Tony BarkIndie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage
brucethemooseSeems excessive.
There’s AI slop games, the new breed of lazy asset flips. There’s replacing employees with slop machines.
And then there’s “a few of our textures were computer generated.” In a game that is clearly passionately crafted art.
I get it’s about principle, but still.
Also what about AI code tools? Like if they use cursor to help write some code does that disqualify them?
Yeah.
A lot of devs may do it personally, even if it’s not a company imperative (which it shouldn’t be).
seathruIf you do that and proceed to say “No we didn’t use any AI tools”. Then yes, that should be a disqualification.
“When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.”
That’s fair.
But the Game Awards should reconsider that label next year. The connotation is clearly “AI Slop,” and that just doesn’t fit for stuff like cursor code completion, or the few textures E33 used.
Otherwise studios are just going to lie. If they don’t, GA will be completely devoid of bigger projects.
…I don’t know what the threshold for an “AI Slop” game should be through. It’s clearly not E33. But you don’t want a sloppy, heavily marketed game worming its way in, either.
You have to draw the line somewhere, saying any game cant use AI is much simpler than an arbitrary definition of what slop is. Also means we reward real artistry everytime.
Then you’re going to get almost no games.
Or just get devs lying about using cursor or whatever when they code.
If that’s the culture of the Game Awards, if they have to lie just to get on, that… doesn’t seem healthy.
How have we all forgotten that games were made perfectly fine for decades without AI? Better games even.
I'd rather give an award to a "worse" game that didnt use AI, than to a game that did.
Devs can lie, but the truth always comes out eventually.
Then most just won’t go on the Game Awards, and devs will go on using Cursor or whatever they feel comfortable with in their IDE setup.
I’m all against AI slop, but you’re setting an unreasonably absolute standard. It’s like saying “I will never use any game that was developed in proximity to any closed source software.” That is possible, technically, but most people aren’t gonna do that. It’s basically impossible on a larger team. Give them some slack with the requirement; it’s okay to develop on Windows or on Steam, just open the game’s source.
Similarly, let devs use basic tools. Ban slop from the end product.
Kogasa“the truth” being that a few generated placeholder textures were accidentally left in and promptly replaced? crazy
A willingness to play with Sauron’s One Ring is a signal that they’re not all that bothered about playing with Sauron’s One Ring.
Did you know that most domestic abuse cases don’t actually start with some guy beating his future wife on their first date? That kind of behavior builds up over time.
Games were made by a single person not sleeping for a week.
But people expect more now and one person can’t do it fueled just by passion. The other people want to get paid now, not when the game is released.
Limiting the tools people can use to make games is ableist, elitist and just stupid.
Theyre not limiting their tools, they’re limiting some awards they could win when they created real art.
No no. The rules didn’t say “art” it was ALL AI use for the whole duration of the project. Planning, emails, research everything.
Not a single drop of AI is allowed.
This time yes. But the rule ban any and all AI use during development. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the final product or not.
Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination.
It says developed using generative AI, not no AI is allowed to be used anywhere near development.
They should make it more specific though and not one sentence, since it obviously leads to ignorant or willfull misinterpretation.
Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination.
You arent developing a game when you sennd Emails to someone. Same as you’re not a developer when you do the finances.
What about AI based autocomplete in an IDE, would that disqualify a game from this specific award?
It’s a weird gray area. Nobody really knows where the limit is. The current consensus is that for a fact the “AI” can’t own a copyright to anything.
How smart can an autocomplete be before it takes away your copyright? Does using snippets count? How smart can the snippet engine be at filling the template?
If I ask AI how to solve something but write the exact same code myself, is it mine?
It If I grab code from stack overflow, does it make it mine?
It’s a weird gray area. Nobody really knows where the limit is.
This is a “no.” If you can’t just say yes, that’s a no, buddy.
If I ask AI how to solve something but write the exact same code myself, is it mine?
You know, colleges figured this one out: it’s called “plagiarism.”
It’s not me saying it, it’s the lawyers. The jury is quite literally out own where the copyright lies on AI generated content. The only definite verdict has been that the AI itself isn’t it.
But whether it’s the one who created the model, prompted the model or the ones whose data was used to teach the model 🤷🏻♂️ Wibbly wobbly timey wimey
I get regular briefings about this at work, because we have really good lawyers who actually read contracts of the services we use. And have banned multiple ones due to … creative copyright clauses in their contracts.
As for your “generated code is plagiarism” argument, do you have any precedents on that because I’d be interested in reading the verdicts? If true it’s a massive game changer for many industries and open so fucking many companies to lawsuits.
