pro-AI post. haters don’t interact. thx.
Labor-saving technology should be the friend of labor. Obviously, the bosses will just use it to put people out of work, but anybody left in position to use such technology? They will be less wrecked by the job, less likely to be crippled in old age by the work they do. Any time jobs are lost, there’s an adjustment that has to be made, and it can hurt when the social safety net is bullshit, but that’s on the government, on our societies privileging the whims of the rich over the needs of the people – not on labor-saving technology itself.
The Game Awards recently awarded a heap of prizes to french “JRPG” style video game Expedition 33. I’m no gamer. I watched a few hours of someone playing it and thought the soundtrack was overbearing and the writing annoying. Still, there’s a difference between watching and playing. I’m sure there was something to recommend it highly. Gamers went hard for it.
Come The Indie Game Awards and Expedition 33 -which won “Best Indie Game” at the more mainstream ceremony- was disqualified for the use of “generative AI.” Call me what you will, but indie game studios are the last people in the fuckin world that should be joining the leftosphere groupthink moral panic about AI.
Video games take a ludicrous amount of labor to produce. Most of the webcomics of the world flame out and die because just making a comic strip is too much effort for the creator to sustain. Most of the blogs in the sidebar on FtB are defunct because just knocking together a few words per year is too much effort for people to sustain. Multiply that effort by roughly a hundred, a thousand, or more, depending on the scope of your ambition. Now that you’re taking a decade to make a video game that can be played in two hours, be ready to rebuild every part of it because modern computers can’t run the engine you originally built for.
If you’re an art hobo chasing commission money, a grandma selling water color paintings at the craft fair, whatever, don’t use AI. That’s fine. If you’re in a field where the labor is prohibitive, and you want to finish more than one production in the course of your entire short life, maybe use labor-saving technology.
If you have problems with AI for the purposes of art, music, etc, write those problems out, consider how important these things are to you. Look at the counterpoints that have been offered by proponents of AI art. Consider if those answer your concerns, or if you think they’re arguing in bad faith. Consider what it will actually look like, to create your production from scratch with nothing but pure human effort – the time budget, the quality as well. There’s bad-looking AI art but there is a helluvalot of shitty human-crafted art as well. With what you have access to, will you be able to do better with one approach or the other?
What is it worth to you, being a purist? The biggest downside to using AI on a video game right now is literally nothing more than the prejudice of the fickle masses. They might feel completely different in three years. Even if they don’t, wouldn’t you rather make art, than fuss about the opinions of a horde of screaming shitbirds?
Do your art, however you can. That might work better with AI assistance. Look at Expedition 33. That was a coherent work of art, every part of it contributing to the whole, painting the picture the creators wanted to paint. Where was the AI even used? I couldn’t tell. If generated images are part of your production pipeline, but it’s building to your own personal artistic expression, how bad is it?
Original sin! Fruit of the poison tree! Roll back the clock! Uninvent the wheel! Burn the witches!
Fuck off.
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A rather arbitrary rule indeed. BTW, ‘gg’ is short for ‘good game’ and is used to concede a loss.
https://www.indiegameawards.gg/faq sez “Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination.”
That’s it. That’s the rule.
Where was the AI even used?
“The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself. When it was submitted for consideration, a representative of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of a resurfaced interview with Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production being brought to our attention on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this 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. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards.”
Specific article about it:
https://www.ign.com/articles/indie-game-awards-strips-clair-obscur-expedition-33-of-game-of-the-year-over-gen-ai-dev-says-placeholder-textures-were-patched-out-after-slipping-through-qa-process
one, they probably just did it and either didn’t read the rules or didn’t care about them, then did all the performative contrition required of the political moment.
not the most ethical behavior, but why should this rule exist in the first place? it’s political theater to appease this popular movement, not unlike when star wars capitulated to popular racism and sexism by reducing the character of rose tico in their last movie. it’s just caving to the other side of the aisle.
two, i did end up seeing a screenshot of this texture. it was a wall covered with newspaper pages, which had the telltale nonsense of ai upon them. if anything, that texture showed how absurd ai outrage is.
who was the artist whose sacred IP was violated by this? was the “original” image written in gibberish? no, whatever images were used for training had been altered much more than an actual plagiarist would have done – well beyond any legal threshold that had existed before.
the labor argument – should they, as an indie studio with a smaller staff, have added several hours per image to the time it took to produce the game? or hired more people, stretching their limited budget? this was the crux of my article – indies should be using the hell out of ai.