• warm@kbin.earth
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    3 hours ago

    AI isnt needed at all, we didnt need it in the past to create art. And with all the tools and knowledge available online, for free, theres even less reason we need it these days.

    I’ve never pirated a game, but if developers are going to use pirated content to make a game, they cant be mad when we pirate their game.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Seems 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.

    • Kilgore Trout@feddit.it
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      Let them have their award with their own rules.
      Although I wouldn’t talk about integrity when someone still claims Clair Obscur is an indie.

    • Naia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 hours ago

      For stuff like dirt/stone/brick/etc textures I’m less strict for the use of generative stuff. I even think having an artist make the “core” texture and then using an AI to fill out the texture across the various surfaces to make it less repetitive over a large area isn’t a problem for me.

      Like, I agree that these things gernally are ethically questionable with how they are trained, but you can train them on ethically sourced data and doing so could open up the ability to fill out a game world without spending a ton of time, leaving the actual artists more time to work on the important set pieces than the dirt road connecting them.

      • warm@kbin.earth
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        4 hours ago

        Who made the textures or took the photos that them AI generated ones were derived from, do they get a cut? That justification is even more bizarre now, considering the tools we have to photoscan.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        And little tools like that give studios like this an edge over AAAs. It’s the start of negating their massive manpower advantage.

        In other words, the anti-corpo angle seems well worth the “cost” of a few generations. That’s the whole point of AI protest, right? It really against the corps enshittifying stuff.

        And little niche extensions in workflows is how machine learning is supposed to be used, like it was well before it got all the hype.

        • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Most AAA studios at this point have in-house AIs and training, I’m not sure it’s the equalizing factor people think it is.

          • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            An OpenAI subscription does not count.

            Otherwise, yeah… but it helps them less, proportionally. AAAs still have the fundamental Issue of targeting huge audiences with bland games. Making them even more gigantic isn’t going to help much.

            AAs and below can get closer to that “AAA” feel with their more focused project.

        • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          100% agree. I’m glad AI is democratizing the ability for the little guys like you and me to not pay artists for art.

            • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              And little tools like that give studios like this an edge over AAAs. It’s the start of negating their massive manpower advantage.

              The implication here is that you can gain manpower without hiring more men, no?

              • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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                17 minutes ago

                One builder only uses hand tools, other uses power tools.

                That’s the difference, nobody is hiring less people because the tools are better.

              • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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                More that an existing smaller studio doesn’t have to sell their soul to a publisher (or get lucky) to survive. They can more safely make a “big” game without going AAA.

                My observation is that there’s a “sweet spot” for developers somewhere around the Satisfactory (Coffee Stain) size, with E33 at the upper end of that, but that limits their audience and scope. If they can cut expensive mocap rigs, a bunch of outsourced bulk art, stuff like that with specific automation, so long as they don’t tether themselves to Big Tech AI, that takes away the advantage AAAs have over them.

                A few computer generated textures is the first tiny step in that direction.

                So no. AI is shit at replacing artists. Especially in E33 tier games. But it’s not a bad tool to add to their bucket, so they can do more.

                • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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                  4 hours ago

                  Right, so the barrier was that they had to pay for this “outsourced bulk art”, and now with AI they don’t have to. It looks like we are in agreement when I say “I’m glad AI is democratizing the ability for the little guys like you and me to not pay artists for art”?

          • fonix232@fedia.io
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            4 hours ago

            Oh fuck off with that sentiment. You’re very well aware that that’s not what happened here, nor is it what’s happening in a majority of genAI usage cases. In fact in most cases it IS artists using genAI to speed up the design process.

            What AI does here is allowing small teams to get art done what otherwise would eat up their budget, aka they literally couldn’t afford. No artists were harmed in these cases because if AI didn’t exist they simply wouldn’t have been hired.

            Yes, there IS a currently ongoing shift. Just like there was e.g. with the mechanic loom. Did that kill off handmade clothing? No - even today we still have artists making handmade clothing and in fact making tons more off of it, while the masses got access to cheap clothing. The initial sudden rush to the new tech is annoying and yes it exposes some people to hardships (which is why we should switch from capitalism, and start providing UBI), but it WILL balance out. Remember, the luddites were wrong at the end.

