drifting in the universe @artic-quills - Tumblr Blog

Pixelberry, Series Entertainment and the Rise of AI:

Ok, I was taking a break from watching Twilight: New Moon because sometimes the cringe gets too much and I get second hand embarrassment and I decided to doomscroll on social media. I, like many of you I'm sure, are aware of Series Entertainment (honestly i'm not going to say Pixelberry anymore bc I don't think its them and I genuinely am not sure if any humans actually work at that company anyme) recent failed attempt at rebooting the Hero franchise with this Captain Marvel esque AI bullshit:

Here are some screen grabs i pulled from social media /reddit:

In short:

*my reaction:*

Sorry for the strong language but I'm genuinely at my wit's end with this fuckin company. So, as i was saying, I was on Choices insta account and came across this comment:

Now, me being me, I was extremely confused. I only started on Choices in Spring 2023 after having to drop out of mt last year of school due to chronic migraines and as far as I had known, the It Lives franchise was cancelled after Book II, It Lives Beneath also lemme take a quick moment to shout out one of my favourite MC's Harper Vance🙂‍↕️🙂‍↔️.

So, i did what any sane 21 year old would do and I went on the Choices Reddit Page and guess what my unlucky ass found:

Now you may be thinking @artic-quills, what's the big deal? They brought back Elementalists hope that's the correct name I haven't played that series yet, just last year. Well, dear friend, the big deal is that I just one year ago roughly I remember because I finished the book a couple days after just moving into our new house I remember finishing a fan made project, with the exact same title:

Not only was this a fuckin masterpiece its part of the reason why I became so passionate about turning Choices stories into forms of visual media(movies, TV shows) one day if I ever had my own production studio it was an incredibly detailed, intricate game that was just as good, if not better in some instances, than the original work by the original Choices team. Whoever those individuals are who worked on the @itlivesproject gave up their valued time and energy into making something for every single Choices fan to enjoy - simply out of the kindness of their own hearts.

This was a project from what I can gather on their social media pages that clearly took months or years even - and even despite all the bugs, user feedback they still dogged it out and came out with an interactive game that honestly puts a lot of the interactive games out there to shame. You know why? Because they gave a damn. Something Series Entertainment clearly does not.

People in the literary world often take fanfiction unseruously. But I say this: do you know the level of skill you have to have to take an existing franchise, and make it your own? Take something that was wonderful all on its own and improvement it without further detracting from the original work's quality? Its fuckin hard.

Therefore it fuckin sucks when I come online and see this post from original creator behind @itlivesproject :

Not only did they not bother to rename the fuckin book, they leeched onto the popularity of another successful fan-made book in order to get a few clicks on their stupid soulless AI slop app Run.Tv

artic-quills

*continu'd*

And in case you're wondering, what Run.Tv is? They make AI short story form shit like this:

It (MMC) looks like the literal fuckin devil

Hey here's a tip Choices (or Series Entertainment) if you want people to read your damm books = than maybe write good fuckin books?!

Under your July 2024 acquisition post you stated: "With our cutting-edge technology, we will be able to take Choices to the next level, with bigger books, new interactive features, and ever-improving story quality..."

Yet it seems like to me ever since your acquisition of Choices there has been an incessant downward spiral in qualities. Spelling mistakes, uncanny valley character smiles:

Underdeveloped plots, overlooked characters have all led us to the crap we see before us today in your half-assed not even half more like quartered attempt at revitalising a beloved franchise in which a dark skin African American woman (Ava) has miraculously turned white:

Its 2026, and I'm sure I don't need to explain how harmful whitewashing is but this was an issue that could have been avoided if someone had actually checked the content before you dropped it randomly on a fuckin Sunday.

This is why the fans have such a hard time believing your faux 2025 Art Promise:

"We promise we are a team of real people, and we promise to continue being one and continue to do our best to make this product that we love so much..."

