This entire discourse is so stupid, no amount of moralizing will put the AI cat back in the bag, in 10 years every game will be 80% AI and unfortunately its time to get used to it.
Indie means its independent, which means no publisher. Sandfall has a publisher, Kepler.
And even if you want to go with the “look and feel” argument, E33 does not look or feel like an indie game. It looks and feels high quality and high budget.
Now if you’re using the fact that it had a small budget? Then you’re ignorant. That’s not what makes something indie.
So how do you feel about the fact that Blue Prince, the game that replaced E33 as the Indie GOTY, has a publisher? Should it also not be in contention?
I agree that E33 isn't an indie game, but saying that any game that has a publisher isn't indie is just inadequate.
I’m kind of glad for this expedition 33 has been taken all of the fucking awards. It would only be fair for them to lose some and let other games have their time in the sun.
I wouldn’t. It’s all pretty terrible looking regardless. And it directly harms artists who would otherwise be getting paid for art assets you can just buy on online stores
But why pay an artist for their work making a grass or rock texture when the can just steal it and spit out a blatant copy for free right?
Imagine if the IGA was honest and just said this game is normal, has beautiful characters, and is made by White men primarily and they just lost their collective and sexually uncertain minds and found the silliest non-reason to do this. LOL!
good, any leeway companies get that it's ok means THEY WILL MOVE THE GOAL POST. otherwise eventually it'll be like "they only used gen ai for the voices of minor NPCs come onnn"
I'm no fan of gen AI, but I think in the long term, the dividing line is probably going to have to be "Is it something that players can see, that is clearly visible and/or impacts the experience in the final product?" The controversy around Clair Obscur is over a placeholder image asset that was easy to see an identify as an AI element. Games need to not have that. I think it's going to be impossible to police the use of AI in game code, though.
I guess the dark side of what I'm suggesting is "We're all fine ignoring it as long as we can't see it and don't hear about it," which still sucks. But I'm also currently wearing a T-shirt that I'm sure inevitably had sweatshop labor at some point in its creation process, and I order things on Amazon because it's convenient despite me knowing that the people working in the warehouses are very overworked.
They used AI art. No leeway. Stop using gen AI for art even if you say “we used internal artist and internal AI” yeah, no one cares. Stop trying to make shortcuts that will fuck over people in the long run when it reaches its capitalist endpoint.
That art came from 2022 when this technology was literally in its infancy and was not hated anywhere near at the level it is today. Not only is there zero AI anything in the game, the artwork in question was patched out almost immediately before it was even noticed, but also the directors and crew of the game made a statement about how much they hate genAI. There is nuance to this situation that goes beyond the monochrome wall this subreddit has put up. No one here is going to make it far in life if they continue to see in black and white
Uh huh. Just like if you see one bed bug in your bed that was just unlucky, there’s definitely no more after you killed that one.
Such a braindead take to defend this game. The AI stuff was something E33 admitted to using it and as a company, I can assume you’d want to minimize the damage as much as possible. Sorry not sorry. There’s no way in hell they used AI 3 years before the release and somehow forgot some of them and released the game with it?
Valid disqualification due to them not being an indie developer. AI however is just too ubiquitous to avoid so disqualifying due to that seems overzealous.
Keep AI out of art. And stop shoving it into every piece of software so that those of us that dont want it dont have to go through 5 dropdown windows to turn it off.
I hate AI but I understand that it's going nowhere and has value. And like any tool, needs to be used properly with moral/ethical means. If done properly and ethically, I see nothing wrong with using unless your intention is to replace existing team members with it.
FWIW, ai absolutely can go the way of the dodo. It is currently a massive money pit, and it turns out to be unfeasible to make it profitable, the plug will be pulled.
"It is currently a massive money pit, and it turns out to be unfeasible to make it profitable, the plug will be pulled."
The plug may be pulled on training, but generation, at least for most models, is relatively profitable. There might be some minor price adjustments here and there, but someone somewhere will still sell it.
Do you have a source for generation being profitable? All data I've seen suggests that generation is ~1/3 of costs, and these ai projects are are still underwater if you reduce the cost by that much.
Open ai is losing 16 billion a quarter right now, and that's just them. No AI company or venture is profitable, nor is one even close to breaking even. Data harvesting is profitable because it's cheap. Reddit estimates it makes less than 25 dollars a year per user. AI is far too expensive for that type of low cost high volume strategy to work.
OpenAI is not even trying to make a profit. I don't know why you think no AI company is profitable? Midjourney, ElevenLabs etc? I am not familiar with every AI company under the sun but both of these appear to have been profitable pretty quickly after launch.
Most of these AI companies aren't trying to be profitable right now, they are grabbing market share just like basically every tech startup in the past 20 years. Tech just doesn't go back in the bag. AI is here to stay, We have models right now that are dirt cheap to run that are pretty easy to be profitable on.
Both of those are private and not required to make accurate GAAP compliant statements. Both have rather large revenue for their size, but we have no cost break down, and AI already has tricky accounting under GAAP.
Can we at least agree both look profitable even if we don't have access to their books. ElevenLabs in particular, audio AI is just much much easier to be profitable. In that people will actually pay.
I don't actually disagree too much on OpenAI, they are playing a risky game and will struggle for profitability. But AI as a whole isn't that.
After reading a lot of these comments, I have concluded that this sub has been overrun by Anti-AI luddites. Same kind of people that hated automobiles, personal computers, and the internet when they first came out. The future won’t have less AI in it, sorry.
I think its mostly people who aren’t tech enthusiasts and are afraid of being unemployed and annoyed at the misuse (deepfakes, misinformation, electricity price hikes etc). Their concerns are valid but their perspective is limited.
No, but they took away jobs from ranchers, street sweepers, carriage builders, blacksmiths, farmers etc. Also, everyone’s data has been getting harvested for the last 30 years. Companies just have an actual use for it now.
All of those jobs people use machinery to do them now, sanition drives a street sweeper instead of pushing a broom, etc
AI companies are literally stealing people’s work to feed to their AI models without compensating the writers or artists, they build massive data centers that are destroying the environment while the people pay for their electricity and water usage and the company keeps all the profits. Memory prices and pc components are skyrocketing in price because they are buying up all of the inventory making everything we want to purchase much more expensive on top of eliminating millions of jobs.
My point still stands. People find ways to adapt to the changing job market when revolutionary technology takes hold. We have had data centers much longer than we have had AI, but only now people are complaining about them. They were always going to build more regardless of AI. As for chips, supply will catch up to demand as it always does. Same thing happened to GPUs a few years back.
This outrage will fade just like microtransactions. When microtransactions first started many gamers vowed they'd never play these games. Now 20 years later every game has them and even games with the most blantly dogs shit microtransaction loaded shit sell billions and become the highest selling games of the year.
This outrage will fade just like microtransactions. When microtransactions first started many gamers vowed they'd never play these games. Now 20 years later every game has them and even games with the most blantly dogs shit microtransaction loaded shit sell billions and become the highest selling games of the year.
Dumb as hell rule, and made me not give a fuck about the IGA. It's like disqualifying someone because they used a brand of hammer you didn't like. Gen AI is just a tool, and it's the end product that results at the end of the day. If gen AI is used to produce slop, which is what most people are opposed to, then it will be clear in the end product. You don't need arbitrary rules for that.
I still cannot fathom why it matters in any conceivable way. Who the hell cares if AI is used? If the game is good, it's good, regardless of how it was made. It's always better not knowing how the sausages are made.
It only means that a company developed a game without the backing of a large publisher. Team size and budget are not factored in to the current definition.
