19
votes
Weird game "Catly" revealed at The Game Awards might be some kind of AI generated grift or scam
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- Title
- This Game Revealed at the Game Awards Might Not Be Real
- Authors
- TopicArlo
- Duration
- 19:15
- Published
- Dec 17 2024
If any of you watched TGA last Friday, you might've noticed a trailer for this weird cat game called "Catly" that looked like something someone would've made with that SORA AI video generator. What's really weird is the platforms listed: Steam, Switch, and... Apple watch? And it's supposedly an MMO? For Apple Watch?
Youtuber Arlo looked into it, and the website and Steam page seem like complete nonsense. The Steam page description of the game looks like complete AI slop, as Arlo says he would expect even an AI to do a better job making something coherent. They have "reviews" supposedly written by the producer of League of Legends and the game director of Hearthstone, and claim the lead composer who worked on the music for Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is making the Catly soundtrack, but the "links" to those statements are actually blue text made to look like links. The website for the game talks about selling clothes that are clearly fake and AI generated images.
The developer and publisher's name is listed as "SuperAuthenti", which, while I know a lot of tech companies choose quirky names, sounds like someone literally naming a company "Super Legit Not a Scam Inc."
For such an obviously fake AI product, someone had to have spent a lot of money to get this trailer on TGA, where a lot of eyes would be on it. Something's definitely going on here...
Looking at the Steam page, particularly the quotes, makes me think this game is fake and it's meant to prove some point about Steam's standards, TGA's willingness to showcase/advertise any game that pays enough, or both. It makes me think of Atlanta Nights, a book written to be as bad as possible in order to expose a publisher as a vanity press.
That’s an interesting theory. I’m thinking it’s some sort of NFT or AI grift, like start with this trailer to attract NFT bros and then release a bare minimum game later and collect money from people as you continue to make promises of the game improving over time (cough star citizen cough), but you’d think the devs would be smart enough to not name the development company “SuperAuthenti”, so either they’re really dumb or you’re onto something. That said, this would have cost them a ton of money if they were just trying to prove a point.
That's a very expensive point to make. And not a particularly novel one. A simple scan of newly released titles would prove that pretty quickly.
And well, I'll be polite about Keighley and TGA and just say that I'm sure many people would welcome a scam ad in if they were paying 5, maybe 6 figures for it. If they can't directly be culpable for harm, I see no reason to reject that kind of money.
Giving it the (MASSIVELY UNWARRANTED) benefit of the doubt for a second, it looks like they intend to Tamagotchi your cat on the watch rather than have you play a full game on there.
TBH that would be pretty neat. Smart devices kind of killed those days where we had those micro-devices that could possibly accompany larger games. It seemed to do the opposite and discourage devs from building in compatibility for these more experimental sorts of mini-games.
Well if Steam's "Similar to games you've played" is any indication, this game will be similar to Just Cause 2. So there's that to look forward to!
...Okay but now I really want to know what that would look/play like. I feel like it would be a disaster, or a genuinely glorious one-of-a-kind gaming experience.
I only put about 3 hours into Just Cause 2, so by my recollection it'll be really well-dressed cats grapple hooking around a tropical island. Which does fit the the game's descriptor of "cat" and "island"
I'd be very surprised if it was SORA given that SORA was only publicly released 2 weeks ago. Are there other competing video AI gens?
Oh yes, there are a bunch. The two best quality ones that I’m aware of are Hailuo and Kling AI. Yes, in my testing both are noticeably better than Sora.
So the game website is already different from what is shown in the youtube video, you can see it yourself at https://www.playcatly.com/. Looks decidedly more game-like (and at least from the homepage, nothing like the youtube video's version).
Edit:
The steam page is also different now, from what is in the video. And honestly the writing in the youtube (the writing in the steam page as shown in the video) doesn't really seem AI generated to me, but very poorly translated. Any AI would write better copy than that. This just reminds me of cheap screenprint t-shirts ordered from China or reading the instructions that come with an odd appliance or piece of furniture.
Another edit:
I'm continuing to watch this linked video not really out of any interest in "Catly", but out of curiosity what this video is even for. It's 20 minutes long, and just has zero information. He repeats the same sentiments over and over, reads the Steam page verbatim with an editorial comment between each sentence. When he gets to the first bit of verifiable info (the industry quotes), he laments that they aren't links but then doesn't do even a cursory web search to find if those people exist in the industry. He just scrolls back up to complain about the AI images again. (All of the people are real, but i can't find anything regarding any actual connection to Catly)
It's just filler material to get some content out there with a few advertisements along the way, riding an easy sentiment of "AI stuff is dumb". Doesn't seem much better than what gen AI can produce.
I have to agree; the linked video is quite bad.
The Steam page has changed in the three hours since my earlier comments. All the screenshots came from the original trailer (it's still there, at the end), and used those screenshots throughout it. The new lead trailer looks much more like a proper game.
The quotes are still bizarre to me though, especially without any sources backing them up, and something about the first trailer still feels off. Mainly how the fur ripples in closeups, I think.
I did a little digging and Ben Brode at least confirmed his comments: https://www.threads.net/@benbrode/post/DDiOoGvSKfT
They have an actual page for their Apple Watch app lmao
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/catly-your-wrist-buddy/id6737467506
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2987350/view/554602728738783384
Oh my god, it's a Science-Based MMO with
DragonsCats!From the comments here it seems like they might have made changes to the steam page and such. But looking at the trailer I don't think it is AI created. The entire concept throughout is way too coherent and maintains a singular them in a way that current video models can't yet as far as I know. The cat movements I saw are also lacking any of the odd perspective shifts you see with video generation models.
If it is going to be a real game (or any good) remains to be seen. It might still be vaporware but not of the AI kind.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, they seem like an NFT project studio pivoting to actual game development.