\n<\/p>\n
Abubakar Salim has<\/span> a lot of beef with Hollywood\u2014and he\u2019s getting it off his chest in his latest video game. The actor, known for his roles as Alyn of Hull on House of the Dragon<\/em> and Father in Raised By Wolves<\/em>, has been balancing his time between the big screen and gaming, two industries that have been affected by a slew of similar issues: long hours, shrinking jobs, abuse of power, and, more recently, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence use and generative AI.<\/p>\n Salim\u2019s sophomore game, Dead Take<\/em>, is a story of Hollywood, ambition, and exploitation, dressed up as a horror game that takes aim at his industry\u2019s problems, from corruption to AI use. \u201cHollywood is pure horror,\u201d Salim says.<\/p>\n Dead Take<\/em> is a firm departure from his debut game, Tales of Kenzera: Zau<\/em>. Where Zau<\/em> told a vibrant, heartfelt story about grief, Dead Take<\/em> is a psychological thriller set in the dark rooms of a Hollywood mansion. After his friend Vinny goes missing, struggling actor Chase breaks into the home of the industry\u2019s hottest director, Duke Cain, in search of clues. The game is an escape room by way of home invasion; room-by-room puzzles unlock more areas of the house, whether that means digging through bedrooms and closets, or navigating a poolhouse. Duke\u2019s domain is littered with clues about a lost child and a failed marriage, along with hints about how far he\u2019s willing to push actors in his films.<\/p>\n Salim likens writing the game to an exorcism. \u201cYou hear these stories,\u201d he says of whispers about headline-making abuse and bad behavior. \u201cIt is horrific. To then make a game that explores that felt like \u2018oh fuck you\u2019 to the industry and the machine. It really is mad what people get away with, the amount of toxicity that exists on an industry level.\u201d Dead Take<\/em> lets players piece together these sorts of stories, much as you would in real life, through emails, notes, and context. An actress caught in a MeToo-like scandal. A director pitting his actors against each other, or pushing them beyond their limits.<\/p>\n Throughout their search, players find flash drives containing video clips of the game\u2019s actors. Salim made the unusual choice to let these scenes play out as real-life footage instead of as animation. Although the use of full-motion-video in games has enjoyed newfound popularity, thanks to titles like Immortality,<\/em> it\u2019s still uncommon. Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI<\/em>, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em>) and Neil Newbon (Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em>, Date Everything<\/em>) act as the game\u2019s leads, Chase and Vinny. Both actors have worked for years, but it\u2019s only recently that they\u2019ve had the spotlight, thanks to more prominent roles in popular games. \u201cThey’re fucking good and I wanna show that, rather than putting them behind a character,\u201d Salim says.<\/p>\n As a creative professional, there\u2019s a lot for Salim to dislike about AI use\u2014and he certainly does dislike a lot\u2014but one fear stands out to him: images or videos being \u201cbastardized\u201d in ways actors and artists have no control over. \u201cI think that’s disturbing and disgusting,\u201d he says. \u201cThe last thing I want is someone to generate a horrific image of myself and then my daughter to stumble upon it as we’re older. That would be horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Abubakar Salim has a lot of beef with Hollywood\u2014and he\u2019s getting it off his chest in his latest video game. The actor, known for his roles as Alyn of Hull on House of the Dragon and Father in Raised By Wolves, has been balancing his time between the big screen and gaming, two industries that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[6141,8325,413,830,386,671,8326],"class_list":{"0":"post-14714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-actors","9":"tag-dragon","10":"tag-game","11":"tag-hollywood","12":"tag-horror","13":"tag-house","14":"tag-skewers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}