Still Wakes the Deep’s Premise is Inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing

The nominees for The Game Awards 2023 have been announced and Alan Wake 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 are tied for the most nominations, with eight each from 31 total categories. They're both up for the main Game of the Year award, but are also competing for Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Score and Music, among others.

Unity have said that they expect to lay off staff in the coming months, following the engine maker’s catastrophic rollout of their new pricing plan earlier this year and as they turn towards a more “focused” offering, including the likes of AI, for growth.

Diwali is almost here, and while India is all set to enter the festive weekend, the artificial intelligence space is ever so buzzing. In the first incident, Maharashtra Congress asked the state government to intervene and set up a committee to create a legal, regulatory framework to deal with the issue of deepfakes. In another incident, Google is currently in talks to invest capital worth hundreds of millions of dollars into the popular character-based AI chatbot platform Character.AI. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

The weekend is just around the corner but before you let loose, you should know about the top developments in the artificial intelligence space. In the first incident, Air India has planned to introduce new features to its generative AI virtual agent that handles more than 6,000 customer queries daily. In other news, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has issued a statement that multiple AI-generated videos are being circulated targeting the Olympic officials, including one particular video where Hollywood actor Tom Cruise has been seen saying that officials are “slowly and painfully destroying the Olympic sports that have existed for thousands of years”. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

The commotion was really loud in the artificial intelligence world today, November 9, as a new technology sparked several controversies. In the first incident, reports have highlighted that Nvidia is soon going to release three AI chips for China. This comes weeks after the US government restricted trade of advanced semiconductors with China, forcing Nvidia to not sell its top-of-the-line A800 and H800 series chipsets to China. In other news, rapper Bad Bunny wrote a post on his WhatsApp Channel asking fans to leave if they choose to listen to the viral song on TikTok that has been generated using AI and mimics his voice. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has named its first playable race: the Brujah, who love to settle brouhahas with brutal melee combat. A brief, fifteen second trailer showed a little of that combat in action in The Chinese Room's rebooted take on the RPG sequel. Find it below.

Now that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has a new developer, The Chinese Room, we're going through the whole rigamarole of teasers and reveals all over again, starting now and carrying on into 2024, and possibly beyond. I hope you're prepared. 

AI Roundup: Karnataka's Mysore Sales International Ltd (MSIL) is set to introduce a groundbreaking AI-powered platform to enhance its chit-fund business. In a separate development, Alibaba's Ant Group received Chinese government approval to deploy AI products based on its Large Language Model (LLM) called Bailing. Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar also issued a warning for social media platforms about their responsibility in countering AI-powered deepfakes and misinformation.

On the first day of November, global-scale development on artificial intelligence was seen. At the UK AI Summit, global leaders from 28 different countries came together and committed to evaluating AI-related dangers together. In other news, billionaire Elon Musk, who is also at the AI Summit, reiterated his previous statement and called AI a risk. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

Twitter was transformed into X earlier this year, and while the change was essentially a logo, name, and domain shift, company owner Elon Musk has much grander plans for his platform. From a simple messaging platform, in his own words, Musk wants to turn X into an ‘everything app', similar to China's WeChat, where people can do a bunch of different things outside of typical social media activities on the app itself. This can include even checking your bank account balance, applying for a job, watching a live stream, shopping for clothes, and even finding a date. Even if it sounds ridiculous, Musk is pretty serious about it and mentioned it all during the company's first all-hands employee meeting.

In an unprecedented move in modern times, Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast is suspending shipment of its next physical release, The Deck of Many Things, due to defect. The announcement was made Friday, a little more than two weeks ahead of its expected release on Nov. 14. Polygon spoke with executive producer Kyle Brink ahead of the announcement.

What better way to follow up my interview with Just Stop Oil than by writing about a horror game set on a haunted oil rig? The game in question is, of course, Still Wakes The Deep from Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs developer The Chinese Room. Set off the coast of Scotland in the 1970s, it sees you navigating collapsing gantries and flooded rooms while avoiding an unearthly terror apparently extracted from the ocean floor. Mind you, the worst thing in the game could be the weather, which you can witness for yourself in the latest gameplay trailer below. Never mind the dreadful moaning on the other side of the pipes - how about that drizzle?