Anything outside of the typical publisher/developer dynamic. It's pretty obvious at this point and this question getting asked over and over again feels like fishing for an opportunity to be performative and obtuse over this subject.
They didn't start with that level though, they started with 6 people working on a very tight budget. They got additional financing and investors as they showed they had a good product that could deliver a meaningful ROI. Every single indie studio out there that got a publisher went through this same process, some with more investment than others.
All indie games have investors, even when it's a single developer they're investing their own time and money into it, and (if they're wanting to be successful) treating it as a tradeoff of investment of time/money for expected ROI on every feature, polish, and change.
Indepedent is a completely and utterly useless term when referring to a game studio and the spirit of what an indie game is. Paradox is independent, Fromsoft is independent, EA is independent, and so on. No one would say they belong in the indie category.
Looking at the GotY spreadsheet for these awards, 7 out of 12 nominees (6/11 if you exclude E33), including the winner have third party publishers.
Of course it used to be “independent” from publishers (and investors) but that would basically limit the category to a handful of teams who work on games in their spare time.
Small correction, the actual game awards did not remove any awards. These awards were from a similarly named but significantly smaller indie game awards show started in 2024.
E33 being placed as indie is this industry's joke of the decade.
The studio had 35 core employees plus hundreds of contractors. Kepler Interactive, the publisher, received a $120 million investment from NetEase, a Chinese giant, which made them a minority investor.
The game's good, don't fuckin get me wrong, but it's not indie. That's a psyop.
I have to imagine there would have been a back and forth about it if the studio hadn't lied about the AI usage in the first place or if it wasn't caught on the literal day of the awards. Sounds like circumstances removed room for nuance and obviously breaking the rules for a competition will get you disqualified from it.
Ouuufff, I’m interested to see the mental gymnastics the fans do here. Certain companies have been crucified for making a mention of AI, but now we’re getting more and more fan favourites being a part of the movement.
There are definitely people who have been pointing their fingers at the AAA companies for relatively benign comments that I’m curious to see what will say now that some of these darling games are targeted.
Completely valid decision l, but I do think by this time next year this ‘no ai at all’ rule will be quietly dropped. The cat’s outta the bag with ai and dev’s that use it will slowly out compete those that don’t. And just like with CGI in movies when it’s done right you’ll never know (unless you’re in the know)
This will age poorly. Every dev, indie or not, will be using AI in some capacity in the next few years. There's a massive AI luddite stance among tech/reddit types lately and it's giving a lot of punching air vibes.
It just reeks of "plz plz don't kill my job" and trying to wrap it up in snark.
This in itself is a non-issue, but admitting that you use gen AI anywhere, especially in art-related areas is akin to PR suicide because the anti-AI sentiment overwhelms all sense and reason (I mean there is a point of being too much of it, but some folks think that a straight up ban on any kind of AI is the way to go, and state their opinion quite loudly), thus everyone prefers to lie about not using it and risk being caught. Which becomes an issue and hurts legitimacy of AI use even more.
I'm vehemently against AI and even I think this is silly. This is hardly a game that relies on generative AI content for any part of the finished product, it was very obviously a leftover placeholder.
The game also began development in 2020, let's not forget. The entire AI surge happened during the games creation, well before discourse on the subject had developed and as the ethical concerns were still being discovered by people.
If the finished game was deliberately using AI generated content than it would not be eligible but to argue that it was used in the development process and therefore invalid is - regardless of whether you think it's reasonable or not - simple a practically unenforceable stance for an award to make a criterion. How would you know?
Retroactively disqualifying a game of this scope and caliber over a single newspaper texture feels deeply antithetical to what the awards are about. The disqualification for using AI probably did not exist when Sandfall was developing those early stages of their game, and you can't argue they used it in any meaningful degree in the finished product, so what gives?
Tangently related - but it's funny to me that this was what they were disqualified for, rather than anything to do with the game "not being indie" like people keep arguing over. The industry itself seems to have no dispute over whether or not the game is a "true" indie, which leads back to me theory that it's really just optics and people think it's not indie because it really doesn't look indie.
Lest we forget that Tron (1982) didn't get an Oscar nomination for Visual Effects because using computers was "cheating". The lesson wasn't learnt apparently.
It’s really interesting how Gen AI is starting to be treated like performance enhancing drugs in sports.
Clair Obscur using Unreal Engine assets that were AI generated is like a sports star getting secondhand contaminated by lotion with steroids or something.
I think people hate success and it shows on here. Using AI as placeholders is totally fine...I don't see the problem with that. It makes workflows more efficient and it's a great way to expedite certain processes. This is indicative online hate and outrage culture, one use of AI to generate a newspaper texture some how undermines the entire studios efforts to produce a video game. Let's not pretend AI in it's current form can even replicate a good game at all.
Agony is always ugly. Anti-GAI psychotic lynch mob is living last weeks. As if the majority of software developers, whether a studio with hundreds of people or individuals in their apartments, don't now use all sorts of copilots, agents or simply chat-bots to write and "generate" code based on "training" on endless rows of code written by other people before.
Is the argument that E33 is completely devoid of human creativity and thought or that no humans worked on E33 and it was a one shot prompt game? Gamer McCarthyism at it's finest. We don't attack prompt games. Instead we claim that games made by hundreds, or in COD's case thousands, of people somehow are games made by zero people and totally lacking in human creativity and expression.
Oh holy shit who gives a fuck about the news paper. They obviously realized the mistake and fixed it. This is just as ridiculous as people crying about Divinity using AI. People acted this way with photoshop and filters and now no one blinks an eye. This is just blind hating because “oh AI is bad” when it obviously serves as a tool in the right hands. It’s not like they used ai in a way that palworld did. Indie of the year is too vague of a category to begin with however if felt like they were ready to strip them of an award for any reason, this was a known fact months ago.
Dumb decision. Indies especially are going to use AI for things they mostly won't be able to afford like having voice acting in the game, original music etc. Most of the industry uses AI as a helping tool for concept art and stuff like that anyway.
Haven't bought the game yet but now I'm definitely going out of my way to buy it just to spite people who are stupid enough to be upset about a company using a tool
Loved E33, but after this discourse indie is such a fiesta of what should and shouldn't counted. Should games guaranteed to succeed like Silksong/Hades 2 be considered indie? I don't think so. Imo it would make more sense for indie to go away as a category and be replaced by debut titles not owned by larger studios. Maybe another category "breakout title of the year" as well being non debut titles from similarly uncontrolled studios that isn't exclusive to first games. The current definition of indie just seems wrong and not what it initially was, a more grassroots type of thing. If you've made a game like Hades/Hollow knight/E33 you've now got name recognition and any game those studios release afterwards are guaranteed a bump in sales because of that, they are now established in the industry and aren't the underdogs that they were before releasing those titles.
I don't understand the discourse. Indie should just be any game that's self published or at least any game that isn't funded by a publisher. Supergiant is the developer and publisher of Hades 2 so it is definitely an indie game.
Im saying the current meaning of indie doesn't 'feel' like what indie was before, more underground/grassroots games. I think the way we currently define indie makes no sense. If you make a game and self publish a game that gets millions of sales you've now graduated from what the core of being an indie dev is and are latching onto technicalities to call yourself "indie". They are amazing games, but they are now making proven concept sequels to games, they've made a name for themselves.
How many games can a studio make that sell millions before they no longer count as indie? Is it infinite as long as they don't own or publish for other studios? While technically indie these studios don't embody the full spirit of indie, so we need a new descriptor.
