Static Sky: And Yet It █████
About this game
Static Sky: And Yet It █████ is a literary computer game based on the fear of and resistance to artificial intelligence. It imagines a future ruled by AI world models, where everything is generated by AI, reality is redefined, hometowns are reshaped, and symbols are reoriented.
In this future, the protagonist wears a RV (Real Virtuality) headset that claim to show "reality" within the "virtual." The seemingly real traces revealed by the RV glasses (such as unfinished noise and uncolored white objects) trigger his mental breakdown and fear of reality.
By depicting this collapse and the disintegration of meaning caused by reality, Static Sky: And Yet It █████ presents a possible future of extreme artificial intelligence. The protagonist's mental symptoms are a hypothesis about the broader human cognition of the future.
Static Sky is a “walking simulator” style game that takes players into the world of the protagonist to experience a series of vignettes and scenarios - some from the protagonist's lived experience, others generated by the generative AI Sekai.
Average Play Experience Time: 1 to 2 hours
Includes
A surreal landscape where reality and the hallucinations of AI blend together.
A vision of the future: what might a world controlled by rampant generative AI look like?
A mystery to solve: how did the world end up in this state?
Featuring
A surreal dystopian world full of failed AI images, brought to life by Rhett Tsai (How Deep is the Dark Water?), winner of the 2023 HUA Award of the Lumen Prize and 2023 Independent Games Festival finalist
Story and setting conceived and co-penned by Justin Bortnick (Glittermitten Grove/Frog Fractions 2), IndieCade 2017 and 2016 finalist and NZ Games Festival Play By Play 2017 finalist
Original oil paintings by artist Mofan Zhai
Note: Although this work deals with artificial intelligence and generative content, this is not a game generated by AI. A small number of individual assets were produced with the aid of AI working from images we own, for the purpose of demonstrating the contrast between a human- and AI-produced image. Please see the statement of ethics inside the program for full details, and hire and pay real humans to produce art.
Achievements
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Rain and White Tiles
59.7%"The moment he was set at liberty, he looked up to the sky and down to the ground, and, stamping with his foot, in a contemplative mood, said, Eppur si muove, that is, still it moves, meaning the Earth." - Giuseppe Baretti, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺, 1757
Scout®
68.0%"I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself." - Hayao Miyazaki, 13 November 2016
The True and False Monkey King
72.2%How many ears does it take to hear reality? In our modern judgment, we all become Diting. Is this transformation dehumanizing, or enlightenment?
Real Virtuality
77.7%"The world is not one person’s world but the world’s world." - 𝘓𝘶̈𝘴𝘩𝘪 𝘊𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘲𝘪𝘶 [吕氏春秋], c.293 BCE
Noisy World
88.8%"We don't know who struck first. Us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky." - Morpheus, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘹, 1999
"Static Sky: And Yet It █████" is a literary computer game based on the fear of and resistance to artificial intelligence. It imagines a future dominated by the generative AI "Sekai", where reality and hallucination blend and become indistinguishable.