You mean a team of real people that have lived through the Black Lives Matter Movement, and general political turmoil of this time are unaware that it's racially insensitive for a dark skinned black character to be depicted as a tanned white woman with dreadlocks?!

You've been willing to ask for our and advice, and yet all too willing to ignore. The amount of comments from loyal fans assuring you all to take your time on books, and that we'd rather have less books in a year if it means better quality are endless and still you refuse to listen and churn out more and more low quality books that nobody wants and nobody asked for:

"We want to be very clear about our commitment to Interactive Fiction. The traditional Choices format is the heart of what we do... Hero: Homecoming represents an opportunity for us to explore Choices stories in different modals and formats."

The truth is, you don't have a commitment to Interactive Fiction or the traditional Choices format. If you did you would actually listen to the fans, listen to the people who'd been here since 2017 who helped make this community a special place to be.

#pb choices #choices playthrough #choices

artic-quills

Pixelberry, Series Entertainment and the Rise of AI:

Here are some screen grabs i pulled from social media /reddit:

In short:

*my reaction:*

Sorry for the strong language but I'm genuinely at my wit's end with this fuckin company. So, as i was saying, I was on Choices insta account and came across this comment:

So, i did what any sane 21 year old would do and I went on the Choices Reddit Page and guess what my unlucky ass found:

Therefore it fuckin sucks when I come online and see this post from original creator behind @itlivesproject :

Not only did they not bother to rename the fuckin book, they leeched onto the popularity of another successful fan-made book in order to get a few clicks on their stupid soulless AI slop app Run.Tv

shouts-into-the-void

Not only did they leech onto the popularity; the creator of the It Lives Within game came out with another post revealing Choices plagiarized the fan-game to make this AI "show", as well as scrapping people's fan-art of the OG games.

Its really disgusting to see that the people who worked on the fan-game poured their heart and soul into making something for fans after PB canceled the series, only for PB to swoop in and steal it after years.

artic-quills

They have no shame

#pb choices #choices #it lives in the woods #it lives anthology #it lives within #anti ai

spicyroyals

Let's get the Royal Romance Fandom Rolling Again!

Hello everyone, I am an oldie who was part of this fandom group for years until too much negativity poured into it. I let go for a while and decided to come back, but seeing that the TRR fanbase has quietened down breaks my heart.

Not only was TRR fun, wild, and romantic, but it was so much fun because of the wonderful fanbase that supported it.

I MISS YOU GUYS!!!!

Some of you might roll your eyes or laugh when I say this, but coming onto Tumblr and engaging with you all was my therapy.

So..... I would like to get the ball rolling by starting a Royal Romance Writing Reboot.

Please share this post so we can reach out to everyone! Whether you enjoy reading, writing, artwork, or just like sharing your thoughts, I hope you'll jump on the train.

My hope is to get everyone involved again and launch some fun events. within the next couple of weeks.

artic-quills

I would love this. TRR was my first Choices book so it holds a v special place in my heart.

#trr #trr drake #trr au #trr fanfic #king liam #drake walker #pixelberry #the royal romance #choices trr

itlivesproject

Hello everyone, mod win here.

A couple days ago, I made a post addressing Pixelberry/Series Entertainment's "It Lives Within." At the time, I wasn't aware of the story, I only knew that the name was the same. Since then, I saw many people accusing it of plagiarizing our game. I decided to look into it more, and after having watched all the episodes on YouTube, the claims of plagiarism unfortunately seem to be valid. As such, I'd like to further address this situation, and provide a list of stolen ideas and art with screenshot proofs and explanations.

A few years ago, I had a video call with one of the original writers for the It Lives Series. He no longer works for Pixelberry, and did not work with them at the time of the video call. Though I knew nothing about their original plans for the game before starting this project (including that they also intended to name the game "It Lives Within"), he told me their plans on that call. It was going to be a survivor-type cave crawl story with giant bug-inspired and creepy crawler monster enemies, where you play as a new character who is attacked by these creatures while camping and separated from their friends. From my understanding, Connor and his crew would be sort of like Sam and Dean from SPN, acting as these experienced "hunters" who help protect them.

