The gaming world appeared ablaze after the Indie Game Awards announced that it was rescinding the top honors awarded to RPG darling Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 due to the use of generative AI during development. Sandfall Interactive recently sat down with a group of influencers for a private interview session, where the French studio was probed about recent AI controversies. Game director Guillaume Broche clarified some of the misinformation surrounding the studio and reiterated what other Sandfall developers have said about generative AI usage during interviews held earlier in the year.
Transcription of the Q&A comes courtesy of gaming content creator Sushi, who was one of the handful of influencers who were present at the session. Twitch streamer crizco prefaced his question by recounting the storm surrounding Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios’ admission about using generative AI during game development.
I see no issues here. These AI tools came out during the game’s development. Its not unreasonable to try using new tools upon release. And its reasonable to be unaware of the harms of these new tools before the harms are widely reported on.
If things were as described, this seems fine. They now have a clear policy against AI. People, even in groups can be mistaken and learn and change their ways, which is what appears to have happened here. I can’t fault anyone for making the occasional misstep.
So long as they stick to their commitment to not use AI.
Not only is AI bad it is also bad —
Look I’ve seen the hours those studios and devs put into design… If they want to prototype using a tool? Nobody’s losing a job over that. Its a couple hours saved from doom scrolling though your existing assets looking for something temporary.
Yeah, it slipped out though the cracks. But then how many games are loaded with “Unintended Easter eggs” because people are human. I don’t get it. The event is no more novel than finding an untextured brick off the beaten trail or a picture of a dev left in following an in joke amongst the team.
Those poor artists, its actually a good thing they have AI now, isn’t it?
No artist gets paid to create placeholder art during development. They get paid for the final art pieces that are used in the game itself. No actual AI art was used in the final game except for a few accidentally included bits that were not correctly replaced with the final art and that issue was corrected. No artists were harmed in the making of this game.
I guess I’ll just take your word for it then.
Any projects i have been on, if i need quick placeholder i take it from some existing library that is filled with free to use textures or i create some bullshit texture name temp.png or removethis_brown.jpg and some real artist comes and makes the final one somewhere down the line, 10-1000 hours later.
I have hard time understanding how creating the temporary texture that is never meant to be seen by end user is different when using generative tool versus paint. Especially when no artist looses their pay check or their spot in the credits.
However I do take offence if somebody uses ai to replace writer, designer, voice actor, or artist of any kind in the final product.
If it doesnt matter then dont use AI for placeholders. What’s the argument here for them?
If its nicer and faster why would somebody not use it?
Because the people they want to sell their game to have overwhelmingly stated they don’t want this new generation of AI technologies used when creating art. Its sorta like arguing that using corn syrup is cheaper and quicker than sugar or honey, so why not use it? Things aren’t so simple as “nicer” and “faster”, and only a small subset of people seem in favor of AI technologies used creatively.
Of course if you are making art for yourself, by yourself, then who cares what you use for anything.