            • setsubyou@lemmy.world
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              I’ve been programming as a hobby since I was 9. It’s also my job so I rarely finish the hobby projects anymore, but still.

              On my first computer (Apple II) I was able to make a complete game as a kid that I felt was comparable to some of the commercial ones we had.

              In the 1990ies I was just a teenager busy with school but I could make software that was competitive with paid products. Published some things via magazines.

              In the late 90ies I made web sites with a few friends from school. Made a lot of money in teenager terms. Huge head start for university.

              In the 2000s for the first time I felt that I couldn’t get anywhere close to commercial games anymore. I’m good at programming but pretty much only at that. My art skills are still on the same level as when I was a kid. Last time I used my own hand drawn art professionally was in 2007.

              Games continued becoming more and more complex. They now often have incredibly detailed 3D worlds or at least an insane amount of pixel art. Big games have huge custom sound tracks. I can’t do any of that. My graphics tablets and my piano are collecting dust.

              In 2025 AI would theoretically give me options again. It can cover some of my weak areas. But people hate it, so there’s no point. Indy developers now require large teams to count as indy (according to this award); for a single person it’s difficult especially with limited time.

              It’d be nice if the ethical issues could be fixed though. There are image models trained on proprietary data only, music models will get there too because of some recent legal settlements, but it’s not enough yet.

            • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              What AI does here is allowing small teams to get art done what otherwise would eat up their budget, aka they literally couldn’t afford. No artists were harmed in these cases because if AI didn’t exist they simply wouldn’t have been hired.

              That excuse can be used by big publishers as well, no?

              • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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                3 hours ago

                Oh, yes. Big publisher will try it on a huge scale. They cant help themselves.

                And they’re going to get sloppy results back. If they wanna footgun themselves, it’s their foot to shoot.


                Some mid sized devs may catch this “Tech Bro Syndrome” too, unfortunately.

                • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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                  3 hours ago

                  Yes, like we went over before, it’s literally OK to use AI if the studios that I support use it to generate things that I like.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Also what about AI code tools? Like if they use cursor to help write some code does that disqualify them?

      • seathru@quokk.au
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        4 hours ago

        If 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.”

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          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.

          • warm@kbin.earth
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            3 hours ago

            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.

            • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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              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.

              • warm@kbin.earth
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                2 hours ago

                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.

                • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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                  6 minutes ago

                  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.

                • Kogasa@programming.dev
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                  1 hour ago

                  “the truth” being that a few generated placeholder textures were accidentally left in and promptly replaced? crazy

                • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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                  2 hours ago

                  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.

            • frongt@lemmy.zip
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              3 hours ago

              Awards like these are inherently subjective. You don’t have to draw an objective line anywhere.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Yeah.

        A lot of devs may do it personally, even if it’s not a company imperative (which it shouldn’t be).

    • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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      4 hours ago

      People have made it excessive due to turning AI into a modern witch hunt. Maybe if people had a more nuanced take than “all AI bad” companies could be more open about how they use AI.

      I can guarantee that if E33 came out with the AI disclaimer it would’ve been far more controversial and probably less successful. And technically they should have an AI label because they did use Gen AI in the development process even if none of it was supposed to end up in the final game.

      But we can’t have companies being honest because people can’t be normal.

      • Nate Cox@programming.dev
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        47 minutes ago

        “All genAI bad” is a nuanced take. When you look at genAI from a moral, ethical, or sociopolitical perspective it always demonstrates itself to be a net evil.

        The core technology is predicated on theft, the data centers powering it are harmful economically and to surrounding communities, it is gobbled up by companies looking to pay less to profit more, and it’s powered by a bubble ripe for bursting which will wreak havoc on our economy.

        GenAI is indefensible as a technology, and the applications it may have for any tangible benefit can probably be accomplished by ML systems not built on the back of the LLM monster. We should all be protesting its use in all things.

      • Lfrith@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        Its not surprising when even people who like AI are now being affected by consumer hardware prices that is leading to shift in previously positive perception of it.

        Becoming harder to ignore its effects. Gone from a philosophical difference of opinion to actual tangible consequences.

