Happy New Year, dear subscribers!

Recently, I've started working six days a week and so I've sadly had very little time to sit down and work on game-related things - Although I've been thinking about them constantly. I actually appreciate having the break because it lets me reorient myself and think about what I'm doing exactly. 

I've done a bad job in the past of articulating my goals for the game but I think that this topic of AI art helps express something important - 

I have always aimed to make Hong Kong NOIR a community-based project. Originally, my focus was purely on inviting writers to helm different chapters so we could present them as an anthology that is stronger as a digital packageof sorts.  My goal was purely for students and fellow writers to have some form of simulation and an actual audience for their work.  Professional writing in Hong Kong is incredibly fraught with exploitation and compromise and I've tried to make a project which avoids those pitfalls. 

Recently, I shifted from using my own placeholder drawings to using images generated by AI. This was incredibly productive for me and I have found it very rewarding for the obvious reasons - It's quick, cheap and easy. 

However, only after making changes to the game, I became aware of how AI was affecting artists - it may be exploiting the works of artists whose work has been used to train such systems, without the consent of the artist. 

The conclusion of all of this is to say that I'm very open to paying for artists that can replace the AI artwork because I feel that it's ultimately truer to my original goals of building a creative community and supporting creatives. 

If you know anybody out there (particularly if they're based in HK) please put them in touch with me! I have a gig for them!