Where exactly did he admit this? I tried searching and haven't found a source that actually backs this up aside from an Escapist article that also cites no sources.
in this case it was WAY worse! they accidentally left in placeholder textures on a background element and had the AUDACITY of shipping the game and not fixing it until like.. a few weeks after launch when it was pointed out!
I still say this the ebst game this year, they are just crying because this won the awards and not AAA game that are nothing but greedy so they did this so they think they did something wrong. This will not stop from buying game like this from India games because right now top AAA game suck, they don't care about anyone but themself. They can keep that award, no one cares we all know Expedition 33 was better then anything junk that came out this eyar.
HAHAH this is so laughable.... every studio is using Ai in their games nowadays. it is hard to not see that some people are very pissed about this game. also all the Ai was removed in later patches and replaced after the first or second patch. this is so BS.
This is the stupidest thing ever. Soon games will only be made using ai. This doesn't take away that they deserve the award. Beautiful game best I played all year. Who cares if ai was used at all
I get this is the sub for this game and I loved it myself, but the glaze some of y'all have for genAI is so weird. Like, y'all acting like they couldn't have just as easily used any other placeholder asset that doesn't usa a tech placing extra unneeded strain on the environment or being used to actively undermine the working class? Bruh, the irony of some of y'all in a literal game about art.
Even though I admire their commitment and overall end product, as an artist myself, I feel we do NEED to place heavy rules against the use o GenAI. When game companies use genai to "push" things faster, it usually means not hiring a concept artist, not hiring a storyboard artist, and so on.
Pushing the use of GenAI in the industry into a "morally grey area" is much more damaging than people outside the industry imagine and since most of you aren't game devs, or part of the creative teams, I am sure you have a say in this, however you have have little to no idea how bad it actually is using this plagiarism tech disguised as "an intelligent one".
We don't need tech that abuses moral and ethical rights being pushed into the indie games industry. We need a society willing to bet and shining a light on small studios by seeing the potential on a gaming project. We all want and need jobs. GenAI is stealing these to get you a product faster.
Don't care. Still my GOTY. Still better recieved and more adored than anything AAA has come out with, and it's not even close. They deserve it. In every regard.
Bit weird to me that they are this strict on AI - while I don't think pushing out AI slop or handing vast amounts of production over to it should be encouraged, using AI as the tool it is to help human artists and designers in processes and communication is completely fine imo.
Who benefits of that most? Indie devs arguably, because it helps them save time and resources and be more efficient, which they need without big studios and a huge budget. That's why I think if the rule really is as strict as it seems, it's a bad rule and should probably be recalibrated. Ban the straight up lazy AI slop and overreliance on it that the rule was probably intended against while allowing it to be used as a tool.
This whole thing is fucking stupid. AI is a TOOL. Just like CAD is for cabinet designers, FL Studio for producers, a Capo for guitarists, a fucking monkey wrench for plumbers. Sandfall shouldn’t be burned at the stake for using AI assets because the method in which it’s used isn’t malicious.
Can we get past this stupid part of technological advancements and get to the norming stage already? I’m so tired of this nonsense.
It is at the game awards and will be for several others I reckon, it just won't be for this particular award show because they're disqualifying it. There is more than one GotY award.
I think people and especially gamers are incredibly harsh on AI generated content. If the end product is good who cares about the tools who made it? Its especially funny that these exact people use AI in almost every aspect of their lives... have you taken a photo with any smartphone? AI enhanced. Spell checked? Email polished? Code generated? Talked to chat gpt? Made a funny image on nano banana? It took someone's job probably. As a dev I can tell you that AI is shit if the poeple use it are shit.. its another tool for the artists, its not instead, it clears up time to make the important art and not spend time on random textures... and they wouldn't have hired another artist! They would have spent less time on the important things. Just saying.
This is bullshit created by sore losers. The world is filled with whining bitches lately. Game is superb and this kind of bullshit is like saying a mathematician cannot use a fucking calculator.
So it's ok for game like Ghost of Yotei uses AI and keeps it in game but god forbid if a game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 uses it for concept art and switches it to human art, that's bad. This is such bullshit.
Well, it has been fun. I bought PC and PS5 and Vinyl records. I have done my part supporting them. Not joining this sub to get how another dirt bag on the internet is hating this master piece and why you guys care at all. Unsubscribed
It was removed 8 months ago for 2 very small textures ; anyone has tried AI at least once. The game did not expect to be received this way. AI is included in IDEs. Big studios do much worse things. This hate is unjustified; someone rediscovered something old that was already known and fixed, and the sheep are following the trend.
Breaking: Clair Obscur Expedition 33 stripped of chance to compete in all future Game Awards. It appears someone filled out the game studio's application incorrectly. In the area under "do not write in this space," someone wrote "OK." https://youtu.be/YflQRpuzR5Y
Who cares….this award is a joke Too bad for Silk fraud and Hades Mansplaining edition, the whole world already know how great E33 is. Fuck this « indie game wards » lol 😂
And meanwhile no one talked about the fact that Wuthering Waves literally bought the Players Voice award at the Game Awards by offering rewards for votes. Seems to be a much bigger issue to discuss than a vague use of AI at some point of the development of the game. And I'm sure many other games nominated there did it too, they just won't say it.
I had a feeling that more people played CO Expedition 33 that those who knew about Indie Game Awards 😂 They are clearly doing this to get all the attention they can.
The Alters was blamed to dust for using AI to create a single sign. A sign on the wall.
But when Expedition 33 does that, everybody seems upset. Double Standards, of course.
I enjoyed Expedition 33 a lot, but the more I spend time in this sub, the more I hate the game. Every single post just tries to spit on other games for no reason.
What's wrong with you people? Why do you try to make every successful game a god and then worship it like a cult?
Expedition 33 is a good game yeah, but still flawed. Accept it you weirdos!
This so BS, there's no way GenAI was not used in Blue Prince or any others games in the indie category, for concept art or any tiny details. I'm pretty sure we're gonna hear from other developers sames story soon and it will make people that don't dev games or create anything mad on internet as always. Like someone said, see you in 5 years where this category will be empty due to this rule. People need to learn what is lazy ai usage in creation for inspiration or place holding, and real AI "slop" like COD.
Who cares about the indie game awards? It already won game of the year. It's not like this irrelevant game award show can strip it of the awards it already won???
Cringe. Go take awards from other games that released after 2021. Actually almost ALL.
AA - AAA absolutelly all.
This AI panic is ridiculous. This is literally an analogue of Hitler's "argument." When you have nothing to say and try to blame your opponent for something. The Indy Awards just found an excuse to get on the hype train of hate. It's a shameless disgrace.
AI is a tool, and that's it. Anyone who spreads the schizophrenic idea that a tool "kills" creativity is either misunderstanding what they're saying or intentionally distorting reality. Drawing hasn't disappeared with the advent of photography. Manual labor hasn't disappeared with the advent of machines, and in fact, it's become even more valued in certain circles. The tool itself is not the problem; it's the person who uses it incorrectly. Stop using AI as a synonym for something terrible; it's absolute idiocy and childishness. And the most ridiculous is the hypocrisy with which people are immediately ready to turn away and start to hate great games for using this tool in minor moments, not understanding and completely refusing to acknowledge the usefulness of such tools (which they often use themselves in everyday life and or at work, but this is of course "different" and they of course can because... because because!)
It's been known the game had used A.I for art assets months ago and it was patched out but there will be people who will (for a good reason) wonder if that was the only case of it being used.
It's up to people at this point to decide where the line is for this as I personally feel if it was used during the earlier concept phases for inspiration but everything after was made by a person I would probably have no issues, but I don't know how deep it all goes.