        So becomes a question of is AI cool enough to make them happy to put up with the rising cost of hardware, which is something tech enthusiasts tend to care a lot about with it being something needed to even enjoy AI generated stuff in the first place.

        • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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          3 hours ago

          I agree the current state of affairs makes people even more against AI and I think people have a good reason to be against AI, but don’t you find it a bit contradictory how people are less antagonistic towards E33 AI use now that it has been revealed?

          People are far more antagonistic towards games when the first thing they see is the AI label, to the point where they dismiss the entire game as AI slop, but it seems people are willing to be more lenient on AI usage when they first get to experience the game for what it is. This unreasonable reaction to the first impression is why companies would rather hide their AI usage rather than inform the customer.

          • Lfrith@lemmy.ca
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            I don’t know that people are less antagonist because of E33. I think regular tech hardware enthusiasts are getting gradually angrier after the initial excitement over them when it came to potential improvements in things like NPC behavior. Because its shifting towards not being able to afford hardware to begin with.

            Things have moved from somewhat background noise to no longer something they can pretend to be unaffected by. I think the period of discourse over AI was most relevant couple years before hardware issues popped up. Those who hate AI now likely don’t even care that much about creative elements. They are just pissed that AI is why prices are going up. They are angry at the AI data centers buying up all the hardware and supplies moving to corporations as consumers get cut off.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          How do I put this.

          AI isn’t exactly the cause of the rise in the price of hardware. Only 1/6th of the purchased Nvidia cards are actually in data centers. Same for the memory.

          We’re not using it.

          What’s really drumming up all the prices is that the billionaires are convinced that AI is going to replace tons and tons of people. It’s not. It’s the insane corporate hype that’s doing all the damage.

          It will replace some, sure. The same way the electric drill replaced carpenters. One electric drill does not replace one carpenter. That’s not how that works. Instead the carpenters can work a bit faster and their job is a bit easier. It’s worth buying and it’s worth using, but it doesn’t really replace a person. Accountants didn’t disappear as a profession when spreadsheets were invented.

          There were books written in the 1980s about how household appliances raised the standard of cleanliness. Turns out people change clothes more when cleaning clothes doesn’t involve a washing board. And I don’t think Roombas replaced that many jobs either.

          In particular, I think this is a thing that will happen for software development. I don’t think it’ll reduce the number of developers we need. I think the standards for development will just be higher. All the front end stuff in particular is going to get easier, and you won’t need as many frameworks. We’ll especially need just as many devs, if not more, in the short term. Someone’s going to have to fix the mess all these companies are going to make after they’ve fired half their devs and tried to just vibe code everything.

    • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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      4 hours ago

      I have the same feeling about Kojima’s and Vincke’s latest comments on AI. Am I supposed to get mad at every single person who said they used/plan to use AI for something? I’d be as outraged as the average Fox News viewer, and it would be impossible to be taken seriously. I still won’t be using AI myself (fuck surveillance state AI) and I’d be making every effort to encourage others not to use it, but there’s no point in burning bridges and falling for rage bait.

      They’re creative people who care about the craft and care about the teams in their employ, which gives their statements weight, where some Sony/Microsoft/EA executive making an identical statement has none.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        I understand the principle. Even if E33 is not slop, people should fear a road that leads to dependence on “surveillance state AI” like OpenAI. That’s unacceptable.

        That being said, I think a lot of people don’t realize how commoditized it’s getting. “AI” is not a monoculture, it’s not transcending to replace people, and it’s not limited to corporate APIs. This stuff is racing to the bottom to become a set of dumb tools, and dirt cheap. TBH that’s something that makes a lot of sense for a game studio lead to want.

        And E33 is clearly not part of the “Tech Bro Evangalism” camp. They made a few textures, with a tool.

        • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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          3 hours ago

          When I give myself the leeway to think of a less hardliner stance on AI, I come back to Joel Haver’s video on his use of ebsynth:

          It lets me create rotoscoped animations alone, which is something I never would have the time or patience for otherwise. Any time technology makes art easier to learn, more accessible, we should applaud it. Art should be in the hands of everyone.

