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.
So if I’m reading it right they basically just tried it out and then decided to not use it, removing anything that used it? I can see how technically that it ‘was used at all in development’, but also seems a lil silly to pull the awards based on it.
They probably should have clarified how they used it a lot earlier, but I also don’t blame them for trying out a new tool.
The game was released with AI assets. The rules required disclosure, and they failed to properly disclose. Whether this was on purpose or by accident, they were disqualified quite fairly. It’s a shame, but fairness must apply equally to all studios.
This is where I am confused. I hear this, but I also keep hearing they used AI to create assets when it was first started development as placeholders for future assets. They were all replaced long before the game was ever released. I also heard that the assets used were stock unreal 5 assets which were AI generated but again replaced later long before the game released. So which is the real story?
They used them as placeholders, they may or may not have been stock ue5 assets, which is another problem altogether. But a few of them were left in game at release, presumably by accident since they were removed 5 days post launch. The game did release with AI assets, even if mistakenly.
Given the test, release and publishing timelines, the 5 days patch was already being actively worked on before the game was released. Had it be a few positions higher on the backlog, nobody would have known.
If this is against Indie GA, then for sure drop the award, but that makes me value less the IGA than the game.
The AI assets were only patched out at day 5 because fans noticed them. The devs likely rolled it into that patch because of the fans catching it in the live game.
The issue at hand, as the article above goes into, is that the devs said that they used no AI at all in developement, which is a condition of the award. They did however, as these assets and the devs themselves comfirmed in various interviews. They lied or at least misled the Indie game awards and violated its conditions.
Revoking the award seems like a pretty reasonable response on the IGA’s part. The game itself can still be a masterpiece, but not one eligble for this award.
It was released with the original placeholder AI assets, but patched out within 5 days. It’s pretty clear that they just missed replacing those assets prior to release.
I don’t know exactly which assets, or exactly how many… but from several article it seems one of them was a newspaper only used in the prologue, that no one would notice without directly looking at it up close, which 99.9% of people would never do, and could easily be overlooked doing final testing for game breaking issues prior to release.
And the failure to properly disclose could easily be explained by them messing around. Early in development, deciding not to use AI, and then forgetting about it. Which also explains it being left in for release accidentally. Updated assets were clearly made, just never replaced.
The disqualification had nothing to do with the assets being there for the release, it was solely about development as mentioned in every statement from the awards. Meaning even if it hadn’t been there at release, they still would have been disqualified. Hard criteria like that which disqualifies any sort of context or consideration is not fair. Especially when we’re talking about cutting edge technologies that teams will obviously be experimenting with before making decisions.
They used it to create placeholders during development. It wasn’t something they decided not to use before. It’s just something that was meant to be replaced. Usually these placeholders are a missing texture image or just a magenta texture, but they used generative AI to create something that fit into the world. Because it fit they forgot to replace it.
Honestly, I’m not opposed to this usage. It’s not like it’s replacing an artist. No one was going to create a placeholder to be replaced. However, it is obvious to see that occasionally you’ll forget to replace items with this technique, like we saw here. The old style of incredibly obvious placeholders were used for a reason; so that you can’t forget to replace them. It’s probably smart to keep doing this.
I agree with almost everything here, I think using LLMs to generate placeholders is fair game and allows studios to nail down the feeling of the game sooner. That being said there’s one thing I disagree:
However, it is obvious to see that occasionally you’ll forget to replace items with this technique
There are ways to ensure you don’t forget, things like naming your placeholders placeholder_<name> or whatever so you ensure there are no more placeholders when you make the final build. That is the best way to approach this because even extremely obvious placeholders might be missed otherwise, since even if you have a full QA team they won’t be playing every little scene from the game daily looking for that, and a few blank/pink/checkered textures on small or weird areas might be missed.
I think it’s okay for studios to use generative AI for placeholders, but if one of them makes it to the release you screwed up big time. And like I said there are ways to ensure you don’t, it’s trivial to make a plugin for any of the major engines (and should be even easier if you’re building the engine yourself) where it would alert you of placeholders in use at compile time.
I don’t disagree that there are ways to add protections. It’d require strict compliance still though or things could fall through the cracks. Even when using the classic placeholders things have been missed on occasion. The only 100% reliable way to avoid shipping any generative AI content is to never include it in the project.
Again, I don’t think the usage here was bad. I think the reaction to one piece of generative AI art, which was replaced within a week, has been too severe. I’m just saying that if you really want to make sure you don’t ship any of it, just don’t ever include any. The old methods were perfectly fine, even if they made development look less pretty.
And they lied about it on the award application, but yes.
i can see how this would happen though: marketing team simplistically asks about AI assets, dev team says no because it’s not in the final product that they’re aware of, and that miscommunication is exactly that: neither team is trying to be dishonest, it’s just that some information got lost along the way
their award should have been rescinded for sure
but also that shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of the studio going forward as long as they apologise and it was legitimately internal miscommunication rather than an attempt to deceive
But did you consider “ai bad” and “nuance is stupid, ai bad?”
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.