The ai assets where place holders for posters but place holders don't need to look finished. would of took less time to just have a neon square texture say "poster" in unreal engine. That's enought for the other devs on the team to get it and replace it with the real asset.
Where do we draw the line on ai it's used constantly in code now by most company's but people seem to be fine with it.
Me personally tho they changed it so they did have actuall assets it's fine. if they left it in and refused to change it that's another thing.
Some people really need to stop being outraged by everything. They used AI? Good for them, who cares? Everyone should and will use any tools available if it does the job. You gotta use any advantages possible.
IGA made an objectively unenforceable stupid rule and used it to remove E33 because of the heat on the game right now to gain notoriety in certain circles.
It's pretty strictly a "political" play for lack of a better word, given IGA would've had full knowledge of AI placeholder usage in E33 discussed back in July. Furthermore there are no AI assets in E33 at this point as well.
The assumption that Indie games cannot use any AI in development invalidates literally any game using an IDE with autofill, and I assure you all these games used these.
IGA basically nuked their reputation in order to capitalize on the luddite rampage against AI.
A device used to create special effects like the on they have in atron is vastly different from a work-stealing, energy guzzling, literal glorified search engine, but sure.
I mean the extend they used it is totally fine in my opinion and I would be surprised if other game devs (especially in the indie sector) wouldn’t do the same but without mentioning it.
Good riddance. That french slop was everywhere by using indie name and backed by a marketing team bigger than US intelligence.
ReplyDeleteThat's why Hideo Kojima made that smirk...
ReplyDeleteJoke of an award
ReplyDeleteI'm 54 and games, Hollywood, music, etc. has become so iterative and stale.
ReplyDeleteDude, no matter how many times I silence this sub, every day a new post crying about AI pops in my feed.
ReplyDeleteEvery piece of software today has AI in it to some extent. Period. Get used to it.
This entire discourse is so stupid, no amount of moralizing will put the AI cat back in the bag, in 10 years every game will be 80% AI and unfortunately its time to get used to it.
ReplyDeleteIt should have been disqualified because ITS NOT A FUCKING INDIE GAME.
ReplyDeleteWhy are people calling it an indie when it objectively is not, in any way, and indie?
According to what definition?
DeleteAccording to the definition of the word “indie”…
DeleteIndie means its independent, which means no publisher. Sandfall has a publisher, Kepler.
And even if you want to go with the “look and feel” argument, E33 does not look or feel like an indie game. It looks and feels high quality and high budget.
Now if you’re using the fact that it had a small budget? Then you’re ignorant. That’s not what makes something indie.
So how do you feel about the fact that Blue Prince, the game that replaced E33 as the Indie GOTY, has a publisher? Should it also not be in contention?
DeleteI agree that E33 isn't an indie game, but saying that any game that has a publisher isn't indie is just inadequate.
What happens in 5 years when 99% of devs -Indie or not- use AI?
ReplyDeleteExpedition 33 shouldn't even be considered an indie game in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI’m kind of glad for this expedition 33 has been taken all of the fucking awards. It would only be fair for them to lose some and let other games have their time in the sun.
ReplyDeleteWell COE won't get indie game of the year, lets just give them game of the year then.
ReplyDeleteSo I’m curious as a person who is looking into doing some solo game dev.
ReplyDeleteIs it just AI art that people find distasteful (including myself) or is it also AI code generation, debug log analysis etc?
I don’t really have a problem personally with AI writing code at an amateur level.
I don’t like companies firing developers to use AI because I know first hand AI code is rarely all that good.
But it can be useful. I used it to write myself a little app that helps me do stats for my son’s baseball team.
If I were going to do some game development I’d probably use it for some code and analysis work
I’m not delusional and worried it might cost me an indie game of the year award…I’m just curious how people feel about it
It’s always art. The shortcuts are just frowned upon. But never use gen AI art. You will be slaughtered.
Delete
DeleteI wouldn’t. It’s all pretty terrible looking regardless. And it directly harms artists who would otherwise be getting paid for art assets you can just buy on online stores
But why pay an artist for their work making a grass or rock texture when the can just steal it and spit out a blatant copy for free right?
Imagine if the IGA was honest and just said this game is normal, has beautiful characters, and is made by White men primarily and they just lost their collective and sexually uncertain minds and found the silliest non-reason to do this. LOL!
ReplyDeleteThis is why people hate PETA…
ReplyDeleteCause they get it wrong so often that it hurts the cause entirely
Any game that uses any popular engine will almost certainly have used AI in some respect. It’s in Unity, Unreal
ReplyDeletegood, any leeway companies get that it's ok means THEY WILL MOVE THE GOAL POST. otherwise eventually it'll be like "they only used gen ai for the voices of minor NPCs come onnn"
ReplyDeleteI'm no fan of gen AI, but I think in the long term, the dividing line is probably going to have to be "Is it something that players can see, that is clearly visible and/or impacts the experience in the final product?" The controversy around Clair Obscur is over a placeholder image asset that was easy to see an identify as an AI element. Games need to not have that. I think it's going to be impossible to police the use of AI in game code, though.
ReplyDeleteI guess the dark side of what I'm suggesting is "We're all fine ignoring it as long as we can't see it and don't hear about it," which still sucks. But I'm also currently wearing a T-shirt that I'm sure inevitably had sweatshop labor at some point in its creation process, and I order things on Amazon because it's convenient despite me knowing that the people working in the warehouses are very overworked.
As GenAI’s number one hater myself, this is such a gross over reaction. I hate that people can’t consider nuance into discussions like this
ReplyDeleteEdit: downvote me all you want. I am secure in that I have the ability to think critically and consider nuance, and you don’t
They used AI art. No leeway. Stop using gen AI for art even if you say “we used internal artist and internal AI” yeah, no one cares. Stop trying to make shortcuts that will fuck over people in the long run when it reaches its capitalist endpoint.
DeleteBehind every anti-AI post is someone who has decided capitalism is the reason they aren’t as successful as their parents.
DeleteThat art came from 2022 when this technology was literally in its infancy and was not hated anywhere near at the level it is today. Not only is there zero AI anything in the game, the artwork in question was patched out almost immediately before it was even noticed, but also the directors and crew of the game made a statement about how much they hate genAI. There is nuance to this situation that goes beyond the monochrome wall this subreddit has put up. No one here is going to make it far in life if they continue to see in black and white
DeleteUh huh. Just like if you see one bed bug in your bed that was just unlucky, there’s definitely no more after you killed that one.
DeleteSuch a braindead take to defend this game. The AI stuff was something E33 admitted to using it and as a company, I can assume you’d want to minimize the damage as much as possible. Sorry not sorry. There’s no way in hell they used AI 3 years before the release and somehow forgot some of them and released the game with it?
Hey, I got a bridge to sell you kiddo.
Valid disqualification due to them not being an indie developer. AI however is just too ubiquitous to avoid so disqualifying due to that seems overzealous.
ReplyDeleteBased.
ReplyDeleteKeep AI out of art. And stop shoving it into every piece of software so that those of us that dont want it dont have to go through 5 dropdown windows to turn it off.
Resisting AI is futile. Every company will be using within 3 years. Thats like trying to boycott computers when they first came out
ReplyDeleteIf you use code academy or any code based learning tool you use Ai. I rest my case
ReplyDeleteMan it's going to get wild in the next few years.
ReplyDeleteI hate AI but I understand that it's going nowhere and has value. And like any tool, needs to be used properly with moral/ethical means. If done properly and ethically, I see nothing wrong with using unless your intention is to replace existing team members with it.
