Recently, spurred by the passing of Patrick Stewart, my wife and I have been spending our evenings rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation from the beginning (well, rewatching for me, first watch for her — but I’m still finding that there are a lot of early episodes I never saw). Like many shows, season one is rough in some places — the writers and actors are still feeling out who these characters are going to be, the plots are trying to get away from being as dead simple as those from the original Star Trek, and so on. It starts getting better pretty quickly — in my opinion, as soon as you get past “The Naked Now,” which is literally just a redux of an episode from 1966 — but Riker without a beard still looks weird to me. Look at this man. He hasn’t even sat on a chair incorrectly yet.
Anyway, this is the Queue, our daily Q&A column where we boldly answer questions no one has seen since yesterday. Let’s get into it.
Faradai
Can you bonus roll a boss you’re already locked out of?
You cannot! I swear this used to work differently, but I am probably wrong.
Arthonos
Q4tQ: Any thoughts about the House House situation?
Oh boy.
On the one hand, if you believe their account (and I think they’re being sincere), they essentially used an LLM as a glorified search engine. Unfortunately, this is what AI companies want you to do! But I guess I can sort of understand it as a last resort after even going to the folks at Unity and going “how do we do X in the game engine that you created” and being told it was impossible.
On the other hand, this just… looks really bad. It had zero mention on their Steam page, because Steam doesn’t require disclosure of AI-assisted coding. They essentially kept it under their hat until submitting to the Independent Games Festival, even knowing that they would have to disclose it to IGF and it’s a hugely hot-button issue. Even things like how House House recently and vocally joined the BDS movement boycott of Microsoft now looks (in light of them keeping their use of LLMs a secret) like them trying to garner good will ahead of this news breaking. Maybe that’s cynical, and it’s probably not true, but it’s the optics, you know?
I have a lot of other feelings on this topic, and I don’t think I’m gonna change anyone’s mind on any side of the discussion, so I’m just gonna leave it at that.
MusedMoose
For those of us waiting for it: 100 days left until Persona 4 Revival
It’s not a question, but I’m highlighting it anyway because oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy. I’m putting this in my calendar! …. And I have exactly one day to beat it before Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold releases in early access. That’s just a rude thing to do to me personally.
Anna Bell
[vague ongoing demand for pet pics]
Carrot is such an orange cat. He’s trying to drink iced tea in this pic.
That’s my tea, you little orange brat. You’re lucky you’re cute.