          Now my blood boils like everyone else’s when it comes to being forced to use AI at work, or when I hear the AI Voice on Youtube, or the forced AI updates to Windows and VS Code, but it doesn’t boil for Joel. He clearly has developed an iconic style for his comedy skits, and puts effort into those skits long before he puts it through an AI rotoscope filter. He chose his tool and he uses it sparingly. The same was apparently true for E33, and I have no reason not give Kojima and Larian the same benefit of the doubt.

          On the other hand, Joel probably has no idea what I’m talking about when I say “surveillance state AI.” People Make Games has a pretty good video exposing its use case. There’s also…

          • the global and localized environmental impacts of all these data centers,
          • Nvidia and Micron pricing the consumer out of owning their own hardware,
          • aforementioned companies fraudulently inflating an economic bubble,
          • the ease with which larger models can be warped to suit their owners’ fascist agendas (see Grok).

          Creatives may be aware of some, or all, or none of those things, which is why it’s important to continue raising awareness of them. AI may be toothpaste that can’t go back in the tube, but it’s also a sunk cost fallacy, you don’t have to brush your teeth with shit-flavored toothpaste.

          • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            Now my blood boils like everyone else’s when it comes to being forced to use AI at work, or when I hear the AI Voice on Youtube, or the forced AI updates to Windows and VS Code

            You don’t hate AI. You hate Big Tech Evangelism. You hate corporate enshittification, AI oligarchs, and the death of the internet being shoved down your throat.

            …I think people get way too focused on the tool, and not these awful entries wielding them while conning everyone. They’re the responsible party.

            You’re using “AI” as a synonym for OpenAI, basically, but that’s not Joel Haver’s rotoscope filter at all. That’s niche machine learning.


            As for the exponential cost, that’s another con. Sam Altman just wants people to give him money.

            Look up what it takes to train (say) Z Image or GLM 4.6. It’s peanuts, and gets cheaper every month. And eventually everyone will realize this is all a race to the bottom, not the top… but it’s talking a little while :/

            • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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              2 hours ago

              True on most fronts except one. On a personal level, I do hate AI lol. The large language model itself. I just don’t think typing out or speaking out a series of instructions is that useful or efficient. If I want a computer to do something for me, I much prefer the more rigid and unnatural syntax and grammar of programming language. AI tools themselves just don’t produce a result that satisfies me.

              • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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                Again, they’re tools. Some of the most useful applications for LLMs I’ve worked on are never even seen by human eyes, like ranking, then ingesting documents and filling out json in pipelines. Or as automated testers.

                Another is augmented diffusion. You can do crazy things with depth maps, areas, segmentation, mixed with hand sketching to “prompt” diffusion models without a single typed word. Or you can use them for touching up something hand painted, spot by spot.

                You just need to put everything you’ve ever seen with ChatGPT and copilot and the NotebookLM YouTube spam out of your head. Banging text into a box and “prompt engineering” is not AI. Chat tuned decoder-only LLMs are just one tiny slice that a few Tech Bros turned into a pyramid scheme.

    • fonix232@fedia.io
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      5 hours ago

      At the end of the day it’s all about the quality in my opinion.

      The entire game could be written by ONE passionate person who is awesome at writing the story and the code, but isn’t good at creating textures and has no money for voice actors - in which case said textures and all the voices would be AI generated, then hand retouched to ensure quality. That would still be a good game because obvious passion went into the creation of it, and AI was used as a tool to fill out gaps of the sole debeloper’s expertise.

      A random software house automating a full on pipeline that watches various trends on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc., and chains together various genAI models to create slopware games by the dozens, on the other hand, is undefendable. There’s no passion, there’s no spirit, there’s just greed and abuse of technology.

      Differentiation between the two is super important.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        So is the source.

        If they’re paying a bunch of money to OpenAI for mega text prompt models, they are indeed part of the slop problem. It will also lead to an art “monoculture,” Big Tech dependence, code problems, all sorts of issues.

        Now, if they’re using open weights models, or open weights APIs, using a lot of augmentations and niche pipelines like, say, hand sketches to 3D models, that is different. That’s using tools. That’s giving “AI” the middle finger in a similar way to using the Fediverse, or other open software, instead of Big Tech.

  • VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world
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    They replaced the art later, but shouldn’t the bar be high like this? Otherwise, the caution won’t be there. It also could be abused, like games only getting adjusted post-launch if a certain measure of success hits. Plus the final product is not the only part of matters in the was-AI-used discussion, it is also about the process. If AI is the product of stolen human artwork being fed into a machine, and then that machine is used during creation, then AI has been used in the process that led to the final product no less than the concept art that may not be seen in game but was important in steering the ship.

    Maybe someone can share their thoughts though. I’m still formulating mine and this is where I am at the moment.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      If we’re banning games over how they make concept art… I’m not sure how you expect to enforce that. How could you possibly audit that?

      Are you putting coding tools in this bucket?

    • Sal@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      There is no use of Gen AI in an indie game that should be tolerated. Period.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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        That’s just not going to happen.

        Nearly any game with more than a few people involved is going have someone use cursor code completion, or use one for reference or something. They could pull in libraries with a little AI code in them, or use an Adobe filter they didn’t realize is technically GenAI, or commission an artist that uses a tiny bit in their workflow.

        If the next Game Awards could somehow audit game sources and enforce that, it’d probably be a few solo dev games, and nothing elsex

        Not that AI Slop should be tolerated. But I’m not sure how it’s supposed to be enforced so strictly.

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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    5 hours ago

    I feel like this is virtue signaling more than actually addressing a real problem with Clair Obscur.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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      14 minutes ago

      Welcome to the internet. No one knows each other, no one considers context, no one reads past the headline, everyone makes snap judgements based on half understood heuristics, and then rushes to the comments to grandstand. A job that could be trivially done by AI, and almost certainly is, but instead we’ll all pretend like we’re the last bastion of human sanity.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Yeah.

      Maybe a technicality too. The rule said “no AI,” and E33 used AI.

      I get their intent: keep AI slop games out. But in hindsight, making the restriction so absolute was probably unwise.

      • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        What are the odds that a mechanic introduced to you in the first tutorial combat (and continuously iterated on throughout all the prologue combat encounters) is a required component of the game? Crazy.

        I think you should probably give up on gaming. Doesn’t seem like your scene: it’s for people that have the ability to process information and learn from it.

  • Kogasa@programming.dev
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    56 minutes ago

    The only takeaway is that the Indie Game Awards’ rule is overly restrictive. Woops, one of your contracted artists used a GenAI model to generate a music playlist to set the mood while he was working on your game, you’re disqualified and the fact that you didn’t come forward with this information immediately makes you a liar. Obviously absurd. If they’re going to take a strong anti-AI stance, it should be more realistic. At some point, maybe even already, every single competitor should be disqualified but isn’t aware or forthcoming about it, so what’s the rule actually doing except rewarding dishonesty?

  • jonathan7luke@lemmy.zip
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    5 hours ago

    Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched with what some suspected to be AI-generated textures that, as it clarified to El País, were then replaced with custom assets in a swift patch five days after release.

    Fuck using Gen AI to replace human-made art, and fair enough for pulling the award, but I do think it’s worth making it clear exactly how much of the art is/was AI. And the answer is, very little at launch and none currently.

    • fonix232@fedia.io
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      5 hours ago

      AI wasn’t used to “replace human-made art”, though.

      To me it sounds like the team needed generic textures in big batches, and instead of spending precious designer time on hand crafting them, AI was utilised to allow the designers to focus on actual art they enjoy. I’m a software engineer, not a designer, but if I were given the option to write 8000 classes that are almost the same, or write 5 classes that will take the same effort as the 8000, but actually require using my creative skills… I’d choose the latter, and offload the 8000 boilerplates to AI.

      The fact that it was replaced with human made art so quickly suggests that the AI generated ones were meant to be placeholders only anyway.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        That’s exactly the takeaway I got from it as well.

        It seems most likely that those were placeholders that were supposed to be replaced before release but were missed. Once they realized that some were missing, they got them replaced and pushed the update.

        GenAI being used for placeholder stuff is arguably the perfect use case, especially for small studios without massive art teams.

      • warm@kbin.earth
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        4 hours ago

        So instead of buying the textures they didnt want to create, they paid for AI to generate derived versions from stolen art??

        Whats the point? Just give the artists the money directly.