FWIW, ai absolutely can go the way of the dodo. It is currently a massive money pit, and it turns out to be unfeasible to make it profitable, the plug will be pulled.
Delete"It is currently a massive money pit, and it turns out to be unfeasible to make it profitable, the plug will be pulled."
DeleteThe plug may be pulled on training, but generation, at least for most models, is relatively profitable. There might be some minor price adjustments here and there, but someone somewhere will still sell it.
Do you have a source for generation being profitable? All data I've seen suggests that generation is ~1/3 of costs, and these ai projects are are still underwater if you reduce the cost by that much.
DeleteHuh? It’s insanely profitable to harvest data from millions of people.
DeleteOpen ai is losing 16 billion a quarter right now, and that's just them. No AI company or venture is profitable, nor is one even close to breaking even. Data harvesting is profitable because it's cheap. Reddit estimates it makes less than 25 dollars a year per user. AI is far too expensive for that type of low cost high volume strategy to work.
DeleteOpenAI is not even trying to make a profit. I don't know why you think no AI company is profitable? Midjourney, ElevenLabs etc? I am not familiar with every AI company under the sun but both of these appear to have been profitable pretty quickly after launch.
DeleteMost of these AI companies aren't trying to be profitable right now, they are grabbing market share just like basically every tech startup in the past 20 years. Tech just doesn't go back in the bag. AI is here to stay, We have models right now that are dirt cheap to run that are pretty easy to be profitable on.
Both of those are private and not required to make accurate GAAP compliant statements. Both have rather large revenue for their size, but we have no cost break down, and AI already has tricky accounting under GAAP.
DeleteCan we at least agree both look profitable even if we don't have access to their books. ElevenLabs in particular, audio AI is just much much easier to be profitable. In that people will actually pay.
DeleteI don't actually disagree too much on OpenAI, they are playing a risky game and will struggle for profitability. But AI as a whole isn't that.
After reading a lot of these comments, I have concluded that this sub has been overrun by Anti-AI luddites. Same kind of people that hated automobiles, personal computers, and the internet when they first came out. The future won’t have less AI in it, sorry.
ReplyDelete1. The luddites were right.
Delete2. Almost every comment pointing out the flaws of generative-AI have been downvoted beyond 0 points.
There's a brigade for sure, but it ain't from the anti-AI crowd.
I think its mostly people who aren’t tech enthusiasts and are afraid of being unemployed and annoyed at the misuse (deepfakes, misinformation, electricity price hikes etc). Their concerns are valid but their perspective is limited.
DeleteAutomobiles didn’t harvest everyone’s data and steal people’s work to make them.
DeleteNo, but they took away jobs from ranchers, street sweepers, carriage builders, blacksmiths, farmers etc. Also, everyone’s data has been getting harvested for the last 30 years. Companies just have an actual use for it now.
DeleteAll of those jobs people use machinery to do them now, sanition drives a street sweeper instead of pushing a broom, etc
DeleteAI companies are literally stealing people’s work to feed to their AI models without compensating the writers or artists, they build massive data centers that are destroying the environment while the people pay for their electricity and water usage and the company keeps all the profits. Memory prices and pc components are skyrocketing in price because they are buying up all of the inventory making everything we want to purchase much more expensive on top of eliminating millions of jobs.
My point still stands. People find ways to adapt to the changing job market when revolutionary technology takes hold. We have had data centers much longer than we have had AI, but only now people are complaining about them. They were always going to build more regardless of AI. As for chips, supply will catch up to demand as it always does. Same thing happened to GPUs a few years back.
DeleteThis outrage will fade just like microtransactions. When microtransactions first started many gamers vowed they'd never play these games. Now 20 years later every game has them and even games with the most blantly dogs shit microtransaction loaded shit sell billions and become the highest selling games of the year.
ReplyDeleteThis outrage will fade just like microtransactions. When microtransactions first started many gamers vowed they'd never play these games. Now 20 years later every game has them and even games with the most blantly dogs shit microtransaction loaded shit sell billions and become the highest selling games of the year.
DeleteDumb as hell rule, and made me not give a fuck about the IGA. It's like disqualifying someone because they used a brand of hammer you didn't like. Gen AI is just a tool, and it's the end product that results at the end of the day. If gen AI is used to produce slop, which is what most people are opposed to, then it will be clear in the end product. You don't need arbitrary rules for that.
ReplyDeleteProof that they have no idea how or what GenAI should be used for so just decide to ban everything
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck are "The Indie Game Awards"? This seems to be their second year? Has anyone ever heard of it outside of this story?
ReplyDeleteIf they're so goddamn indie then Clair Obscur shouldn't have been nominated in the first place.
Lots of salty E33 fans in here.
ReplyDeleteWe gunna hear about this every day now or what?
ReplyDeleteConsidering Reddit is really the only place that cares... yup. Strap in
DeleteI still cannot fathom why it matters in any conceivable way. Who the hell cares if AI is used? If the game is good, it's good, regardless of how it was made. It's always better not knowing how the sausages are made.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the definition of an Indie Game?
ReplyDeleteEven though the studio "only" has 30 or so employees, I believe they used a lot of contractors.
Claiming Clair Obscure is 'indie' and putting it up for Indie Awards is the most absurd thing about the whole situation.
DeleteIt only means that a company developed a game without the backing of a large publisher. Team size and budget are not factored in to the current definition.
DeleteMany of the games nominated for Indie Game Awards have been backed by a publisher.
DeleteSo 8ts a useless label
DeleteAnything outside of the typical publisher/developer dynamic. It's pretty obvious at this point and this question getting asked over and over again feels like fishing for an opportunity to be performative and obtuse over this subject.
DeleteWhat do you define as "outside the typical developer/publisher relationship". That can mean a lot of things
DeleteThey didn’t use that many. The credits were over in like a minute and that’s even including a dog
DeleteI'm pretty sure it used to mean, a couple of passionate souls that got together and made something personal.
DeleteNot a 9 - 10 million dollar polished product.
I'm not slamming the game. The game is amazing. It irks me how everything gets watered down.
They didn't start with that level though, they started with 6 people working on a very tight budget. They got additional financing and investors as they showed they had a good product that could deliver a meaningful ROI. Every single indie studio out there that got a publisher went through this same process, some with more investment than others.
Deleteso the very definition of not independent if they had outside investment money
DeleteMany indie games have publishers.
DeleteAll indie games have investors, even when it's a single developer they're investing their own time and money into it, and (if they're wanting to be successful) treating it as a tradeoff of investment of time/money for expected ROI on every feature, polish, and change.
Do you know what independent means? It means not dependent.
DeleteIndepedent is a completely and utterly useless term when referring to a game studio and the spirit of what an indie game is. Paradox is independent, Fromsoft is independent, EA is independent, and so on. No one would say they belong in the indie category.
DeleteLooking at the GotY spreadsheet for these awards, 7 out of 12 nominees (6/11 if you exclude E33), including the winner have third party publishers.
Of course it used to be “independent” from publishers (and investors) but that would basically limit the category to a handful of teams who work on games in their spare time.
DeleteNow it pretty much means “anything but AAA”.
Answer: Anti-AI activists misfired against a massively popular and well loved product. Hilarity ensued.
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ReplyDeletewhat is this super biased explanation dude lmao
DeleteI wish they didn't delete, might have found it funny
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ReplyDeleteSmall correction, the actual game awards did not remove any awards. These awards were from a similarly named but significantly smaller indie game awards show started in 2024.
