there is a whole basked of technologies which you can label as "gen AI" but which have non of the problems why people hate "gen AI"
as a very dump example, some pretty decent "line smoothing" algorithm are technically gen AI but have non of the ethical issues
> technically gen AI but have non of the ethical issues
so as an extrema example if you artists used that line smoothing algorithm you game isn't qualified anymore
it's an (maybe the most) extreme example of something which is "gen AI" but not problematic and as such a naive "rule" saying "no gen AI at all" is a pretty bad competition rule design
You'd have to cite an actual example of something this ridiculous. Non gen-AI algorithms have been line smoothing just fine for 2 decades now for less than a trillionth of the resources required to use gen AI for the same task.
It’s immersion breaking to try and talk to a random character only to hit a loop of one or two sentences.
How awesome would it be for every character to be able to have believable small talk, with only a small prompt? And it wouldn’t affect the overall game at all, because obviously the designers never cared to put in that work themselves
GenAI doing chore work is IMO the best use case
Even if all the AI-generated content had been replaced before release, this would still be a lie.
They should rename to the Digital Amish game awards or something.
The question is stupid and I think Sandfall should be given the benefit of doubt that they interpreted the question not literally, but in a way which actually makes sense.
it's like having doping rules in sports and then disqualifying someone for using caffeine in their gym plants.
When someone goes three miles per hour over the speed limit they are literally breaking the law, but that doesn’t mean they should get a serious fine for it. Sometimes shit happens.
Like, using automatic lipsync is "generative AI", should that be banned ? Do we really want to fight with that purely work-saving feature ?
Nobody is preventing the studio from working, or from continuing to make (ostensibly) tons of money from their acclaimed game. Their game didn't meet the requirements for one particular GOTY award, boo hoo
But you’re also not supposed to drive as close to the speed limit as possible. That number is not a target to hit, it’s a wall you should stay within a good margin of.
I understand analogies are seldom flawless, but the speed limit one in particular I feel does not apply because you can get a fine proportional to your infraction (go over the limit a little bit, small fine; go over it a lot, big fine) but you can’t partially retract an award, it’s all or nothing.
Anyway, I don't agree with banning generative AI, but if the award show wants to do so, go ahead. What has caused me to lose any respect for them is that they're doing this for such a silly reason. There's a huge difference between using AI to generate your actual textures and ship those, and.... accidentally shipping placeholder textures.
It really illustrates that this is more ideological than anything.
You dont need to like their rules. Make your own and do better if you want to. Saying they shouldn't enforce their own rules because you don't like them sounds ridiculous. Saying they shouldn't enforce their own rules because it's somehow unfair is literal nonsense.
Would love to see more "I don't like these rules" and a lot less "these rules are fascist!".
In that view, it doesn't matter whether you use it for placeholder or final assets. You paying your ChatGPT membership makes you complicit with the exploitation of that human creative output, and use of resources.
This is just another scheme where those at the top are appropriating the labor of many to enrich themselves. This will have so many negative consequences that I don't think any reactions against it are excessive.
It is irrelevant whether AI has "soul" or not. It literally does not matter, and it is a bad argument that dillutes what is really going on.
There is still human intentionality in picking an AI generated resource for surface texture, landscape, concept art, whatever. Doubly so if it is someone that create art themselves using it.
When's the last time someone with your opinion turned out to be right in the long run?
Of course, I am presuming you can read. I lean on optimism.
Expect the worst and you will never be disappointed.
It'll never happen because the grift is the point.
It’s been insane to me to watch the “creative class”, long styled as the renegade and anti-authoritarian heart of society, transform into hardline IP law cheerleaders overnight as soon as generative law burst onto the scene.
And the environmental concerns are equally disingenuous, particularly coming from the video game industry. Please explain to me how running a bunch of GPUs in a data center to serve peoples LLM requests is significantly more wasteful than distributing those GPUs among the population and running people’s video games?
At the end of the day, the only coherent criticism of AI is that it stands to eliminate the livelihood of a large number of people, which is perfectly valid concern. But that’s not a flaw of AI, it’s a flaw of the IP laws and capitalistic system we have created. That is what needs addressing. Trying to uphold that system by stifling AI as a technology is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
There's also been an extremely effective propaganda campaign by the major entertainment industry players to get creatives to come out against AI vocally. I'd like to see what percentage of those artists made the statement to try and curry favor with the money suits.
Where can I find out more about this?
But I'm kinda thinking this isn't THAT serious =)
Just a cudgel to shut down discussion
Was that before or after real people had their work scraped w/out permission or acknowledgement?
Describing these things as having no difference appears delibrately obtuse.
It doesn't seem strange that an industry award protects the workers in the industry. I agree, it seems harsh, but remember this is just a shiny award. It's up to the Indie Game Awards to decide the criteria.
Is it really though? After all it's just maybe a junior artist.
I've had to work with some form of asset pipeline for the past ten years. The past six in an actual game though not AAA. In all these years, devs have had the privilege of picking placeholders when the actual asset is not yet available. Sometimes, we just lift it off Google Images. Sometimes we pick a random sprite/image in our pre-existing collection. The important part is to not let the placeholder end up in the "finished" product.
> It's up to the Indie Game Awards to decide the criteria.
True and I'm really not too fond of GenAI myself but I can't be arsed to raise a fuss over Sandfall's admission here. As I said above, the line for me is to not let GenAI assets end up in the finished product.
And up to us to decide whether The Indie Game Awards has impaired their credibility by choosing such a ridiculous criterion.
Do you think AAA game development teams pass on AI despite the fact that it produces better results at a fraction of the cost. I think not. Why would you cripple Indie developers by imposing such a standard on indie developers?
It seems completely out of touch with what's going on in the world of software development.
Maybe, some sort of a temporary asset management system is required?
Realistically, no.
This argument in this industry is problematic. The entire purpose of computers is to automate processes that are labor intensive. Along the way, the automation process went from doing what was literally impossible with human labor to capturing ever deeper levels of skill of the practitioners. Contrast early computer graphics, which involved intensive human intervention, to modern tools. Since HN almost certainly has more developers than graphics artists, contrast early computer programming (where programmers didn't even have the assistance of assemblers and where they needed a deep knowledge of the computer architecture) to modern computer programming (high level languages, with libraries abstracting away most of the algorithmic complexity).
I don't know what the future of indie development looks like. In a way, indie development that uses third-party tools that captures the skills of developers and graphics artists traditionally found in major studios doesn't feel very indie. On the other hand, they are already doing that through the use of game engines and graphics design/modelling software. But I do know that a segment of the industry that utterly ignores those tools will be quickly left behind.
The game industry, especially AAA, is actually having major identity crisis right now as technology evolves and jobs adapt around the new tool of AI/LLMs. The game awards (not indie) should demonstrate this dolphin committee you fear already exists because the limiting factor in all industries are major resources: time, capital, experience. AI/LLMs will enable far more high skill work to be accomplished with less experience, time, and possibly capital (sidestepping ethics/practicality of data centers).