https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-c...

> Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative AI-created assets in the game. When the first AI tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within 5 days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process.

To me, art is a form of expression from one human being to another. An indie game with interesting gameplay but AI generated assets still has value as a form of expression from the programmer. Maybe if it's successful, the programmer can afford to pay an artist to help create their next game. If we want to encourage human made art, I think we should focus on rewarding the big game studios who do this and not being so strict on the 2 or 3 person teams who might not exist without the help of AI.

(I say this knowing Clair Obscur was made by a large well respected team so if they used AI assets I think it's fair their award was stripped. I just wish The Game Awards would also consider using such a standard.)

The IGA FAQ states, in its entirety on this topic: "Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination." [1]

Sandfall probably interpreted this reasonably: no AI assets in the shipped product. They say they stripped out AI placeholders before release (and patched the ones they missed). But the IGA is reading it strictly: any use during development disqualifies.

If that's the standard, it gets interesting. DLSS and OptiX are trained neural networks in an infrastructure-shaped raincoat—ML models generating pixels that were never rendered. If you used Blender Cycles with OptiX viewport denoising while iterating on your scenes, you "developed using generative AI."

By a strict reading, any RTX-enabled development pipeline is disqualifying. I wonder if folks have fully thought this through.

[1] https://www.indiegameawards.gg/faq (under "Game Eligibility")

Doubly so if the usage was de minimis.

I think it's the artists, not the tools, that make the art. Overuse of anything is gauche; but I am confident that beautiful things can be made with almost any tool, in the hands of a tasteful artist.

Of course you could always find opinion pieces, blogs and nerdy forum comments that disliked AI; but it appears to me that hate for AI gen content is now hitting mainstream contexts, normie contexts. Feels like my grandma may soon have an opinion on this.

No idea what the implications are or even if this is actually something that's happening, but I think it's fascinating

Does TDD and LLMs have a kernel of utility in them, yeah, I don't see why not. But what the majority of people are saying doesn't seem to be true and what the minority of people I can actually see using them 'for reals' are doing just doesn't applicable to anything I care about.

With that in mind, the only thing less real to me than a tool that I have to vibe with at a social zeitgeist level to see benefits from is an award when I already have major financial and industrial success.

Half the people in my team has played the game. For months all I would hear about w.r.t. games was how this game was smashing milestones and causing the entire industry to do some soul searching or putting their fingers in their ears.

I'm sure they can console themselves from having lost this award with their piles of money.

[An LLM did help me with a cryptography api that was pretty confusing, but I still had to problem solve that one because it got a "to bytes" method wrong. So... once in a blue moon acceleration for things I'm unfamiliar with, maybe.]

Taking a scorched earth approach to AI usage is just being a luddite.

The Indie Game Awards, despite sounding similar to The Game Awards, is an unrelated organization that holds their awards the same week. They are small and this is their second year.

Putting essentially arbitrary limitation on which tools game developers are allowed to use is just nonsensical. Yes, the output of AI models can be really bad, but then a game obviously does not deserve an award. Especially for an indie game, with limited resources, AI can be a huge force multiplier. Gatekeeping awards based on these meaningless characteristics seems just very strange.

But i don't mind people using AI it's their own choice, the focus then just becomes in the curation skill of the individual, team, company etc of the generated AI output. So taking away the award is kind of weak given people enjoyed the game.

For instance, see Luddites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

I wonder if the game directors had actually made their case beforehand, they would have perhaps been let to keep the award.

That said, the AI restriction itself is hilarious. Almost all games currently being made would have programmers using copilot, would they all be disqualified for it? Where does this arbitrary line start from?

It used to be there were tons of websites, like textures.com, which curated a huge database of textures, usable by art professionals and hobbyists alike. Some of it was free, others you had to pay for, both generally speaking, it wasn't too expensive, and if you picked up 3d modeling as a hobby, you could produce pretty decent results without spending a dime.

Then came the huge companies (you know which ones) which slurped up all these websites, and turned them into these SaaS monstrosities, with f2p mechanics. Textures were no longer free, but you had to pay in 'tokens' which you got from a subscription, which pushed you into opaque pricing models, bundling subscriptions, accidental yearly signups with cancellation fees, you know the drill.

Then came AI, which is somehow fair use, and instead of having to pay for that stuff, you could ask SD to generate a tiling rock texture for you.

Is this blatant copyrightwashing? I'd argue yes. But in this case, does copyright uphold any morally supportable princible, or does it help artists get paid?

F no.

For those who might care, we use generative AI as much as possible in every way possible without compromising our vision, this includes sound, art, animation, and programming. These are often edited or entirely redone (effectively placeholders). It's part of the process, similar to using procedural art generation tools like geometry nodes in Blender or fluid sim particles generators.

And btw, both UE5 and Unity now have gen AI features (and addons) that all developers can and will use.

Few care about the mainstream game review sites or oddball game award shows as their track record is terrible (Concord reviews).

Most go by player reviews, word of mouth, and social media.

Not if it's against the rule. They got caught with skidmarks. And while the "Ackshually, those skidmarks are just placeholders"-defense may elicit a few cheap laughs, it doesn't matter if you follow the rule to its logical conclusion. Any possible deception in such cases comes on top of it. As it always has; that doesn't change just because you found a new plaything (LLMs) in the box.

If a game is well made and people enjoy it then what's the problem with utilising AI generated code or assets? What's the objective?

Looks like "regulations nitpicking". In the end it doesn't represent the players best interests.

Before we know it we will have entrusted a lot to AI and that can be both a good or a bad thing. The acceleration of development will be amazing. We could be well on our way to expand into the universe.

These awards are behind the times and risk irrelevance.

What software in 2025 is written without AI help?

Every game released recently would have AI help.

But banning using AI at all while developing the game is... obviously insane on its face. It's literally equivalent to saying "you may not use Photoshop while developing your game" or "you may not use VS Code or Zed or Cursor or Windsurf or Jetbrains while developing your game" or "you may not have a smartphone while developing your game".

those guys worked in AAA studios and they got a 10 millions budget

how "indie" is that?

More and more AAA games are going to have AI. Whether it’s AI content, AI dialogue, AI driven storytelling, or AI driven animation.

Having game of the year title stripped over some texture use is some next level petty BS.

If they want to ban AI from their show that is their perogative, but considering that every nominee probably used AI somewhere (I'd bet money on this), this feels like blatantly dishonest posturing.

Next year a lot of families will struggle to buy a needed computer for their kids' school due to some multibillion techs going all-in.

A blanket ban is the way to go on this, people trying to muddy the waters professing they just have nuanced opinions know what they are doing... it's only a horse armour pack, it doesn't affect gameplay, you don't have to use it, you won't notice if it's not there...