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?
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.
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.
You arent developing a game when you sennd Emails to someone. Same as you’re not a developer when you do the finances.
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.