{"id":550216,"date":"2026-03-21T01:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T01:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/550216\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T01:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T01:43:17","slug":"buzzfeed-says-nintendo-inspired-it-to-make-ai-slop-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/550216\/","title":{"rendered":"Buzzfeed Says Nintendo Inspired It To Make AI Slop Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Digital media company Buzzfeed, once a bastion for both hard-hitting journalism and \u201cWhich Lannister are you?\u201d Game of Thrones quizzes, <a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/wordle-creators-new-puzzle-game-parseword-cryptic-crossword-free-play-2000677572\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">is pivoting to games<\/a>. AI-generated games, to be specific. Its first one is called Conjure and it launched on Friday. It was apparently inspired by Nintendo.<\/p>\n<p>The games pivot is bring run out of a new spin-off organization called Branch Office, led by Bill Shouldis, as Buzzfeed tries to escape its current cash crunch. The company lost millions last year and debt is piling up. It\u2019s betting its future on things like Conjure, a mobile game app that uses AI to ask you for daily photographs of stuff in the real world, chooses whether to accept them or not, and then starts building up weird creepypasta lore around the submissions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe guiding philosophy comes from an unlikely place: Nintendo,\u201d the company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/buzzfeedpress\/inside-buzzfeeds-launches-branch-office-ai-incubator\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wrote in its announcement<\/a> earlier this week. \u201cThe gaming giant\u2019s principle of \u2018lateral thinking with withered technology,\u2019 taking maximum creativity out of what already exists, is Branch Office\u2019s north star. We don\u2019t need to build our own foundational models or compete with Big Tech. We just ask one question: what\u2019s already here, and how do we make it genuinely fun?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So far at least though, none of the Buzzfeed AI games actually do sound genuinely fun. Reports from Conjure\u2018s debut at SXSW earlier this month were far from glowing. \u201cWe don\u2019t get it, and clearly the audience didn\u2019t either. After the demo, a lone cough could be heard among the silence, followed by uncomfortable laughter,\u201d reads a <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/03\/17\/buzzfeed-ai-slop-apps-sxsw-bf-island-conjure\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tech Crunch dispatch<\/a> from the event. \u201cShouldis then noted that AI is involved in Conjure, too, as the app has an \u2018AI spirit for a CEO.\u2019 (Again, what?)\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The game is expected to change and evolve over time, however, with new features potentially getting added using Claude Code and other AI agents. \u201cIn a way, software is the new content,\u201d Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti reportedly said.<\/p>\n<p>Yup, definitely sounds like something Shigeru Miyamoto would say.<\/p>\n<p>Correction; 3\/20\/2026, 2:07 p.m. ET: Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti\u2019s first name has been fixed. We regret the error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Digital media company Buzzfeed, once a bastion for both hard-hitting journalism and \u201cWhich Lannister are you?\u201d Game of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-550216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}