That is not what the story of what Choices "It Lives Within" was. At all.

This means that the AI """writers""" at Series Entertainment/PB were not creating this story based on the original writers’ plans. They made their story idea later - after ILW was completed in its entirety. Therefore, it's reasonable to follow that unlike the title, these similarities are not coincidence. Though even then, the title It Lives Within had to do with the cave setting and going literally into the earth, while the AI version has nothing to do with caves. So the reasoning for the title is not the same as the reasoning for their original title.

With all this in mind, let’s go over the similarities between our game and the Choices It Lives Within AI show. I am going to be putting it beneath a read more, in case there are people who are interested in playing ILW and don’t want to get it spoiled.

averyrealhumanunfortunately

You know, it's funny that while the entire run.tv debacle has been going on thanks to what happened with the Its Lives series, I was actually pondering another event that's recently passed by that I'm not too sure most people in the fandom might know about. For those who still play with the original Choices app, about a few days ago, Choices put out a system update that, consequentially, managed to break every single Choices APK mod that was available online.

If you, for whatever reason, don't know what I'm talking about, back in 2016, there was practically no way of acquiring diamonds in the Choices app outside of paying for them. If I remember correctly, the three diamonds a day ad watches weren't part of the original debut, so many fans took it upon themselves to dive into the game's code where they discovered that even though the keys are directly connected to a specific server that made it impossible to edit, the diamonds weren't. So, these tech savvy individuals did what they do best and modded their games to give them infinite amounts of diamonds or just make it so that the diamond counter didn't go down when you chose a premium option. They would then upload these modded apps to pirating sites or other APK sites for other fans to download.

This basically made Choices a real free to play app, unless you lacked the patience to wait four hours a day to play two chapter of a visual novel until the ads for keys basically rendered that wait hollow as well. To the many people who did not have 100 dollars to blow on numerous books, these apps were a godsend. The reason this sparked my interest (aside from my own personal experience) is because I've never seen this happen before.

I've had the Choices app since at least 2017, and I've never seen any update that the people who maintain these mods couldn't crack. More curious is that Pixelberry's official blog just so happened to put out a post talking about how their code was out of date. They, of course, frame it as an issue where the "current architecture significantly limits what's possible" in their goals, and maybe that's true. I just think it's extremely interesting that after ten years, there's a sudden concern for the game's code that coincides with a complete breakdown of these apps that literally removed the primary way in which the Choices makes money.

To tie this into an even longer rant, I genuinely don't believe that Choices' use of generative AI is what most people's problem is. I'm not saying it's not a factor; I just don't think it's the main core. Spellfyre, a game that I've been nursing for about a week and change, outsources it's art to studios that have used generative AI, likely because these companies either don't charge as much or they have only recently introduced generative AI into their process. Yet, the very same people I see getting angry at Choices' use of GenAI in their projects have no problem playing and posting about Spellfyre.

Now, this is not a place of shaming; hypocrisy doesn't necessarily make you wrong. Instead, I think it shows that whatever is going on between the fanbase and Pixelberry Studios is much deeper than the generative AI debates. Frankly, I think the actual issue here is that the Choices app has been growing a lot more hostile to its players, and it's been doing so in a very short amount of time.

When Pixelberry made a post on their blog calling their business model "unsustainable," I think they're being a little gracious with themselves. I would not be surprised if Choices never made a profit ever. I remember the day where Choices decided to change the diamond output for ads from 3 to 100, and I thought to myself "Oh, they're planning on discarding this thing soon." This is why when Choices made the decision to roll back those 100 gems, I wasn't surprised. What I was surprised by was them cutting it down to ten and expecting nobody to say anything.

