Foamstars’ Use Of AI Proves It’ll Never Beat Splatoon

Splatoon 3 Agent 3 Callie Marie

I’m a huge fan of Splatoon. I adored the game when it was launched on Wii U all those years ago, and even took to the pro scene in Splatoon 2. My team made it to the top 8 in the Oceania regional championships, and we had an absolute blast doing it. I fell out of Splatoon at the launch of Splatoon 3, so when I saw Foamstars, Square Enix’s own spin on the genre, I was hesitant but slightly optimistic. That optimism drained when it came out this week that the game uses generative AI.

So here’s the rub: following a preview event, Square Enix confirmed to VGC that there was a “small amount” of generative AI, specifically Midjourney, used in the development of Foamstars. That generative AI was used in album artwork for the game’s music tracks, and it’s going to be in the final product.

Foamstars producer Kosuke Okatani told VGC that all of the “core elements”, including the gameplay and what Okatani said made the game enjoyable, were handmade, and that very little of the final product was AI generated.

“We did want to experiment with AI as well,” Okatani said, “In terms of the content in the game, this makes up about 0.01% or even less, but we have dabbled in it by creating these icons in the game.”

It makes sense to anyone who’s been paying attention. Square has been chasing dodgy trends hyped up by insufferable tech bros on Twitter for years now, first with NFTs and more recently with Square Enix starting 2024 by going all in on AI. It was only a matter of time before it made its way into an actual game.

You may think “well, it’s just a couple of album artworks, what’s the big deal?” The big deal is that it’s creatively bankrupt. Small details are what make or break an experience, and if a developer can’t be bothered to spend a little bit of time building out its world with those details, how can the final product be one worth playing?

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As my colleague Kirk wrote, AI is here to ruin video games, and Foamstars’ use of AI is proof of that. It’s already ruined any potential enjoyment I could find in the game, because I know that it’s not entirely the product of artists expressing their talents. Some of it undoubtedly is, but not all of it, and that’s a huge bummer.

Looking back at Splatoon, there’s a stark difference between how Nintendo handled those small details. Every logo, every icon, every brand, every splash of graffiti, every poster and t-shirt and yes, every album artwork, it’s all made by hand, and the designers put their all into it. I can’t say with certainty, but it feels like the artists of Splatoon had fun creating these designs, they cared about making something that felt real.

And it ultimately comes down to what makes these games tick. Splatoon is more than just a third-person map control shooter, it’s a celebration of culture at its very core. It’s about the artistry behind everything we see and hear in the world, about how fashion, art, and music are intertwined into our lives, about how society as a whole ebbs and flows with the creativity that humanity has to offer, even when humanity has been replaced by squids. It’s about passion, and appreciating the small things.

And Foamstars isn’t that. I don’t know what Foamstars actually is trying to be – we’ll find that out when it launches on February 6, 2024 on PlayStation Plus – but it’s not a celebration of art and culture. No celebration of art could ever come from typing nonsense into a Discord prompt and getting an image made up of millions of probably stolen pieces of art.

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