Each book\u2019s cover is AI-generated and accompanied by AI-written blurbs, and in case you were left in any doubt,\u00a0Rick\u2019s Game Backlog points out that the text for\u00a0Gear of War (official title: Gear of War E-Day Game Guide: Tactical Breakdown of Conflict, Characters, and Urban Survival Systems) unimprovably begins:<\/p>\n
Here is a high-converting Amazon-style book description crafted to sell your book while keeping it emotionally engaging, persuasive, and read-focused.<\/p>\n
Well\u00a0I\u2019m persuaded!<\/p>\n
![\"Please](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gear-of-war-guide2.jpg\")
\u00a9 Amazon \/ Kotaku <\/p>\n
Thankfully for us, heroic Rick ordered a couple of these books for himself, and has posted examples of what lies within<\/a>. And it\u2019s glorious. It\u2019s glorious before it even begins in fact, with a table of contents that\u2019s printed as a series of hyperlinks and without page numbers. The guidebook then doesn\u2019t even pretend to be, well, a guidebook, laid out like a novel and lacking any pictures. 60-ish pages of AI-written lore based on the Gears of War\u2018s Wikipedia are followed by a series of chapters providing \u201cguides\u201d for features that absolutely aren\u2019t going to be in the game, like \u201cSurvival Mechanics\u201d and \u201cPsychological Warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the\u00a0Alien: Isolation 2 book has a whole chapter devoted to the as-yet unrevealed system requirements! A novel-like chapter!\u00a0Rick\u2019s Game Backlog called Amazon\u2019s customer support and had the books flagged and taken down. But they\u2019re right back up again<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prima Content <\/p>\n Genuine gaming guidebooks\u00a0can be released before a game is out. I know people who write them, and they\u2019re given incredibly advanced access to incomplete versions of the games such that they can be meticulously broken down and explained, laid out, and published in time for the game\u2019s launch. But these are something else entirely: entirely hallucinated tomes of gibberish based on plagiarizing online information about a game. And it\u2019s a smart con, too, given Amazon\u2019s propensity to promote associated items if you\u2019ve pre-ordered a copy of any of these games. At $20 or more, it\u2019s not a cheap trick to fall for, too. The cover images are pretty convincing at a glance, and a parent looking to pick up a kid a gift, or just a regular games player having it show up in their Amazon recommendations, could very easily and innocently fall for it.<\/p>\n The same sorts of AI-slop guides are also listed for released games, like this\u00a0Lies of P book<\/a> from the same \u201cauthor\u201d behind the\u00a0Alien: Isolation 2 entry, George D. Brogon, or prolific guidebot Donald C. Campbell and his guides for\u00a0The Adventures of Elliot<\/a>,\u00a0Mina the Hollower<\/a>, and\u00a0Star Fox<\/a>. (My favorite thing about all of these and many others is that they all contain a variation of the phrase \u201cStep into the world of\u2026\u201d in their AI-bilge descriptions. God AI sucks so hard.)<\/p>\n