Ian Pierce

Tag: videographic games

  • non-flushable turds

    There’s been some recent drama between Valve and Epic Games, who run two of the world’s largest online game storefronts. Apparently Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic, said in an interview recently that he was opposed to Steam putting disclosures on its storefront informing buyers of AI-generated content. The new version of Epic’s Unreal Engine uses generative AI features that developers can’t turn off, and Sweeney believes that Valve warning gamers about AI slop will be bad for sales. Apparently it’s never crossed Tim Sweeney’s mind that the reason why this would be bad for sales is because people hate AI. 

    You would think that, if there was some invisible hand of the market guiding the laws of supply and demand, companies who make AI garbage generators would recognize that nobody likes their products and would stop making them. But it seems that these corporations have grown so big that they no longer need to worry about what consumers think. If they want us to eat shit, well then, shit we shall eat. And let’s be real: all of the stuff they make is shit. I’ve finally switched away from Google Search because when I search for a website, it seems to think that I want an AI summary of a Reddit post vaguely related to what I’ve typed in. Either that, or they want to shove an ad in my face. 

    Still, even if I’ve finally quit Googling stuff, I’m forced into the Google ecosystem. I have a Gmail address, and all of the (non-pornography) videos that I watch are on YouTube. You kind of have to bend to their will if you want to use the internet these days. It used to be that you could host your own email server out of your closet, but the tubes are so clogged with spam that running your own server is impossible to maintain. We’re forced into the same narrow boxes, the same websites, until Google tries to write our emails for us every time we open a new window. 

    It would be nice to be able to opt out. It would be nice to have a choice. But choices, as far as I can tell, are no longer for people like us. They’re for billionaires, who as far as I can tell, have aspirations far greater than recreating the age of robber barons. They want to bring back feudalism. They want us to pay for everything while they pay us nothing and replace our jobs with AI. 

    This is one of the problems I have with the argument that “we can’t have an income tax in Washington because billionaires ~ * CrEaTe JoBs * ~. If Boeing or Starbucks or Amazon could get away with having no pesky employees demanding annoying things like “paychecks” or “benefits”, they would. Microsoft just spent $110 billion to buy Activision Blizzard, then laid off ten thousand XBOX employees. Corporations don’t create employment out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because they are obliged to. 

    I’m hoping that soon this whole AI economy collapses like a giant house of cards. Technocrats like to claim that “AI today is the worst it’s ever going to be”. That’s bullshit. AI isn’t learning or thinking. It’s taking words on the internet, stirring them around, and spitting them out in a (sometimes) coherent order. It’s like if you claimed your alphabet soup was intelligent because sometimes words come out when you dip your spoon in. As more and more of the internet gets taken over by AI, the quality of that alphabet soup will deteriorate, like copies of a copy. It’s like how the Melvins pioneered the genre that would be called grunge, but many lesser bands imitated them, then even lesser bands did the same, until eventually we got Nickelback. Do you want the internet to be Nickelback? Because that’s how you get Nickelback.  

    But that’s how bubbles work. Everyone gets super rich until suddenly they’re not. So if you’re a venture capitalist hoping to make a fortune on the next big thing after AI, I have a proposal for you. I’m selling shares in a company that will hold a monopoly on shipping goods from the South Seas. It’s foolproof, I tell you.  

    ~ Ian (listening to Demon Days by Gorillaz)

  • untitled update, june 11, 2026

    I had a visit to the tooth doctor again last week. It ended up with some bad news: it seems like three of the teeth on the upper left side of the mouth are so fucked up that removal is the only option, as soon as possible, along with implants, bone grafts, the whole nine yards. If you’ll recall from last year, I had some additional tooth-related problems that led to a root canal, which was the most painful experience I’ve ever had, since for some reason the anesthetic they gave me didn’t fully work, so I could feel most of the pinching and pulling at my nerve. I hope they give me the gas this time, since three teeth are coming out. Let this be a cautionary tale to all ye Gen Z wastrels who will not go to the dentist! I didn’t go for years, and at this rate, I’m going to eventually look like one of those cartoon characters that gets hit over the head with a piano and stumbles out of the wreckage with piano keys protruding from his toothless gums.

