Project APEX is an experiment to see what a collectible card game could look like if it was illustrated by an AI program in 2022. Its proxy cards are designed to work with Netrunner, a critically-acclaimed out-of-print asymetrical card game with a cyberpunk theme.
You can try out a digital version of Project APEX at chiriboga.cronbach.com.
Netrunner was originally designed by famous game designer Richard Garfield and is currently maintained by a fan-run non-profit volunteer collective that refers to itself as Null Signal Games.
All System Gateway Cards are available in Project APEX.
All System Update 2021 Cards are available in Project APEX.
These are samples of the Project APEX cards. Please note that these are just previews. Use the download links on the Project APEX Itch.io page to print the cards at a higher resolution with a bleed.
You can download high-resolution versions of all the Project APEX cards at its Itch.io page.
Null Signal Games maintains Netrunner and provides all the information you need to play with these cards, including a tutorial.
Project APEX does not endorse any printing service. However, most people print them at home with the help of PNPBuddy or through MakePlayingCards.com.
You can find decks on NetrunnerDB. Currently, Project APEX provides proxy cards from the System Gateway set, as well as a number of popular cards from other sets.
A friend and some tokens. You can use whatever you like for tokens but NearEarthHub has some suggestions. As for a friend, check out AlwaysBeRunning.net.
All cards are alternate versions of already existing Netrunner cards. They are as balanced as Netrunner is balanced.
No, the project is concluded.
There might be a video in the future.
They are all over the place. The project took a lot of AI "wrangling" and some cards even use prompts that were meant for other cards.
No. A human did the graphic design, some digital painting, and they also often combined multiple AI illustrations into one.
I use any art AI that I can get my hands on. There are many of them, such as MidJourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, etc.
AIs sometimes draw the strangest things and Project APEX embraces this, as it is conceptually relevant to the project to do so.
I believe that the images used to train an AI need to be acquired with the consent of the artist. The AIs that were used to create these cards were not ethically developed.
That is actually great. This is an art project and your reaction is part of the art. It is meant to feel "wrong" as these cards were illustrated by an AI that does not understand the game while simultaneously taking over a job from a human illustrator. It aims to spark discussion on automation, job displacement and skill shift, and their relation to art. Perhaps the protesters in classic Netrunner said it best: "Haas ≠ Humans".
Of course, it is also great if you do like it. Despite the clear issues with the AIs used for this project and the relatively grim design of the cards, we are living in an age where a single digital artist can create art for hundreds of cards in a few weekends. That is absolutely incredible, and if we handle this technology ethically and responsibly, there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about a future in which human artists leverage AI for the better. Maybe AIs are friends we salute?
