of love and a deranged software engineers' response to being told he is going to be replaced by a machine. If AI is something that concerns you, welcome! This space is for you. Please proceed:

• Artistic Intent: We just couldn't make a game that satires genAI using human art, that's just mean. The other option was making montages with old ads but we didn't want to be accused of stealing IP. If you want to dive into it more, here's a longer read
• Historical Context: The chosen art style is that of 1950s US advertisements; they are quite amusing and decidedly sexist, racist and out of touch. They also belong to the companies that ran the campaigns back in the 50s. If genAI art is stealing, at least we steal from a very rich company that comissioned the work to someone that is, very likely, dead. Does it make a difference? We think it does.
• Supporting Artists: The game was originally developed with a different theme. More than 120 original illustrations were commissioned (and paid for with good cash) to Adriano Villarraga. He is a swell guy and a very good artist. As for the illustrations you can have them. Just make sure you attribute the guy, please. Let this be proof that we used genAI because we are mental, but not cheap.

Let's get real

This is not just about taking the piss. This is about saying that maybe enough is enough with getting on a high horse and pointing fingers at everybody using genAI. We are all up to our necks with it and it isn't going away, so what about we propose some actual ideas and place the blame where it belongs?

• Workforce Impact: AI, coupled with robotization, is expected to destroy countless jobs in the near future. If that is true, and before it happens, we believe a large redistribution of wealth should be a central part of the conversation - wealth taxes to fund UBI or the abolition of waged work.
• Accumulation of Power: One of our largest concerns about AI is how to make sure the power it yields does not exclusively end up in the hands of already monopolistic and large corporations. We propose AI models should publicly disclose their training data, and in many cases, open-sourced. It is about time we move on from the era of privatization to the one of the commons.
• Environmental Concerns: It’s widely documented that AI data centers weigh on an already critical environmental situation. While we should be wary of this, it's a relatively small footprint compared to many other issues. We believe the larger conversation here should be about fixing the negative incentives of our extractivist capitalism, making sure companies are not allowed to externalize their costs to the environment.
• Bloated Internet: The billionaires that run tech companies clearly have no interest in nor incentives to control the rise of fake genAI contents on the internet. Maybe it’s time we stepped away from the current platforms and worked toward a decentralized internet?

If a board game - like any other form of culture - cannot be used to discuss these ideas in a fun way, where do we go from here? A longer read is available here.

The Idles is a provocative and one-off game in many ways, and the only game in our roadmap where we plan to make use of genAI to produce final artwork. We fully understand if this game is not for everybody. But at least you read through to the end, and we thank you for it. This is more than most will do, congratulations!