DeleteAnswer: Silksong fanboys wanted it to win instead of CE33
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ReplyDeleteWho here is gonna boycot GTA6 cause they are using AI lol . How dare they.
DeleteAnswer: Turn based combat is ass
ReplyDeleteE33 being placed as indie is this industry's joke of the decade.
ReplyDeleteThe studio had 35 core employees plus hundreds of contractors. Kepler Interactive, the publisher, received a $120 million investment from NetEase, a Chinese giant, which made them a minority investor.
The game's good, don't fuckin get me wrong, but it's not indie. That's a psyop.
I have to imagine there would have been a back and forth about it if the studio hadn't lied about the AI usage in the first place or if it wasn't caught on the literal day of the awards. Sounds like circumstances removed room for nuance and obviously breaking the rules for a competition will get you disqualified from it.
ReplyDeleteOuuufff, I’m interested to see the mental gymnastics the fans do here. Certain companies have been crucified for making a mention of AI, but now we’re getting more and more fan favourites being a part of the movement.
ReplyDeleteHere's the mental gymnastics:
DeleteI didn't crucify either The Alters devs or Larian for this either. Fans aren't a monolith.
Then I’m not talking about you, am I? :)
DeleteThere are definitely people who have been pointing their fingers at the AAA companies for relatively benign comments that I’m curious to see what will say now that some of these darling games are targeted.
This was known months ago when the game first came out.
ReplyDeleteSo they purposefully gave it an award, just to rescind it.
It's purely performative.
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DeleteThey have to draw the line somewhere. It’s not fair to exclude ai slop games but then give another game a pass because more money for marketing.
ReplyDeleteBlue Prince should have won because it's a better game, actually.
ReplyDelete(I like E33! But Blue Prince is fresh as hell.)
Blue Prince was awful. Waste of money
Deleteblue prince is a slop for 60 year old people. its a mid game
DeleteLmao Exp33 sweeps one award show winning multiple awards but it misses out on a different award show so we gotta be mad and pity poor Exp33.
ReplyDeleteLol I don't give a shit about Exp33 but the reaction from the anti-ai crowd has been pretty pathetic about it.
DeleteGood. Ai has no place. Takes jobs and kills the industry. Destroys innovation.
ReplyDeleteCongrats to blue prince for game of the year.
Completely valid decision l, but I do think by this time next year this ‘no ai at all’ rule will be quietly dropped. The cat’s outta the bag with ai and dev’s that use it will slowly out compete those that don’t. And just like with CGI in movies when it’s done right you’ll never know (unless you’re in the know)
ReplyDeleteThis will age poorly. Every dev, indie or not, will be using AI in some capacity in the next few years. There's a massive AI luddite stance among tech/reddit types lately and it's giving a lot of punching air vibes.
ReplyDeleteIt just reeks of "plz plz don't kill my job" and trying to wrap it up in snark.
Jeez, imagine people wanting to product their jobs from the climate-killing, society-destroying tech owned by psychotic anti-democratic billionaires.
DeleteThe tech is coming whether you like it or not. Hence punching air.
DeleteThis in itself is a non-issue, but admitting that you use gen AI anywhere, especially in art-related areas is akin to PR suicide because the anti-AI sentiment overwhelms all sense and reason (I mean there is a point of being too much of it, but some folks think that a straight up ban on any kind of AI is the way to go, and state their opinion quite loudly), thus everyone prefers to lie about not using it and risk being caught. Which becomes an issue and hurts legitimacy of AI use even more.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, there are 2 kinds of games. Games that are made with Gen AI, and the kinds that are made with Gen AI and lie/don't know about it.
ReplyDeleteWho cares about such a little thing. This is ridiculous, the game is amazing and should be appreciated
ReplyDeleteI'm vehemently against AI and even I think this is silly. This is hardly a game that relies on generative AI content for any part of the finished product, it was very obviously a leftover placeholder.
ReplyDeleteThe game also began development in 2020, let's not forget. The entire AI surge happened during the games creation, well before discourse on the subject had developed and as the ethical concerns were still being discovered by people.
If the finished game was deliberately using AI generated content than it would not be eligible but to argue that it was used in the development process and therefore invalid is - regardless of whether you think it's reasonable or not - simple a practically unenforceable stance for an award to make a criterion. How would you know?
Retroactively disqualifying a game of this scope and caliber over a single newspaper texture feels deeply antithetical to what the awards are about. The disqualification for using AI probably did not exist when Sandfall was developing those early stages of their game, and you can't argue they used it in any meaningful degree in the finished product, so what gives?
Tangently related - but it's funny to me that this was what they were disqualified for, rather than anything to do with the game "not being indie" like people keep arguing over. The industry itself seems to have no dispute over whether or not the game is a "true" indie, which leads back to me theory that it's really just optics and people think it's not indie because it really doesn't look indie.
Lest we forget that Tron (1982) didn't get an Oscar nomination for Visual Effects because using computers was "cheating". The lesson wasn't learnt apparently.
ReplyDeleteIt’s really interesting how Gen AI is starting to be treated like performance enhancing drugs in sports.
ReplyDeleteClair Obscur using Unreal Engine assets that were AI generated is like a sports star getting secondhand contaminated by lotion with steroids or something.
So the game should then have the checkbox for AI on steam?
ReplyDeleteI think people hate success and it shows on here. Using AI as placeholders is totally fine...I don't see the problem with that. It makes workflows more efficient and it's a great way to expedite certain processes. This is indicative online hate and outrage culture, one use of AI to generate a newspaper texture some how undermines the entire studios efforts to produce a video game. Let's not pretend AI in it's current form can even replicate a good game at all.
ReplyDeleteAgony is always ugly. Anti-GAI psychotic lynch mob is living last weeks. As if the majority of software developers, whether a studio with hundreds of people or individuals in their apartments, don't now use all sorts of copilots, agents or simply chat-bots to write and "generate" code based on "training" on endless rows of code written by other people before.
ReplyDeleteSuch a kindergarten, AI is here to stay and everyone opposing it will end up like carriage drivers. Good luck in your misery!
ReplyDeleteIs the argument that E33 is completely devoid of human creativity and thought or that no humans worked on E33 and it was a one shot prompt game? Gamer McCarthyism at it's finest. We don't attack prompt games. Instead we claim that games made by hundreds, or in COD's case thousands, of people somehow are games made by zero people and totally lacking in human creativity and expression.
ReplyDeleteOh holy shit who gives a fuck about the news paper. They obviously realized the mistake and fixed it. This is just as ridiculous as people crying about Divinity using AI. People acted this way with photoshop and filters and now no one blinks an eye. This is just blind hating because “oh AI is bad” when it obviously serves as a tool in the right hands. It’s not like they used ai in a way that palworld did. Indie of the year is too vague of a category to begin with however if felt like they were ready to strip them of an award for any reason, this was a known fact months ago.
ReplyDeleteits fucking funny watching people seethe over this, just because their gay game kingdom come didn't win goty at the vga
ReplyDeleteDumb decision. Indies especially are going to use AI for things they mostly won't be able to afford like having voice acting in the game, original music etc. Most of the industry uses AI as a helping tool for concept art and stuff like that anyway.
ReplyDeleteHaven't bought the game yet but now I'm definitely going out of my way to buy it just to spite people who are stupid enough to be upset about a company using a tool
ReplyDeleteto be fair it should have been disqualified because it's not indie not because of the ai placeholders
ReplyDeleteIf that's a requirement, then that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteIt's going to be a confusing couple years because who knows who's using it unless they admit it or something slips into the game.
