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There was a really heated debate that started yesterday when a new review of ARC Raiders rolled in, this one published by Eurogamer<\/a>. It\u2019s a two-star review out of five, which equates to a 40\/100 on Metacritic, making it the game\u2019s lowest score by far. So low, it docked ARC\u2019s Metascore a few points by itself, and cost it a few of its recent records, by the looks of it.<\/p>\n I have always taken issue with Eurogamer\u2019s \u201cthey know what they\u2019re doing\u201d five-star review system where a \u201cgood\u201d 3\/5 is a 60\/100 on Metacritic, where if a big game lands a 60, those are studio shutdown numbers. But the issue at heart here is why Eurogamer scored ARC Raiders this low, and it\u2019s almost entirely because of its use of generative AI in its voicework.<\/p>\n The review of the actual game is almost entirely positive, from its mechanics to its social experience. But it ends with nine full paragraphs about the game\u2019s use of generative AI in voicework. It\u2019s a unique situation because it appears some VOs signed over their voice rights to be used in this fashion, mixed and matched with genAI for lines in the game. The counter-argument to this type of \u201cethical AI\u201d is that other VOs may lose jobs if they don\u2019t want their voices thrown into AI like these other actors.<\/p>\n Using this aspect of ARC Raiders as a cudgel to smash its review score to bits is\u2026a choice. While some anti-AI folks are celebrating this, others are admitting that perhaps this was not really the place to go on a full-on rant about the practice, something best saved for its own article, or series of articles. Throwing it into a review and letting it dictate the score almost entirely seems misguided.<\/p>\n Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes<\/p>\n I am firmly anti-genAI these days (as genAI has eaten every word I\u2019ve ever written and spits it out again in Google summaries), but even I\u2019m a bit \u201cehhhh\u201d about this. I think something like this does more harm than good to \u201cthe movement,\u201d as it were. While I am not amused with the \u201cthis is why game journalists are trash\u201d refrain now (obviously 95% of other game journalists gave it very high scores), the larger issue is that now anti-AI people are being torched because of this \u201cprotest vote.\u201d This may draw attention to the use of AI in games, but the reaction is not exactly \u201chm yes, I hadn\u2019t considered this,\u201d among pro-AI users. It\u2019s just an inferno out there of people lambasting how stupid they think this was, for the most part.<\/p>\n Eurogamer certainly has the right to do whatever they want, score a game however they want, and no one should take into account raising or lowering a Metacritic score when reviewing a game. But to me, this seems similar to something like a game critic flipping a review of a good game from positive to negative because the studio used crunch to finish it behind the scenes. Is that a real issue? Yes! Will writing a review dictated by that be useful or good or helpful to the cause you\u2019re trying to support? I would argue no, not particularly.<\/p>\n And (sigh), it sure doesn\u2019t help the same writer gave Concord a 3\/5 either. <\/p>\n Follow me on Twitter<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>,<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series<\/a> and The Earthborn Trilogy<\/a>.<\/p>\n