An average chapter of Choices typically contains a special dress option (25), a special hangout event that's either to give the player an advantage in a later scene or just to pad the time (15-20), and a love interest oriented hangout scene (20). There are exceptions to this rule like a smut-oriented diamond choice costing 30 diamonds (and maybe 20 in books that are more erotica oriented) or the dreaded wedding books that are notoriously expensive. That said, on average, a player can look to spend about 60-80 diamonds a chapter.

Choices did not need to cut the diamonds that low, and it's a really bad look that they did. I truly believe that if they just halved the 100 diamonds a day to about 50, players probably wouldn't have felt so disoriented, even though Choices would still be making a profit. To cut it down to ten was a deliberate choice not just to make diamond farming a little less unfair to the corporation, but to actively frustrate the more stubborn players into just giving up on their hoarding.

The fact that Choices also stopped doing diamond rush events based on playing books or spending on premium choices didn't help either. Neither did getting rid of book passes or the ability to farm diamonds through replaying old books. These were avenues for players to not only regularly engage with the app, but also feel rewarded for doing so. The decision to remove all of these options at once was deeply jarring and cruel. At least those who follow Pixelberry's official accounts got some form of a head-ups about the diamonds; they just removed the other stuff and fucked off.

Prior to that, the shift in book genres had also been creating a lot of tension in the fanbase. Regardless of your opinions on Choices' long standing history of prioritizing romance and then eventually erotica thanks in part to the success of The Nanny Affair (though I would argue that Bloodbound walked so that series could take off sprinting), the reality is that there were a lot of complaints from fans about this that persist to this day, and those complaint largely fell on deaf ears.

The biggest nail in the coffin, to me at least, was the creation of the VIP service. While this was an additional way of making money for the app that went beyond single purchases of keys or diamonds, the decision to include VIP books in the line up for special content increased production pressure on an already swamped work environment as well likely created complaints within fan spaces, which why I think they stopped making VIP exclusive books and shifted to early access books. This has had a tremendous effect on the fandom because now the communal aspect of playing these serialized chapters as they were released have been broken, killing fan discussions due to the fear of spoilers. This whole thing has been amusing to me because the unlimited keys and extra diamond rewards from the package are pretty good on their own; they didn't need to add that extra pressure.

Ever since this acquisition (and honestly even before), Pixelberry has been quietly rolling back a lot of their goodwill gestures to the fandom, likely under the impression that these gestures haven't given enough back for them to continue. The fact that Choices is still, without a doubt, one of the most professional iterations of these types of game has also granted it a monopoly that only Romance Club has seemingly made in a crack in, though we'll see where Spellfyre goes in the future.

What Pixelberry, or rather this new company head, needs to understand is that Choices is a live service game. These types of games are built on a deeply tenuous relationship between fan and developer entirely based on a give and take dynamic. Perhaps Choices felt like the fans were doing much giving, so instead of incentivizing them to do so through small, incremental changes, they just gave up.

When fans feel as if they are simply bags of disposable income in the eyes of the developers, it actually turns them more stubborn and spiteful. I've never bought a pack of diamonds in my life. The two times I did, it was my sister footing a birthday bill. Trying to squeeze money out of those who are determined not to spend any never results in those groups actually forking over cash. They just leave or turn to alternative ways to cheat you. It is what it is. You just have to get over it as a business rather than trying to irritate them into submission and turning away audiences that were actually giving you money.

The whole GenAI thing is just an extension of this need to actually make money on an app that, again, I don't think has ever made money nor really could never make money running the same way that it did in 2016, which was an absurdly different time and economy. And it's also serves as an extension with fan frustration that Choices really just views them as faceless wallets. That fact that there are obvious obfuscation going on here in what is being told to us and what is happening only makes things worse.

If the cost of making books was so high, why are you remaking older books where all you do is slap on a new visual art change that forces you to spend time replacing all of the visual code on a game that nobody was complaining about, unless it was to use these books as testing dummies for a new art style shift?