    And yet, even if things are going poorly mouth-wise for me, I can’t help having a bit of confidence, a bit of spring in my step. The news that one of my stories will be published has reinvigorated me, where in the past few months I have definitely been de-invigorated. It’s given me a boost to my spirits that makes me feel like the big weird fish guy in that lake in Resident Evil 8.

    This piscine ebullience also stems from the fact that, after two years of radio silence on the part of agents, a literary agent has requested to see a full manuscript of one of my books! It’s no guarantee that I’m going to get an agent – in fact, considering my luck, I’d still say the odds are stacked against me. But it’s a new start.

    A lot of the time, the process of trying to get published has felt like bashing my forehead repeatedly against a brick wall until the wall crumbles. Usually, that strategy is a failing one. It does much more injury to yourself than to the wall. Over the last few months, however, ever since being nominated for the Resnick Award and going to Dragon Con, I’ve started to see cracks form in that wall. Hopefully it comes down before my skull is as broken and shattered as my teeth!

    ~ Ian

  • Desert Bus!

    Every year, I look forward to the second week of November because of one amazing thing: Desert Bus For Hope. This event, put on by Canadian streamers and sketch comedians LoadingReadyRun, is a tiny fragment of joy in a dark, cruel world, and it’s one of my favorite things in the world. The gist of it is that a team of funny internet people play the most boring video game ever made for a whole week in order to raise money for children in hospitals and domestic violence shelters.

    I could explain how the event works and why it’s so special, but honestly, the About page on the Desert Bus website describes it far better than I ever could:

    Started in 2007 by internet sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun, Desert Bus for Hope combines video games and tedium to benefit charity.

    Desert Bus is the world’s longest running internet-based fundraiser and has raised more than $10 million for Child’s Play over its eighteen-year history.

    What started as an impromptu event broadcast from a living room is now a professionally organized fundraiser; it takes more than 13 people to plan the event and another 55 dedicated volunteers to keep the whole thing running once it starts.

    Our viewers direct the action, talking with us via live chat, challenging us to sing, dance and generally make fools of ourselves in front of thousands of viewers. The Desert Bus Craft-Along allows people from all over the world to help us raise money by donating incredible handmade art and goods for auction.

    Desert Bus is a great example of what happens when a huge community of people from all over the world – organizers, volunteers, crafters, sponsors, and viewers – come together to achieve a common goal.

    Desert Bus the Game

    Desert Bus is a mini-game from the never-released Sega CD game Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors. Challenging the player to drive a listing, unreliable, virtual bus on an endless, eight-hour-long strip of highway between Tucson, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada, it is widely regarded to be the worst video game ever made.

    We play it for as long as donations come in. In order to keep things interesting for our viewers we have live and silent auctions, giveaways and contests, celebrity guests, and a lot of silliness.

    Child’s Play – What is Child’s Play?

    Child’s Play is a registered charity dedicated to improving the lives of children undergoing treatment in the hospital with toys and games. The charity supports a network of over 180 hospitals worldwide.

    Child’s Play also supports domestic violence support facilities and aims to provide opportunities for positive engagement, distraction, and play for children in domestic violence shelters and advocacy centres.

    Personally, I’ve been watching Desert Bus since 2012, when I was in college. In fact, while I was taking a class in computer graphics, I made this image as as assignment:

    As far as an image made by a twenty-year-old amateur taking a breadth requirement class, I think it’s not too shabby, Alonso! And it shows that my love for this deeply strange event, which has grown like a beautiful pearl around the annoying piece of grit that is one of the world’s worst video games.

    If you want to check the stream out and join in the fun, go to desertbus.org! And if you want to chip in with a li’l bit of financial support, I would appreciate it muchly. These are dark times, after all, and if we can provide just a little bit of kindness to children in need, it’ll make the world a little lighter.