Technology

Right. The far bigger problem is how trash of an engine Unreal5 is, and all the forced processing making things look and run like shit. But that's not just a Clair Obsur problem.

Yup, people prefer to enrage themselfes, the facts don't matter anymore.

because people's anti-AI furor is totally irrational and becoming a purity test that any/all ai ever is morally irredeemable.

despite the fact that many such techniques tools have been used for decades in game dev... they just weren't branded as 'ai'.

but you are sober, not an anti-ai crusader.

It means AI was used to replace work hours from humans. That's kind of the whole point of anti AI.

Also, to go a bit extreme on an extrapolation of this: ai makes game and all assets. Humans then replace everything with non AI things that look pretty much the same and then say it isn't an AI game.

They lied on the application and said no AI was used.

Agreed, the assets did make it to production, but were replaced in a patch 5 days later. That definitely seems like it was placeholders that just got missed. Which happens, especially for a new small studio releasing their first game.

GenAI being used for temporary placeholders is arguably a correct use case for it. Especially with a smaller development team. If you have a limited number of artists, having them spend time crafting unique placeholders that will be replaced is a poor use of their time and talents that would otherwise be spent working on final art that will actually be in the released game. That is a 100% valid use case scenario for it, as long as the assets are replaced for the launch. And missing a few and fixing that within a week is entirely understandable, not something they should be indicted for.

There is some concern about the exact wording I've seen in various articles. Some say that Sandfall told the awards that GenAI wasn't used in the development, but the articles don't use a specific quote on their side, and then later saying it was used for placeholder assets. They seem to imply that Sandfall lies about the use to qualify, then later came clean. I'm wondering if that is simply miscommunication, potentially language issues, about the final game not using GenAI. Just because people speak multiple languages, that doesn't mean that they understand nuanced differences in meaning when not using their native language. I can see the difference between the final game release and overall development being misunderstood depending on the exact wording used.

There's a quote in the text that explains it: "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."

I'm utterly indifferent both on the merits of the game (it's OK but I'm not spellbound) and genAI in development (as long as it doesn't make it into the finished product) -- just pointing out that those were the rules that Sandfall agreed to.

In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production 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.

https://www.indiegameawards.gg/faq

Because many people believe any use of gen AI is unethical due to how it was created, in addition to how the people in charge are using it.

In other words, using it in any capacity is a bad look to a lot of creatives. And other rational people who can foresee the devastating impact it’s going to have on art of all types, government, and society at large.

Especially since "later" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here given that it was literally within days.

Because there is no way to ethically use the AI we have today. I'm not saying that machine learning itself is unethical; I really enjoy machine learning, been plodding around with it for almost a decade at this point. The problem is that when you use the AI systems on the market, you're directly supporting corporations that mean you harm.

The argument that it was just used for placeholder assets doesn't really hold, because it was used at all. You could just as easily have thrown something together in paint and used that as a placeholder. When designing levels you put them together with basic building blocks, you don't need half-arsed AI generated textures for this. Using AI generated textures and whatnot increases the risk of it ending up in-game.

How can you justify charging for this?

The corporations pushing this tech are looking to strip you of rights, they are bribing government officials, they are ruining the local environment of wherever they put up their datacentres, they're increasing the risk of blackouts right in a season where more people need electricity to stay warm and healthy. They steal, they infringe on copyrights, they invade your privacy.

Like, they're actually just plain evil. Using their stuff means you're supporting evil one way or another. It doesn't make you evil, but it makes you complicit.

Because it's not a big deal, and IGA are technopuritans who can no longer be taken seriously.

It's probably more that they said that they did not use gen AI when they did, even if it was quickly patched out

Because games are about the feels. And having crudely drawn dicks doesn’t exactly make QA work easy.

Also there’s lighting, reflections etc that need that shit to be close to real.

For the same reason movies use stand-ins to adjust lights and not a can of beans, which would be more fun

I heard being a video game developer is easy and fun. Just dicking around all day, never dealing with deadlines, not having to pay a staff $200000 dollars a week with investors down your throat.

Plus they probably wouldn't have forgotten to change them before production if they were quick and bad drawings

Yes they are

like, minus all the plagarism and energy use issues.

Pretty sure that's the primary thing everyone takes issue with. If you removed that most people wouldn't have as big of a problem with it. There is still a social issue at play in terms of the potential damage generative AI can do to the job market with no real safety nets or long term consideration for the consequences to society and the economy, but most people aren't even getting that far.

Seems silly to require ALL the unit tests pass, too, cut them some slack. /s

I 100% disagree with you and people saying it has too many awards. If it deserves an award, it deserves an award.

But holy shit ai is hot condensed bad. I don't care if your argument is "but it's only the fine details of the textures", maybe pay somebody to do that for you, because there's more than enough fine details in nature and human creativity. Also, ai is essentially entirely based on stolen work, and I don't give a rat fuck bullshit ounce if 0.00000000000000000000001% of ai is completely ethically designed, trained, powered, sourced, ran, operated, invested, and gives proceeds to the starving children's fund... that shit doesn't exist, and if it actually does by some mental gymnastics loophole, it is, by far, an exception to the rule.

Fuck ai and fuck all you people with weakass moral compasses encouraging this irresponsible destructive bane upon society right now and making bad excuses and even lying about it. It doesn't have to be at all like this.

Gaming seems like a prime AI use case. Especially AI agents for varying stories.