In October of 1981 Galaga was deployed into 7 Elevens across North America. "Galaga King" tells the story of my local local 7 Eleven, and a boy we knew and revered as the Galaga King.

Posted by DogsoverLava@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 21 comments

... but there was something unique about our 7 Eleven that that made our Galaga days unfold with a certain desperation while we fought to reclaim our childhood after it was threatened by an encroaching darkness. In the end Neverland always falls, and the lost boys grow up and go home. But what happens to the Pan? That's the story of Galaga King.

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OogyBoogy_I_am@reddit

Jeez I hate AI content, especially when there is so much archival stuff around from that era.

But that would then require actual skills to produce so instead, we have this AI YT slop.

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kimapesan@reddit

Downvote this AI bot hard.

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DogsoverLava@reddit (OP)

Bot? my wife would be pretty pissed off to learn that the guy sitting in the living room on the computer for weeks neglecting his household duties while he tried to wrestle with nascent AI tools to tell a story was a bot all along. She always suspected despite my denials. Joke's on her!

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kimapesan@reddit

Bots still haven’t learned how to comment like a human.

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DogsoverLava@reddit (OP)

Whatever dude.

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Schmetts@reddit

Why is this AI crap in my feed?

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CrankyDoo@reddit

The worst thing about the music is that it sounds so generic. It’s like a mishmash of a 100 different pop songs put in a blender to create a bland slurry of music. The same might be said of the people in the video, bland plastic smiling faces. I’ll also add, Galaxians was better.

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DogsoverLava@reddit (OP)

The music has nothing to do with AI - it's all me - playing real instruments into a real recording console and mixing and mastering in a real home studio setup. I've been a musician my whole life and these songs come from a series of songs (a song cycle) I wrote inspired by the years I grew up. They are supposed to sound period correct as they were inspired by the music I grew up on and recorded as such. Galaga King was released to the streaming services about 4 years ago but had been in the can since around 2016 when I first wrote it.

The video was me wanting to tell the story of the song - AI allowed me to try to do that.

Galaga was the successor to Galaxians - but what made it different was the fire button and firing cadence - plus the game-play and story elements. Galaga took what Galaxians introduced to us (I remember playing it on an Apple 2e) and kicked it up by several factors. And without question Galaga is the greatest arcade game ever made - and that's a hill I'd die on for sure. I did after all grow up and survive in the stalking grounds of a predatory serial killer (and if you don't know that reference you didn't watch the video).

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LastRedshirt@reddit

I hate AI Slob

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DogsoverLava@reddit (OP)

I wish we were 3 or 4 years down the road with this already too. But you gotta use the tools to push their development - and stories still have to be told. Right now working with AI is like wrestling a wild animal and trying to herd cats. Thanks for checking it out..

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BradGunnerSGT@reddit

It’s built on stealing the hard work of real artists. Don’t act like “wrestling” with AI prompts is an actual talent that requires practice and discipline to produce art, that’s a slap in the face to actual creative people.

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DogsoverLava@reddit (OP)

I can't speak to how AI was developed - But I do know that I was careful to provide only images that I owned or were usable under license or permission for reference when needed. The back end of how it became capable of rendering an image based on a reference or a prompt is unknown to me.

Developing prompts (detailed instruction sets) then modifying those directions to hone in on the output you want is a laborious process. The tools are imperfect and for every image I generated I was probably running 10:1 on the images I threw away or rejected vs the one's I kept. Then when it came to to render those into sequences I probably again had a similar ratio of fails to success... but I am of course a novice in their use. But to even get there I still sat in my home doing outlines, then shot by shot storyboards with camera directions and perspectives for a very long time before even attempting to engage with AI.

And of course the song is mine. I wrote it. I played every instrument on it and sang. I recorded it, mixed it, and mastered it in my home studio. I released it on the streaming services about 4 years ago and have been hoping to make a video since then. The story is also mine. I lived it and bore witness to it.

As far as respecting artists and copyrights goes you'll see from the two other music videos on my Youtube channel that I made using "found footage" under various creative commons licenses that I assembled like collage to tell those stories, that everything was fully attributed and used according to permissions granted to me directly or personally and that I even attributed it per the license in the video.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. AI. The issues surrounding its use and abuse are only going to get more intense and it will be something we'll all have to reckon with - I'm scared. Right now AI being used to generate politically incorrect Bigfoot getting drunk in the forest and talking bullshit is one thing - what bad actors will use it for scares the crap out of me.

But I do know this - it is inevitable.

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