Mate, you were asked if code that was written for you was in fact your code and you’re talking about copyright. You’re off in the woods. You are so deep in the poisonous bog, I don’t think it’s possible to pull you out.
I think you get regular briefings at work on how to be, like, a business narcissist. Much like Tommy Tallarico, the inventor of music in video games.
But what is “my code”?
If I solve a problem but it turns out later I had read a solution to this problem somewhere and inadvertently copied it. Is it my code?
If I use a Jetbrains provided built in template for a function and just fill in the variables, is it my code?
What if I just accept it as is, still my code?
If I copy a solution verbatim from Stack Overflow or a book, is it my code?
If I iplement a well known algorithm, is it my code if it looks exactly the same as a billion other implementations of the same thing? Can you tell whether I wrote it or just copied someone elses code?
What if Intellisense autocompletes a full function, is it my code?
What if the autocomplete is powered by a LLM, is it my code?
Can anything except a full clean-room implementation on a computer with no internet access be “my code”?
Please tell me, as you seem to have this thing nailed down. I work with this stuff every day and I’m mostly in the dark about where the line between “my code” and “too much autogenerated, no copyright or even copyright ifringement” goes.
… but it turns out later I had read a solution to this problem somewhere and inadvertently copied it.
Plagiarism covers this.
If I use a Jetbrains provided built in template …
Are you claiming you wrote the template? I think plagiarism might cover that.
What if I just accept it as is, still my code?
Absolutely not.
If I copy a solution verbatim from Stack Overflow or a book,
If you… saw a solution somewhere. And then you copied it letter for letter. And then you told people, “this is mine, I wrote this,” … is that plagiarism?
This is for sure a difficult one, super hard, but I will give you a chance to think about it. It’s good to consider all the possibilities.
So it’s plagiarism all the way down? All software ever is uncopyrightable?
If you’re sending emails related to the development of the game you’re developing to other people developing that same game, you’re NOT developing the game? What kind of bullshit mental gymnastics is this?
Sending Emails related to development is still not development itself.
If youre washing your gymnastic clothes, it’s not considered doing gymnastics .
Bad analogy. Communication is part of team development. If you’re pitching ideas, redefining requirements or requesting additional assets, you’re developing the game…
You’re clearly avoiding the spirit of what’s being said here, but I don’t mind biting the bullet anyway: Coworkers should not be using AI in their emails, either. Main reason being, it’s obnoxious and makes you look illiterate.
I’m not avoiding the spirit at all. I’m pointing out the ridiculousness of the no-AI-at-all brigrade slapping the AI label on a game that “uses AI during it’s development even if it’s not in the end product”, because it would absolutely count this exact scenario.
Sure, man.
By this logic you could also ban Photoshop, tablets and any other software or hardware tool that has improved accessibility and workflow over the years.
AI is a tool, flat out banning it won’t and can’t work. It’s too fucking useful.
People said that anyone who used Photoshop wasn’t a real artist, people said computer graphics weren’t real art.
At some point you DO have to draw an arbitrary line. Because that’s all. Art is arbitrary all of it since the dawn of mankind making art. It’s all arbitrary. If you only make hard lines that completely block tools, all you’re doing is harming artists.
The entire point of drawing arbitrary lines is to allow for artists to keep making art. Why dissuading people from abusing others.
So do you want no one to be able to do anything or do you want things to actually have artistic expression which is arbitrary.
At some point you DO have to draw an arbitrary line. Because that’s all. Art is arbitrary all of it since the dawn of mankind making art.
My arbitrary line is that AI is cringe.
I’d have no problem with the show that seems to want the awards be taken seriously remove all or most bigger projects.
It’s highly likely that EVERY video game dev team has at least one person who is using cursor, whether it violates their AI policy or not. It’s massively popular, looks just like VSCode, and can be hard to detect.
You don’t even need to use cursor. All the major IDEs are including LLMs nowadays to help with code completion a d code generation. There’s zero chance no gen ai code is in any project that has more than a few people nowadays.
PapstJL4UThe question is, if having better for-loop completion the same as “create this feature”.
Doesn’t matter, the rules ban all AI. The rules are stupid.
^ The olympic steroids user telling me I can’t prove they used steroids.
You can’t reliably detect all steroids. The Olympics has a long history of under detecting novel steroids. A lot of sporting competitions below the Olympics level have a tendency to undertest as well and underdetect. You could have a long and successful career as an athlete from doping.