Didn’t they use generative ai for concept art and then have artists draw it again by hand?
ReplyDeleteLoved E33, but after this discourse indie is such a fiesta of what should and shouldn't counted. Should games guaranteed to succeed like Silksong/Hades 2 be considered indie? I don't think so. Imo it would make more sense for indie to go away as a category and be replaced by debut titles not owned by larger studios. Maybe another category "breakout title of the year" as well being non debut titles from similarly uncontrolled studios that isn't exclusive to first games. The current definition of indie just seems wrong and not what it initially was, a more grassroots type of thing. If you've made a game like Hades/Hollow knight/E33 you've now got name recognition and any game those studios release afterwards are guaranteed a bump in sales because of that, they are now established in the industry and aren't the underdogs that they were before releasing those titles.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the discourse. Indie should just be any game that's self published or at least any game that isn't funded by a publisher. Supergiant is the developer and publisher of Hades 2 so it is definitely an indie game.
DeleteIm saying the current meaning of indie doesn't 'feel' like what indie was before, more underground/grassroots games. I think the way we currently define indie makes no sense. If you make a game and self publish a game that gets millions of sales you've now graduated from what the core of being an indie dev is and are latching onto technicalities to call yourself "indie". They are amazing games, but they are now making proven concept sequels to games, they've made a name for themselves.
DeleteHow many games can a studio make that sell millions before they no longer count as indie? Is it infinite as long as they don't own or publish for other studios? While technically indie these studios don't embody the full spirit of indie, so we need a new descriptor.
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ReplyDeleteWhere exactly did he admit this? I tried searching and haven't found a source that actually backs this up aside from an Escapist article that also cites no sources.
DeleteWho gives a shit if they used gen AI early in development as a placeholder and replaced it later in the process?
ReplyDeletein this case it was WAY worse! they accidentally left in placeholder textures on a background element and had the AUDACITY of shipping the game and not fixing it until like.. a few weeks after launch when it was pointed out!
DeleteI really hope this is sarcasm.
Deleteshit, I forgot it's not 2020 anymore
DeleteI still say this the ebst game this year, they are just crying because this won the awards and not AAA game that are nothing but greedy so they did this so they think they did something wrong. This will not stop from buying game like this from India games because right now top AAA game suck, they don't care about anyone but themself. They can keep that award, no one cares we all know Expedition 33 was better then anything junk that came out this eyar.
ReplyDeleteyessss this game is so ass 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
ReplyDeleteHAHAH this is so laughable.... every studio is using Ai in their games nowadays.
ReplyDeleteit is hard to not see that some people are very pissed about this game.
also all the Ai was removed in later patches and replaced after the first or second patch.
this is so BS.
This is the stupidest thing ever. Soon games will only be made using ai. This doesn't take away that they deserve the award. Beautiful game best I played all year. Who cares if ai was used at all
ReplyDeleteI get this is the sub for this game and I loved it myself, but the glaze some of y'all have for genAI is so weird. Like, y'all acting like they couldn't have just as easily used any other placeholder asset that doesn't usa a tech placing extra unneeded strain on the environment or being used to actively undermine the working class? Bruh, the irony of some of y'all in a literal game about art.
ReplyDeleteBig deal, let's pretend all the other indie developers never dabbled AI into the game 🤣
ReplyDeleteEven though I admire their commitment and overall end product, as an artist myself, I feel we do NEED to place heavy rules against the use o GenAI. When game companies use genai to "push" things faster, it usually means not hiring a concept artist, not hiring a storyboard artist, and so on.
ReplyDeletePushing the use of GenAI in the industry into a "morally grey area" is much more damaging than people outside the industry imagine and since most of you aren't game devs, or part of the creative teams, I am sure you have a say in this, however you have have little to no idea how bad it actually is using this plagiarism tech disguised as "an intelligent one".
We don't need tech that abuses moral and ethical rights being pushed into the indie games industry. We need a society willing to bet and shining a light on small studios by seeing the potential on a gaming project. We all want and need jobs. GenAI is stealing these to get you a product faster.
Don't care. Still my GOTY. Still better recieved and more adored than anything AAA has come out with, and it's not even close. They deserve it. In every regard.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteBit weird to me that they are this strict on AI - while I don't think pushing out AI slop or handing vast amounts of production over to it should be encouraged, using AI as the tool it is to help human artists and designers in processes and communication is completely fine imo.
Who benefits of that most? Indie devs arguably, because it helps them save time and resources and be more efficient, which they need without big studios and a huge budget. That's why I think if the rule really is as strict as it seems, it's a bad rule and should probably be recalibrated. Ban the straight up lazy AI slop and overreliance on it that the rule was probably intended against while allowing it to be used as a tool.
ReplyDeleteThis whole thing is fucking stupid. AI is a TOOL. Just like CAD is for cabinet designers, FL Studio for producers, a Capo for guitarists, a fucking monkey wrench for plumbers. Sandfall shouldn’t be burned at the stake for using AI assets because the method in which it’s used isn’t malicious.
Can we get past this stupid part of technological advancements and get to the norming stage already? I’m so tired of this nonsense.
Well, I have no desire to watch The Indie Game Awards again.
ReplyDeleteSo its not the goty?
ReplyDeleteClickbait everywhere
It is at the game awards and will be for several others I reckon, it just won't be for this particular award show because they're disqualifying it. There is more than one GotY award.
DeleteWell, as much as I like E33, it's not an indie game so ig it's for the best
ReplyDelete"Rules. Without them we live with the animals"
ReplyDeleteI think people and especially gamers are incredibly harsh on AI generated content. If the end product is good who cares about the tools who made it? Its especially funny that these exact people use AI in almost every aspect of their lives... have you taken a photo with any smartphone? AI enhanced. Spell checked? Email polished? Code generated? Talked to chat gpt? Made a funny image on nano banana? It took someone's job probably. As a dev I can tell you that AI is shit if the poeple use it are shit.. its another tool for the artists, its not instead, it clears up time to make the important art and not spend time on random textures... and they wouldn't have hired another artist! They would have spent less time on the important things. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteThis is bullshit created by sore losers. The world is filled with whining bitches lately. Game is superb and this kind of bullshit is like saying a mathematician cannot use a fucking calculator.
ReplyDeleteSo it's ok for game like Ghost of Yotei uses AI and keeps it in game but god forbid if a game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 uses it for concept art and switches it to human art, that's bad. This is such bullshit.
ReplyDeleteBtw AI Is a tool, so what does it have to do with being an indie or not?
ReplyDeleteGame was never an indie to begin with.
ReplyDeleteWell, it has been fun. I bought PC and PS5 and Vinyl records. I have done my part supporting them. Not joining this sub to get how another dirt bag on the internet is hating this master piece and why you guys care at all. Unsubscribed
ReplyDeleteLiterally unplayable.
ReplyDeletePeople in this thread who allegedly don't even care about these awards so mad about this that they're bashing other games. Y'all are genuinely rancid.
ReplyDeleteIt was removed 8 months ago for 2 very small textures ; anyone has tried AI at least once. The game did not expect to be received this way. AI is included in IDEs. Big studios do much worse things. This hate is unjustified; someone rediscovered something old that was already known and fixed, and the sheep are following the trend.
ReplyDeleteI agree they shouldn't qualify as an Indie studio, but I don't think it should be for AI use that most devs are using as well.
ReplyDeleteBreaking: Clair Obscur Expedition 33 stripped of chance to compete in all future Game Awards. It appears someone filled out the game studio's application incorrectly. In the area under "do not write in this space," someone wrote "OK."
