Clair Obscur won multiple awards but used generative AI art as placeholders during production.
The Indie Game Awards revoked Clair Obscur’s Debut and Game of the Year after the AI disclosure.
IGAs reassigned the awards (Blue Prince, Sorry We’re Closed) and reignited debate on gen-AI use.
So Clair Obscur, the game that absolutely won game of the year, lost due to a technicality.
The generative AI use everyone is pearl clutching about would be textures. As in things that have been procedurally generated (you don’t actually care what they look like, they are just there to smooth out wrinkles) for years.
As someone who hates AI, this is just fucking stupid. Like, you are a virtue signaling luddite if you believe that this usage of AI tarnishes the rest of the fucking game.
Not even that. It was placeholder textures, only the “newspaper clippings” of which was forgotten to be removed from the final game and was fixed in an update shortly after launch.
None of it was ever intended to be used in the final product and was just there as lorum ipsum equivalent shit.
Maybe this will be a warning to other game companies not to use AI assets at all.
If anything it’s probably incentive to lie about AI usage. They got more publicity for being snubbed than winning.
People keep saying the problem ‘wasnt that they used AI placeholder assets, it’s that they lied on the disclosure’, but boy does that still seem like a reach
When you have dozens of people working on a huge creative project, it would take an almost omniscient creative director to know where every asset in every scene came from with certainty. It isn’t hard to imagine a designer somewhere on the team sneaking an AI asset into a pre-release build and forgetting about it. The fact that it was later disclosed suggests that whoever was applying for the award wasn’t aware of that asset being used and then replaced at the time of submission.
I dont mind having some awards dedicated to genAI-free works, but people really need to stop getting their pitchforks out at every mention, otherwise they risk turning into a lynch mob. This doesnt sound like an intentional omission to me.
I don’t know where you got the idea that they just didn’t know. They were DQ’d because they DID KNOW there was AI used.
I’m still not arguing against their disqualification, I’m saying people need to lay off the sauce - it’s not hard to imagine how this could have been accidental and not malicious.
We don’t need to torch an effigy every time a studio mentions AI in an interview.
No one is claiming that it’s malicious that I’m aware of.
“They lied” implies intent to deceive.
I am inclined to agree except it wasn’t intentionally later disclosed. From my understanding, they gave an interview and mentioned it briefly. If they did end up disclosing it to the awards, it wasn’t until the day that they were announced as the winner. That’s kind of icky.
But I do agree with you that whoever spoke to the award committee probably didn’t even know about it.
Still, there’s a lot of room there for some grace. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to strip them of the award, but the level of outrage I’m seeing in this thread and elsewhere isn’t proportionate to the offense.
People really need to chill with this.
Over placeholders? Jesus.
I at least understand it if they were actual final assets. Is the worry that they weren’t really placeholders?
Next up, if you used photoshop you’re out because it has AI features that you might have used.
To be clear, the game released with the AI “placeholders” in the game, and only replaced them later.
Kind of defeats the purpose of a placeholder…
The worry is they didn’t want to be yet another award for E33 and this generates controversy, and therefore views.
How many people are talking about IGA who otherwise would not.
I am for starters. You too probably.
Off topic, but this is why I love Lemmy; Look at this comment section. Many people here have a logical stance, either for or against the genAI use. Both sides are making good points. Reading through the article alongside the comments, my opinion was really teetering. It’s nice to be able to come in with an open mind and be challenged like this.
But fr tho I agree. Sure, there are sole knobheads who clearly haven’t read the article, but the disparity between what you see here and the r-place is wonderful
I suppose this is a warning to any companies who were thinking about disclosing their uses of AI for placeholders
If it’s a placeholder, why does it even need to be generated? Make it a big square that just says “Gustave” on it until you figure out what he should look like. It’s not like placeholder content is meant to be seen outside of development.
When artists arent available a rendered placeholder would give a more appropriate proof of concept than blank textures with text on them.
I’m not a game dev, so I can’t really answer your question. My comment was only pointing out that this might discourage other studios from disclosing their use of AI during development.
From what I’ve heard, the placeholders came from some stock Unreal engine textures they used and forgot to replace.
…no they came from genAI?
They’re genAI assets within the engine’s default ones.
You still have to tell UE to make them though
I hate when people try to shift the goalposts
These guys didn’t disclose the usage of AI when initially sold as well as for the award, and there’s nothing more to it than that
There’s still not even a disclaimer on the steam store page or anything
I don’t really care about game awards but it does seem like some retroactive application of opinion on genAI if they used it in 2022. There was a very different landscape and general opinion on genAI in 2022, (nonone really knew or cared.) I suspect the award show made the rule about genAI after 2022.
Either way, happy to see more press about good games, be it C33 or Blue Prince.
I don’t know anything about this game.
I also know that game awards are a bunch of bullshit so I don’t give a fuck.
Also, I noticed this game is on my wishlist. Huh.
Given the Lemmy view on AI, I wonder how many folks are now uninstalling the game and demanding a refund because it’s suddenly transformed into “AI slop”? Or demanding it be delisted from Steam since they didn’t disclose their use of AI on Steam?
I’m not going to uninstall or demand a refund, but I fully support the Indie Game Awards decision on this and will not refer to CO:E33 as a winner of any of the Indie Game Awards. I will still call it IMO the best JRPG in many years, but I thought that before it started receiving awards.
I hope this event serves to scare game studios of all sizes from the mere appearance of using AI at ANY scale or part of the process. Hell, I hope it causes the whole damn bubble to burst, but it’s just not that important.
Why do you care so much about some stupid “awards show”? Fuck that.
I liked Blue Prince but I don’t think it’s anywhere close to “Game of the Year” material.
Wait until they find out some indie games will use copyrighted placeholders…
It’s still game of the year in my heart.
Congrats to the new winners for winning on a technicality.
… the best kind of correct.
Are the new winners listed of the Indie Game Awards site?
strange stance for ai use. creating placeholders for production use only seems like a dull and tedious job to me that should have been automatized yesterday.