Want to mention that I really appreciate this reasonable, nuanced perspective of the situation that takes pains to see the humanity in the devs, that they are humans who make mistakes, and not ascribe malice to what can easily be ignorance.
The benefit of the doubt is lost in modern day and it’s nice to see it still being given.
Yeah this is something that keeps getting completely lost in this conversation.
The assets in question were from development during 2022-2023 at the latest. GenAI image tools at that time were extremely primitive compared to what’s out there now - remember DallE-Mini? That’s the kind of thing they were using. And because these tools hadn’t breached containment yet, literally no one was talking about ethical issues yet. Sandfall was basically just experimenting with brand new tech long before it was “good” and long before anyone was talking about it.
Now? It’s good to see them committed to avoiding it. GenAI is a plague and should be treated as such. But 2022-ish was totally different than today.
I hate AI with a passion. A burning passion. And there is some muddied reporting and stuff with how the Clair Obscure team handled the use of AI but ultimately it does look to be an innocent use.
It does start a slippery slope argument, but I don’t see much wrong with using AI generated textures or models if they are truly truly 100% meant to be replaced by the product ship date. There are many video games that start out with stolen ripped assets as placeholders because it’s a whole lot easier to throw in completed assets that work right now so you can get to your iterative phase of game development a lot sooner.
During game development, there is a lot of wasted effort you need to try to avoid. A game is not fully complete when it is planned out. When you start video game development, you don’t know where you’re going to end. If you do not approach the iterative process of game design carefully, you will end up wasting tons of effort and artist time just for things and features and levels that will never see the final release.
Tldr; I don’t see a big problem with using AI as placeholders but you better fucking be honest about it and they better actually be placeholders
I think the issue is, that they didn’t remove all the assets in the version they submitted for the award. Yes, the assets were later removed, but the version that was used for the awards still had those assets.
I agree with your argument as a whole, but it doesn’t really apply here. There wouldn’t have been an issue if they had indeed replaced the assets with real art in time.
yeah i don’t even think the dishonesty was necessarily dishonesty… i just think perhaps the marketing team wasn’t fully informed. i can absolutely see dev teams saying no to “AI use” not having been told that the question applied to the whole dev process, and marketing not understanding that that information was important
i have no problem with AI placeholders. i think that’s the right way to use AI… and dishonesty is a problem… miscommunication is really not a problem
but i also think that rescinding the award is the right call! but that shouldn’t tarnish the studios reputation in the future if they apologise and explain what happened
The problem with using AI textures is that at a glance they look like the real thing. So it’s not always easy for QA to spot that a texture hasn’t been swapped out. The thing is it’s also super easy to deal with that, you just put all the AI textures in a
temporaryfolder and then when you think you already to ship the game, delete that folder and see if you get any bright purple broken textures showing up.Most game engines will let you set the missing texture to be something truly awful and very obvious.
Don’t even need to do that. With a visual spot check there is still a chance some things fall trough the cracks. Even a bright pink asset. Better to tag assets as a placeholder in the metadata and then let an automated validation process find the placeholders in the levels. And you can even configure it to run the validation process during a build so it will halt the build when it finds placeholders.
that’s absolutely true, and i’m sure that as tooling and workflow gets better these solutions will become standard. for the moment it’s all pretty haphazard, and i just don’t think it’s necessarily malicious intent or lying exactly… i think it could have easily been just miscommunication and/or legitimate mistake
afaik there were 2 issues here: there was a placeholder asset left in the game upon release, and the rules of the award were no AI assets during development either. i think the first can be easily explained by it being accidental (they replaced the texture very quickly) and the second can easily be explained by miscommunication between teams
Would have been fine if they’d been up-front about it. Some people still wouldn’t like it, but some people wouldn’t play a game made by French devs. Maybe. I dunno. People are free to have preferences, even if we think they’re weird or don’t agree with them. I think Clair Obscur had a ton of great ideas. Game really wasn’t for me, but I respect the hell out of it. It’s a shame about the genAI. Nice that they’re committing to avoid AI, but they really just need to be honest about what you’re getting. I think if they told people what the AI was used for, it would have gone over better.
They lied or misstated during their submission.
We will never know what would have happened if they had been open and honest.
Depends on the exact scenario.
We’re also dealing with language differences. English is not the developer’s first language. What may seem a clear sentence to a native speaker, could be easily misinterpreted/mistranslated to something similar, but different enough that the answer changes.
It seems that the AI use was early in development, and limited to temporary placeholders that were going to be replaced. Since they were patched out within days of release, that seems to imply they already had replacement assets on hand, they were just missed during final checks before release.
The answer from the devs also changed prior to the awards show that implies that they may have had an updated interpretation of the qualification question or answer. If they thought the question was about AI use in the final product, then accidentally missing a placeholder swap shouldn’t be disqualifying. Likewise, early experimentation with the tech and then deciding not to use it probably should not disqualify either. But if the qualification is a hard yes/no with absolutely no context or consideration whatsoever, then that’s a different outcome, and hence them clarifying for the awards team.
