How the roottates are acute and have become a success

Robin Ward recovered with a broken arm when he fell in love with The rootrets are deadA free browser game hosted on Itch.io, an independent game sale. He contacted his creator, Jeremy Johnston, and said to him: “It should be a more important matter than it is.” At the same time, said Ward, he “knew why” it couldn’t be.

The version of the browser of The rootrets are dead Used from art generated by AI for its images, a central part of the puzzle game that tastes players who are investigating dozens of people and filling its complex family tree. At the time, Steam, the largest platform for PC games, did not make it possible to use a generative AI in games published using the window. In addition, Ward and Johnston agreed that they thought it was “contrary to the ethics of selling works created in this way”.

Johnston had initially released the game for free, despite spending 11 months to build it from what was originally a global jam project game paved game together in 2023. In tight time constraints of jam, and at a time before the generative AI was so well known, he contacted a friend who was “super to” put in place by using Pozer.

The images were far from perfect. Johnston and Ward underline a distorted and looking image of a young girl in the original version of the game (that is always available for free) – Ward calls it “demonic”. Other portraits have twisted hands which were a revealing gift of the generative AI at the time.

But despite the expansion of the game for almost a year, adding to the aspects of history and the puzzle, Johnston says that he “never really thought” of replacing art. Not being an artist himself, he focused on the photographic quality of the existing work, and he knew that he could never afford to hire models and a cameraperson to recreate it.

And although he put a lot of work in the extended version, he did not expect the reaction he would get. “I released other things – not necessarily games, but things I spent a lot of time and energy, then they came out and no one cared,” he said. So although he spent a lot of time on RoottretsHe didn’t want to invest in the money he never expected to come back.

When he published the Itch.io version of RoottretsHowever, it was surprisingly popular. He spread on the forums and Reddit, and he received some attention in the game press. He was not billed, due to the work of art of the AI, although he included a donation link and said that he brought about $ 2,000 to $ 3,000 in more than 10,000 players.

And one of these players was Ward. After holding the hand to Johnston, they agreed that Ward would reprogram the game and hire an illustrator to replace the works of art of the AI ​​and prepare it for a steam outlet. The illustrator he brought, Henning Ludvigsen, says that he used the art of AI as a kind of concept sketch. Ludvigsen then did his own research on the era and the style that the image was supposed to evoke, which ends up doing nearly 40 illustrations over almost a year of work.

“I am not a big fan of generating AI,” he says, saying that his peers in the illustration industry have seen a reduction in work, especially conceptual artists. “(Companies) jump this step now (using AI), which, I think, is not great.”

Regarding finished products, however, he still considers generating AI as “not to do well in general” among the players. Large video game companies like Take Two Interactive have noted that players tend to avoid not only the games that use AI but that they also react negatively and in the notes, call him A potential avenue for “the loss of players, income … and reputation damage”. Johnston mentions the case of the Cyan worlds, the developer behind myst, reaction reception To use “AI assisted content” as texture assets in its latest game.

The rootrets are dead He seemed to get around these problems by being transparent about his use in advance, as well as when you go out for free, says Johnston. Ward also underlines that “in this case, this is the case with” there would be no game “against” there is a game “.” Johnston is appropriate that without the use of a work of art generated by AI, the initial version would never have been published, which means that the full version with the work of Ludvigsen would never have existed. Ludvigsen himself says that he “really appreciated” the replacement of the illustrations, since he is “not a big fan of” the generation of art in general.

“I think some people would say:” Well, I would prefer that there is no game in this case “, and I think they are entitled to their opinion,” said Ward, citing the environmental concerns And the abolition of artists’ work for the training of corpus as potential arguments for this approach. “But I ended up playing something I really liked,” he says.

The game was released on Steam in January 2025. “The vast majority of people are like:” I’m very happy that you get rid of AI “”, explains Ward. Although some have declared that they prefer the most photographic quality of the generated art, Ludvigsen’s work is undeniably an upgrade, from the not cut fingers to the increased coherence of design for the characters who appear in several photographs, which makes certain puzzles more understandable.

The rootrets are dead is now a critical and commercial success, which would not have occurred without both generator and a human artist. Ward and Johnston note that the game has taken an unusual route to its current state. But with the growing prevalence of AI tools, more games may end on the same path.