If the the cost of making these books was so high, why are there just as many if not even more books released in 2025 than there were in 2019? Clearly, they can't cost that much otherwise there would've been some form of a production slowdown, whether that would be putting books on hiatus, making books with a short chapter span like the Haunting of Briar Manor, or simply reducing the amount of projects the studio is taking on at a given time?

If the the cost of making these books was so high, why are you spending extra time and money on side projects in tandem with release books, especially knowing that these shows will never be popular among fans because the entire selling point of your app has always been interactive visual novels?

Again, I believe Choices when they say their former way of life is unsustainable these days. What I don't believe is that they actually care about fixing that; in fact, I believe they're more interested in short-term cheap solutions that basically amount to the "special magic bandage" my Kindergarten teacher gave me when I trip on a sidewalk during recess and left 3/4 of my skin on the hot pavement of a basketball court. How am I supposed to engage with you as a consumer when you have shown an active disdain/or distrust in me and frankly your own business model?

I forgot what the conclusion of this post was supposed to be, so I guess it's just a lengthy prose with an unsatisfying ending that really amounts to nothing. Sort of like a Choices book. The only difference is that I can say I wrote this myself, and people would actually believe me.

aces-and-angels

screaming, crying, throwing up

artic-quills

Pixelberry, Series Entertainment and the Rise of AI:

Here are some screen grabs i pulled from social media /reddit:

In short:

*my reaction:*

Sorry for the strong language but I'm genuinely at my wit's end with this fuckin company. So, as i was saying, I was on Choices insta account and came across this comment:

So, i did what any sane 21 year old would do and I went on the Choices Reddit Page and guess what my unlucky ass found:

Therefore it fuckin sucks when I come online and see this post from original creator behind @itlivesproject :

Not only did they not bother to rename the fuckin book, they leeched onto the popularity of another successful fan-made book in order to get a few clicks on their stupid soulless AI slop app Run.Tv

artic-quills

*continu'd*

And in case you're wondering, what Run.Tv is? They make AI short story form shit like this:

It (MMC) looks like the literal fuckin devil

Hey here's a tip Choices (or Series Entertainment) if you want people to read your damm books = than maybe write good fuckin books?!

Yet it seems like to me ever since your acquisition of Choices there has been an incessant downward spiral in qualities. Spelling mistakes, uncanny valley character smiles:

This is why the fans have such a hard time believing your faux 2025 Art Promise:

"We promise we are a team of real people, and we promise to continue being one and continue to do our best to make this product that we love so much..."

artic-quills

If you knew you couldn't handle the requirements that running an app like Choices would bring, why buy it ? Though it would have been disappointing to see the app close down, it would have been better than to see you take our beloved franchise and effectively chew them up and spit them out.

And now, a few things to clarify:

1. I do not blame any past, current Choices writers/artists. I know that they are doing their best to exist within a system that is currently contributing to their creative fields demise.

2. The issues mentioned obviously are not applicable to all Choices books.

Anyway, i'm just going to take one last moment to plug @itlivesproject. The work is really amazing and I think now, more than ever, especially as we anticipate the release of Obsidian Cut, they need our support. I'm so lucky that I am still able to support something made and created by a team of amazing humans before AI completely pushes us all out of our fields.

I may do a deep dive on Run.tv and Series Entertainment- let me know if anyone wants it. There's something really disturbing they're doing to TRR also. Effectively taking the original content and reskinning it to AI episodic form, its disgusting 🤢

Now I'm going back to Twilight. It may be cringe, but Series Entertainment is 10x worse.

AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REPODT/SHARE/GET THE WORD OUT

#pb choices #choices playthrough #choices #pixelberry studios #pixelberry #choices the royal romance #it lives within #it lives anthology #choices blades #choices game

itlivesproject

Hello, everyone!

Like many of you, I woke up to the AI slop It Lives Within "TV show" on the Choices app. Having spent thousands (no joke) of loving hours on the fan-made It Lives Within, I admit it felt like a bit of a kick to the gut, especially since I'd stayed up until 2 AM the night before, meticulously working on improving the programming of textbox animations for the updated version of the game.