  • creature@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    This feels like unecessary absolutism and fear mongeting. I am by no means an AI lover, but people shouldn’t let the worst implimentations of something cloud their judgement.

    I feel the question should be “Does this project use AI responsibly?” not “Was AI used?”

    Maybe what we should be advocating for is transparency with these decisions?

    • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
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      2 hours ago

      Unless the model that they used was trained entirely on artwork that was public domain, creative commons, licensed or owned, then its basically certain that it wasn’t used responsibly.

      You cannot make something on a foundation of someone else’s exploitation and be considered responsible, ethical, original or independent.

    • warm@kbin.earth
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      3 hours ago

      So instead of “Did you pirate this game?”, the question should be “Did you pirate this game, responsibly?”

  • rtxn@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Horrid article, unless the intention was to throw shit around and hope to cause a commotion. There are no AI assets in Clair Obscur, and it should have been made clear by the article. From the IGA’s own statement:

    […] the use of gen AI art in production […] does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place.

    • Rakqoi@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      2 hours ago

      I think you have missed the actual issue here. The issue is not whether or not the game currently contains AI assets, the issue is whether AI was used during development. Quoting the article (emphasis mine):

      “The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself,” the statement reads. “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.

      “In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination.”

      The actual problem is that simply using generative AI during development disqualifies a game from being nominated, and Sandfall Interactive lied and said they did not use gen AI.

      • rtxn@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        The issue is not that the game was disqualified. If the rules clearly and unequivocally state that at no point can generative AI be used (and also clearly state what, in the spectrum from algorithms -> machine learning -> chatbot slop, they consider to be unacceptable, which I don’t know if they did or not, but that’s not the point), then there is no controversy, and I’m not criticising that.

        The issue is that the article completely disregards mitigating facts that counter the narrative. There are no credible sources linked in the article save for one that was grossly misrepresented. Critically, we don’t know what Sandfall actually said before the nomination or after, or how the decision to disqualify was made, only the second-hand account in the FAQ. The article presents circumstances in a biased way, leading the reader to interpret it with the assumption that there are AI-generated assets currently in the game. It is, frankly, sloppy journalism.

  • MrFinnbean@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    People are tearing eachothers up in the comments, but does anybody know what the textures were?

  • ArkyonVeil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 hours ago

    As much as I hate to admit it, non-flagrant AI use will likely become generally accepted. The truth is that there’s a lot of content in games these days that sometimes just isn’t that important to dedicate man hours to it (Ex: Generic brick texture #431). The fact that this slipped through the cracks is proof enough.

    However, overly slacking to the point the end point looks obviously AI generated with just bad art. It’s pretty much akin to just delegating to some shady third party studio that works for pennies and spits out generic, low quality stuff.

    Ethics and copyright, are of course, different questions entirely. (In my opinion most AI providers are committing blatant copyright infringement by using machines that crunch down copyrighted data and resell it back to you). But it seems like Silicon Valley’s marketing and public relations team managed to figure out the copyright one at this point. <>/

    Edit: 3 AM, and tired.

    • warm@kbin.earth
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      4 hours ago

      Trained on stolen art of people who actually spent time making that brick texture?

      Games are an artform, AI shouldnt be used at all.

      • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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        1 hour ago

        You are all over this thread repeating variations of the same comment which, despite wildly different responses from voters, mostly show you do not at all understand how image model training and generation work.

        This sort of absolutism is dead. Do you think they should be disqualified if they Google something and the answer is in Google’s AI summary?

        • No? Great, now we understand your line is subjective and you get to decide what is or isn’t acceptable use of AI.
        • Yes? Cool. Describe how the you police this and how do you choose between fhe three games made next year that will qualify, of which 2 are furry Visual Novels made entirely of RPG maker assets and 1 is the fifty-seventh Pokemon entry.
      • frongt@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        If it’s trained on licensed material, would that be acceptable?

        • warm@kbin.earth
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          3 hours ago

          That part is, the next part is who is it going to replace? Which artist isnt going to be hired because they just made something with AI instead? Thats some pure creativity just lost from the world.

  • Southern Wolf@pawb.social
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    4 hours ago

    I hope this wasn’t used as an excuse to disqualify the game so they wouldn’t have to give it an award… Cause if it turns out it was, that would look really bad…