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/YflQRpuzR5Y
It's not an indie game, so not sure why it was even nominated to begin with.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes a game indie these days anyway? Is it a cap on who worked on the game? Do contractors count? Amount of money dumped into it to make it?
DeleteWho cares….this award is a joke Too bad for Silk fraud and Hades Mansplaining edition, the whole world already know how great E33 is. Fuck this « indie game wards » lol 😂
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Didn’t realize the gaming awards were such purists, considering how much trash is out there.
ReplyDeleteWho cares about these awards anyways?
ReplyDeleteAnd meanwhile no one talked about the fact that Wuthering Waves literally bought the Players Voice award at the Game Awards by offering rewards for votes. Seems to be a much bigger issue to discuss than a vague use of AI at some point of the development of the game. And I'm sure many other games nominated there did it too, they just won't say it.
At first glance, I was truly shocked but up on reading the title and figuring out it was just a placeholder, this is so weird to be disqualified for.
ReplyDeleteThis seems no different than having some stock images up and then replacing it.
I had a feeling that more people played CO Expedition 33 that those who knew about Indie Game Awards 😂 They are clearly doing this to get all the attention they can.
ReplyDeleteThis.
DeleteLol
ReplyDeleteWell Kingdom Come Deliverance which is a really great contender as best RPG with E33 will win then.
ReplyDeleteInconsequential due to the game being better than any other game that came out in the last 10 years at least. Sour grapes.
ReplyDeleteThey should overthink this rule! Claire obscure is for me the best game of the decade.
ReplyDelete5 years from now there's going to be no games at the Indie Game Awards.
ReplyDeleteif there was gen AI usage in this peak of a perfect game.
ReplyDeleteI think I want more gen AI usage in games if we can experience the same quality of in games like I had in this game.
The Alters was blamed to dust for using AI to create a single sign. A sign on the wall.
ReplyDeleteBut when Expedition 33 does that, everybody seems upset. Double Standards, of course.
I enjoyed Expedition 33 a lot, but the more I spend time in this sub, the more I hate the game. Every single post just tries to spit on other games for no reason.
What's wrong with you people? Why do you try to make every successful game a god and then worship it like a cult?
Expedition 33 is a good game yeah, but still flawed. Accept it you weirdos!
This so BS, there's no way GenAI was not used in Blue Prince or any others games in the indie category, for concept art or any tiny details. I'm pretty sure we're gonna hear from other developers sames story soon and it will make people that don't dev games or create anything mad on internet as always. Like someone said, see you in 5 years where this category will be empty due to this rule. People need to learn what is lazy ai usage in creation for inspiration or place holding, and real AI "slop" like COD.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don’t know anybody who cares about indie game awards. I only care about golden joystick and The Game Awards
ReplyDeleteThis is dumb af... BUT at least it gives other "more indie" studios a chance to win something
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, they said they used the metahuman tool from unreal engine 5.
ReplyDeleteAt this rate just disqualify anything made with a big name game engine.
Who cares about the indie game awards? It already won game of the year. It's not like this irrelevant game award show can strip it of the awards it already won???
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ReplyDeleteCringe. Go take awards from other games that released after 2021. Actually almost ALL.
AA - AAA absolutelly all.
This AI panic is ridiculous. This is literally an analogue of Hitler's "argument." When you have nothing to say and try to blame your opponent for something. The Indy Awards just found an excuse to get on the hype train of hate. It's a shameless disgrace.
AI is a tool, and that's it. Anyone who spreads the schizophrenic idea that a tool "kills" creativity is either misunderstanding what they're saying or intentionally distorting reality. Drawing hasn't disappeared with the advent of photography. Manual labor hasn't disappeared with the advent of machines, and in fact, it's become even more valued in certain circles. The tool itself is not the problem; it's the person who uses it incorrectly. Stop using AI as a synonym for something terrible; it's absolute idiocy and childishness. And the most ridiculous is the hypocrisy with which people are immediately ready to turn away and start to hate great games for using this tool in minor moments, not understanding and completely refusing to acknowledge the usefulness of such tools (which they often use themselves in everyday life and or at work, but this is of course "different" and they of course can because... because because!)
Correct decision
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ReplyDeleteIt's been known the game had used A.I for art assets months ago and it was patched out but there will be people who will (for a good reason) wonder if that was the only case of it being used.
It's up to people at this point to decide where the line is for this as I personally feel if it was used during the earlier concept phases for inspiration but everything after was made by a person I would probably have no issues, but I don't know how deep it all goes.
ReplyDeleteGlad we're holding company's to standard
The ai assets where place holders for posters but place holders don't need to look finished. would of took less time to just have a neon square texture say "poster" in unreal engine. That's enought for the other devs on the team to get it and replace it with the real asset.
Where do we draw the line on ai it's used constantly in code now by most company's but people seem to be fine with it.
Me personally tho they changed it so they did have actuall assets it's fine. if they left it in and refused to change it that's another thing.
AI tools are supposed to help these indie games stand on equal grounds of big corporates.
ReplyDeletehow did their logic come to this conclusion?
Some people really need to stop being outraged by everything. They used AI? Good for them, who cares? Everyone should and will use any tools available if it does the job. You gotta use any advantages possible.
ReplyDeleteAccording to what I read Blue Prince also used AI yet it won a prize...
ReplyDeleteEvery game will be using AI for placeholders and concept art in the future so this just seems dumb but w/e.
ReplyDeleteBold move! Respect not being Nvidia co@35&ckers
ReplyDeleteIGA made an objectively unenforceable stupid rule and used it to remove E33 because of the heat on the game right now to gain notoriety in certain circles.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty strictly a "political" play for lack of a better word, given IGA would've had full knowledge of AI placeholder usage in E33 discussed back in July. Furthermore there are no AI assets in E33 at this point as well.
The assumption that Indie games cannot use any AI in development invalidates literally any game using an IDE with autofill, and I assure you all these games used these.
IGA basically nuked their reputation in order to capitalize on the luddite rampage against AI.
Yup, get this AI slop out of here.
ReplyDeleteI am curious to know how many “indie” developers use generative ai to generate CODE via ChatGPT instead of assets. Should that be banned too?
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing is silly in 15 years almost everything will be made with AI. People need to just chill.
ReplyDeleteSo they did this so other games stood a chance ok
ReplyDeletehttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-how-technology-is-making-art-accessible-to-everyone.html
ReplyDeleteThis says thy wern't even using gen AI but AI assisted tools so idk. Souds like they were up front about it.
...that was used for placeholders.
ReplyDeleteOk
Awards are a big wank.
ReplyDeleteEvery company on the planet is using Gen ai atm.
ReplyDeleteEspecially all these indie studios
The original Tron was banned from Oscars nomination for special effects, because they used a computer and it was viewed as cheating.
ReplyDeleteJust a little history check.
It’s just the typical judges dont understand tool, bans tool, then years later realise everyone is using tool so allows it.
DeleteA device used to create special effects like the on they have in atron is vastly different from a work-stealing, energy guzzling, literal glorified search engine, but sure.
Deletelol ai goes brrrr
DeleteHow about stopping using Google, Reddit, or any website that relies on data centers?
DeleteDamn thats wild
DeleteReally? This is laughable at this point
ReplyDeleteI mean the extend they used it is totally fine in my opinion and I would be surprised if other game devs (especially in the indie sector) wouldn’t do the same but without mentioning it.
ReplyDeletehttps://gifdb.com/gif/man-that-s-a-baby-need-to-be-heard-cq0jr64q2nl309u3.html
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