tldr: they said during the application process that no gen ai was used. Since they lied, the Indie Game Awards pulled their GOTY
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.
I think the issue is much more that they lied on the application
This is most of it, but it is worth remembering that using GenAI/LLMs for placeholders is still bad. It's strictly unnecessary, has dubious efficiency gains at best, and you're still using tech that is provably hurting people and the environment en masse.
I'm not going to hate Sandfall forever for this – it's not original sin – but it's still a very real error they should not repeat.
Agreed, it’s still one of my favorite games this year. Any placeholder that isn’t an obvious placeholder has a chance to make it though
What a mistake. Best game is best game. A few background assets that were replaced days after launch.
Expedition 33 is definitely a good game. I'm sure the Indie Game Awards judges would still heartily agree with you on that, too. None of that has anything to do with lying about GenAI use on a disclosure form for an awards show that specifically forbids GenAI use.
I get that you love the game and by extension the studio, but this was still a mistake on their part. They broke the rules, they lose the award. Letting them cheat this would've seriously undermined the integrity of the IGA, not to mention further enabling the use of AI in game dev.
I can see what you mean, it could’ve easily slipped through the cracks. I feel like the Indie Game Awards (much smaller than the regular Game Awards) had to do it on principle since genai is a disqualification
Yeah this is kind of a hard thing to have an opinion on. On one hand I want people in that industry employed and getting to do the job that has turned out to be pretty elusive and arduous to pursue. On the other I really appreciate the art that got made even when time was saved on making some assets.
But where does it lead? Where's the line drawn between having the machine make some grass and rocks and having it do work a person should have done? First I thought it was okay but now I don't know how much of a door opener or a gatekeeper these tools will be going forward
The best argument against it I’ve seen is “why should I care about the thing you didn’t care enough to put the work in yourself”
Which is also why I support using assets. You still have to find things that match what you need, but the human isn’t left out of the process.
Also that the unethically trained llms are an abuse of social contract for profit
Yeah I guess that's my biggest hangup too, the training process I mean. It's hard to examine the datasets and be certain this wasn't stolen from somebody who won't be getting paid or if it's being operated from a facility that's actively siphoning water from a drought affected community.
But I want artists to have tools to pursue the desired scope of their project. But I don't want scope inflation to be incentivized by a tool that business people are proving to be impossible to not see as an infinite money glitch. And that lawmakers are refusing to regulate
The generated assets in e33 were minor and patched out so the project could've been made without them. This gives me hope for their future projects, they seem to know how to manage a decently sized team and had a fitting scope for their resources.
Good discussion! The audience clearly doesn't like or trust the tech so the risk of backlash will hopefully scare off publishers and investors, the sooner the bubble pops the better.
GOTY not going to the only game to break the store or payment processor of steam, Xbox, psn, and Nintendo already made the whole thing seem silly
E33 wasn't advertised, it was a slow burn of purchases.
Do we know their sales figures?
Server load is not a great indicator of how good a game is.
Silksong is an excellent game but it's absolutely not in the same league. COE33 is a much more sophisticated game with deeper story and advanced artwork.
Silksong was 1/3 the price so they could sell many more copies, and COE33 didn't have nearly the same hype on launch. None of that makes Silksong a better game.
It's game of the year, not hype of the year
Agreed. As much as I don't care about Silksong either way, having "so many people wanted me, I broke the storefront" on your resume has to count for something.
The fact that Silksong did that is insane to me, there was so much hype
Meh. Gotta throw a bone to the other games this year I guess
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