TIMES & GALAXY

Robot journalists? A dystopian vision indeed

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At a time when publications such as Buzzfeed – to name but one high-profile example – are laying off staff, ushering in a troubling “new frontier in media” with a reliance on AI-generated content, a game about the galaxy’s first robotic reporter could be considered both in questionable taste and excellently timed. (Perhaps more unwieldy opening sentences like this will help prove Edge is still written by human beings.) Tasked with sustaining – or maybe even improving – the trusted reputation of the eponymous holo paper, we’re certainly moved by this game to consider how doing a bad job might, in fact, be in humanity’s best interests. But for the purposes of a preview, we’re prepared to play along. For now.

It helps, perhaps, that we find ourselves nodding in recognition on quite a few occasions. Creative lead Ben Gelinas, a former writer and editor at BioWare, used to work as a local crime reporter, and it shows. There are telling details peppered throughout this early build, from a conceited columnist who claims spelling and grammatical errors are part of his writing voice (“your style is to make mistakes?”) to the ambience of the newsroom, convincing even when transplanted aboard a spacecraft.