There is a small irony that the Indie Game Awards rejects nominations of games using AI but The Game Awards does not. It is independent teams of developers who are less likely to be able to afford to pay an artists who may be able to produce something of value with AI assets that they otherwise would not have the resources for. On the other side, it is big studios with a good track record and more investment who are more likely to be able to pay artists and benefit from their artistry.
To me, art is a form of expression from one human being to another. An indie game with interesting gameplay but AI generated assets still has value as a form of expression from the programmer. Maybe if it's successful, the programmer can afford to pay an artist to help create their next game. If we want to encourage human made art, I think we should focus on rewarding the big game studios who do this and not being so strict on the 2 or 3 person teams who might not exist without the help of AI.
(I say this knowing Clair Obscur was made by a large well respected team so if they used AI assets I think it's fair their award was stripped. I just wish The Game Awards would also consider using such a standard.)
I agree that this holds in theory, but in practice? All the overhyping of AI I've heard from the gaming sector has come from the big studios, not indies. And, as you point out, Clair Obscur isn't the 'most indie' of indies anyway.
Maybe the small studios just use it as a tool and don’t need to hype it to make it look good for stock holder interests.
That's what semi-recent whining about Larian saying they use AI was about. They just use it to cut some of the boring work and iterate over some ideas, once the idea is in stone actual artist does it.
I don't see the problem because it isn't cutting more artists out of the loop, if anything they get more of the meaningful work
It doesn't have to be hyped to be used, for example today I found these two building their passion project using GenAI, which would otherwise maybe not possible, who knows: https://reddit.com/comments/1prqfsu
Who is hyping the technology doesn't seem to be too relevant. Big studios have a bigger megaphone and, as another has pointed out, possibly even a financial motivation for shouting it from the rooftops for their investors to hear.
Maybe next year
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46297348
Simple fix, they need a separate categories for a game art award—no AI—and the rest of the categories (perhaps including game of the year, best new game) should allow AI.
Right now the rules they're using are going against larger forces in the world that are going to become standard (if they're not already).
And to your point, these are indie developers that are David's going up against the AAA Goliath's that have a bottomless purse with which to shower money on a "product". I dabble in art (and wrote some indie games decades ago) and I am fine with AI-generated art (despite my daughters' leanings in the opposite direction).
I'd agree if this were about The Game Awards or similar, where indie devs are expected to compete against the AAA goliaths, but I've always understood the Indie Game Awards as being more about the craft then the end product.
From the FAQ:
> The ceremony is developer-focused, with game creators taking center stage to present awards, recognize their peers, and openly speak without the pressure of time constraints.
https://www.indiegameawards.gg/faq
Regardless of AI's inevitability, I don't particularly care to celebrate it's use, and I think that's the most reasonable stance for a developer focused award to take.
That's a good point—this being the indie game awards. I still think it makes sense to have separate categories that allow for AI-generated content but "indie developed" (versus an "Indie Art Award" that absolutely prohibits AI-generated content).
We should be able to celebrate the creation, execution, concept of a game without letting AI assets nullify the rest.
It's the same thing as local restaurants being picky about using organic and environmentally sustainable ingredients while big chain corporations have a preference for low cost ingredients that strip the environment bare. The big corporations could afford organic stuff, but their aim is to just get a product out there and get it done cheaply. The local restaurant can't often compete on price alone, so they sell themselves as being made with care for the consumer. Selling one's product as a moral option has been a fairly reliable marketing tactic for a long time and I'm kind of surprised it's taken this long to enter the gaming industry.
This makes the most sense to me. I expect BigCorps to maximize profit and destroy their product to the point that it's slop. I don't expect indie developers or people "doing it for the craft" to make (or use) slop.
There's not that much irony considering how people into indie games are more about the art and craft of video games, whereas The Game Awards is a giant marketing cannon for the video game industry, and the video game industry has always been about squeezing their employees. If they can hire fewer artists and less QA because of GenAI, they're all for it.
Just two days ago there were reports that Naughty Dog, a studio that allegedly was trying to do away with crunch, was requiring employees to work "a minimum of eight extra hours a week" to complete an internal demo.
https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3mab...
> To me, art is a form of expression from one human being to another. An indie game with interesting gameplay but AI generated assets still has value as a form of expression from the programmer.
How though? If questions about style or substance can be answered with "because the AI did it, its just some stochastic output from the model" I don't see how that allows for expression between humans.
Because a human selected it for you to see. If I send you a book to read, the book still has content and value even if I didn't write it.
In this case, you'd be judging the AI made assets as simply AI made and the human made gameplay and programming as human made. I'm not suggesting the AI assets would be transformed into art just because they are part of some human creative work.
You’re not wrong, but I think a hardline stance is pragmatic for keeping AI out while it’s not yet normalized.