Personally I think the hard limit without any room for consideration or interpretation is a shit qualification. Especially considering that isn’t really the case for most awards. Look at the definition of “indie” for example. There’s a half dozen different interpretations people have ranging from having to be self published, avoiding just large publishers, or just the publisher not having creative influence. That’s a lot of interpretation comparatively.
Seems like an overreaction. Oh well.
No AI in video games, period. We’ve learned when we draw the line the major players push at it until they get what they want. AI benefits the wealthy, no one else. AI data centers are a blight on communities.
But maybe if I use AI I can be wealthy. Sure it is accelerating climate change and will undoubtedly cost lives, but that is a small price to pay for me to horde money like a dragon.
I don’t think the typical person knows how destructive AI is to many things much less effects on local communities where they put data centers.
That’s a pretty reductive take. I consider auto-formatting a form of AI because that’s a function that I ask ChatGPT to do. “Reformat the code” “tidy it up.” But I’m assuming even that is bad to you because ChatGPT was involved. The level of “AI” that the Claire devs used seemed to be on the same level as what I just described. A tool to help get the ball moving but not be the sole engine of the project.
Also, you don’t need to use LLMs from companies like OpenAI or Google, you can just run your own LLM.
We’ve seen this before with horse armor and gambling in video games. If you allow a little they are going to take a mile with it. That point I don’t consider it art anymore. AI is not art.
But I’m assuming even that is bad to you because ChatGPT was involved.
I think it’s bad because it’s a waste of power, unreliable, and would be much slower than an actual deterministic code formatters that already exist.
It’s good to have morals, but also to have realistic expectations.
We haven’t been able to stop dlc, micro transaction, gambling… I don’t think we would be able to stop AI in videogames.
I have the suspicion that all these quick and fast remakes in HD are pulling AI assets as crazy to be able to have results quickly and cheap.
Going too hard with these devs, which doesn’t seem like bad people won’t ever change what EA. Ubisoft, Nintendo or any big player will do. It would only hurt this small studio for nothing.
If that’s the case I’ll find another hobby. I’m tired of compromising myself because well they get away with it. AI Bros can blow me.
You do you. I’ve been decades doing political activism. I just advice to keep expectations checked because I’ve seen so many people burning themselves out of not being able to achieve unrealistic political goals, and, what’s worse, ending up picking on small innocent people because they are the only ones they can impose their will on.
It’s good to keep making people conscious of the dangers of AI. But knowing what is expected, for yourself, and trying not to target people won’t deserve being targeted our of misdirected anger.
My best approach is taking a constructive approach. Do something by hand myself and enjoying it.
You’re talking to me like I haven’t been through decades of disappointment and in other areas. Me cutting things off is the last straw and thing I can readily do. Be it someone who says “welfare queens should die” to AI used for media. I know you cannot rightfully get away from supporting Amazon or that you have a choice of a soulless, big box store to buy at anymore. Just because I have to do so to maintain my ability to live doesn’t mean I won’t try to inform others about it and get them on my side. I’m just less patient with supreme levels of bullshit anymore.
You‘ll need some AI so NPCs don’t just idle around.
This controversy is going to look so dumb in 5 years
(when, for example, UE6 has been partly coded using AI)
UE6 doesn’t exist, it’s ‘UE for Fortnite’ now.
it was dumb from the getgo
That’s like claiming that because we invented steam engines and automated production lines there won’t be any handmade products ever made.
Turns out not only there are, many people go out of their way to support the people making them rather than purchasing the automated one.
I won’t buy AI products. And if it’s ever ambiguous to me if you used it, I’m not buying.
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This isn’t about code!
Yeah it’s about ethics in video game awarding
good!
“Will”
lol
The people still defending them is sad. If you give them even a single pass, they will take it for granted. Be glad atleast someone is trying to set a precedent.
Also this game has to be the most polarising one this year. People that played it love it to death and the other well on a lot of social media are now hating it to death(they’re probably salty because of the game awards).
The downvoted prove it
Isn’t ai pretty decent as a coding assistant? Don’t understand what all this fuss is about. I wouldn’t be using Linux if I didn’t have ai to assist me with coding
What does using Linux and AI coding have to do with each other
I don’t know about y’all but I found Linux uses terminal a bunch and I don’t understand the language.
Using a Linux terminal and coding are extremely different things.
I mean if he was saving each one liner in a file and running them from the terminal there wouldn’t be confusion
I mean, as someone who is not tech savvy at all, I think it’s fair to label the Linux commands as coding from a layman’s perspective?
Think this is mostly related to art
Yea if I read it from that perspective I can see what they mean.
I played the game very shortly after release and I read all the newspapers. There was a lot of storytelling going on in them and they definitely weren’t this. Was some prerelease build or placeholder texture? Because if so, this controversy is pedantic, puritanical, witch-hunting garbage, and I say that as someone who is violently anti-AI.
Afaik, they patched it 5 days after release, so depends on how shortly after release you played.
Placeholder textures that got taken out a few days after release. Also I agree with you as well.
That’s exactly what I would expect AI would say.
