The use of artificial intelligence in game development continues to cause heated debate. This time, Champions TCG studio participated in them. She stated that the artwork for her collectible NFT card game Champions of Otherworldly was made using neural networks. They were created by an "AI artist" alone, to whom she paid tens of thousands of dollars.
Cards from Champions of Otherworldly Magic
Champions TCG joined the discussion about AI a few days ago. On April 7, a Swaguar streamer filming Hearthstone videos called one of the maps for Champions of Otherworldly "ugly" and advised the studio to "hire a real artist." In response, Champions TCG offered him to draw some cards himself, stating that he would pay a thousand dollars for it.
This AI slop is so ugly 😭 Why does fat baby Sonic have a scrotum for a left arm? pic.twitter.com/wOlTlzxFBl
— Swaguar (@SwaguarTV) April 7, 2024
Champions TCG then posted a tweet on the studio's official account in which she talked about her artist.
"We pay an AI artist $15,000 per month for 10 hours of work. Why? During this time, he manages to create hundreds of amazing cards — astronomically faster than a team of ordinary artists. All his art is generated by AI, but there are no extra fingers, no template design, no mistakes… He is able to make successive phases of development, skins, and art in a different artistic style. No one is even close to him. We don't care how he does it, we only care that the end user enjoys the game," wrote Champions TCG.
Later in an interview with PC Gamer, Miles Malec, co-founder and CEO of Champions TCG, said that over the past six months, the "AI artist" has painted more than a thousand artworks for Champions of Otherworldly Magic. For this, he received 90 thousand dollars from the studio.
Malek admitted that although the artist actively uses neural networks, the art is still refined manually before being added to the game. "AI can do most of the work/primary generation, but you need to make sure there are no errors, extra fingers, etc. Everything needs to be edited and filtered," the top manager explained.
Malek did not say who this mysterious artist was. The head of Champions TCG pointed out only that he has fifteen years of experience working with digital art.
Champions of Otherworldly Magic was released in June 2023. According to Malek, to date, the studio has earned about 500 thousand dollars from the sale of cards in the game.