But at the end of the day, the people are what own stories. It doesn't matter what PB puts out, especially when it so blatantly disrespects a series we all hold close to our hearts. We can choose what to support, what to value, and what to be our true version of these stories.

As such, I wanted to provide an update for "It Lives Within: The Obsidian Cut." We are working extremely hard to finish rewrites, and I apologize it's taking so long - but real work takes time. We take so long because we don't use AI to do our work for us. Our testers have found hundreds of bugs, which have been corrected. I'm currently working on some rewrites for chapters 21-22, and once that's finished, I'm going to play from start to finish with different MCs to include more complete personality variants for your MC.

While our game was highly beloved (which I am still so wholly grateful for three years after the final episode aired), I know some of you tried the original version and decided it wasn't for you. Others maybe never heard of it. But, with the news of AI It Lives Within dropping today, I just wanted to invite everyone to give our fan version a chance. If you tried it before and gave up, or haven't played it yet, I recommend waiting until Obsidian airs to experience that version for the first time. And if you did play the original, stick around! You'll love Obsidian when it airs. All of our testers are highly enjoying it and say that it improves on the story with every change, while still be the story they knew and love.

AI It Lives Within is frustrating and offensive, but ultimately, we never needed their blessing, and neither do you. Our story started small, with a team that never made any money. Everything was done out of passion and love for this series and these characters, and we were and still are, devoted to creating truly player-drive stories where your choices matter. A LOT. That passion is something that can never be generated in any machine. Stories from the heart speak to the heart, "canon" or not, and what really matters is how theses stories impact and inspire us.

artic-quills

If anyone wants to play something that was actually made with a human soul and is fucking phenomenal this is the game for you

#it lives within #playchoices #it lives series #it lives in the woods

artic-quills

Pixelberry, Series Entertainment and the Rise of AI:

Here are some screen grabs i pulled from social media /reddit:

In short:

*my reaction:*

Sorry for the strong language but I'm genuinely at my wit's end with this fuckin company. So, as i was saying, I was on Choices insta account and came across this comment:

So, i did what any sane 21 year old would do and I went on the Choices Reddit Page and guess what my unlucky ass found:

Therefore it fuckin sucks when I come online and see this post from original creator behind @itlivesproject :

Not only did they not bother to rename the fuckin book, they leeched onto the popularity of another successful fan-made book in order to get a few clicks on their stupid soulless AI slop app Run.Tv

artic-quills

Pixelberry, Series Entertainment and the Rise of AI:

Here are some screen grabs i pulled from social media /reddit:

In short:

*my reaction:*

Sorry for the strong language but I'm genuinely at my wit's end with this fuckin company. So, as i was saying, I was on Choices insta account and came across this comment:

So, i did what any sane 21 year old would do and I went on the Choices Reddit Page and guess what my unlucky ass found:

Therefore it fuckin sucks when I come online and see this post from original creator behind @itlivesproject :

Not only did they not bother to rename the fuckin book, they leeched onto the popularity of another successful fan-made book in order to get a few clicks on their stupid soulless AI slop app Run.Tv

Pixelberry, Series Entertainment and the Rise of AI:

Here are some screen grabs i pulled from social media /reddit:

In short:

*my reaction:*

Sorry for the strong language but I'm genuinely at my wit's end with this fuckin company. So, as i was saying, I was on Choices insta account and came across this comment:

So, i did what any sane 21 year old would do and I went on the Choices Reddit Page and guess what my unlucky ass found:

Therefore it fuckin sucks when I come online and see this post from original creator behind @itlivesproject :

Not only did they not bother to rename the fuckin book, they leeched onto the popularity of another successful fan-made book in order to get a few clicks on their stupid soulless AI slop app Run.Tv

#pb choices #choices playthrough #choices #it lives in the woods #it lives anthology #it lives within