tldr: they said during the application process that no gen ai was used. Since they lied, the Indie Game Awards pulled their GOTY
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched with what some suspected to be AI-generated textures that, as it clarified to El País, were then replaced with custom assets in a swift patch five days after release.
Fuck using Gen AI to replace human-made art, and fair enough for pulling the award, but I do think it’s worth making it clear exactly how much of the art is/was AI. And the answer is, very little at launch and none currently.
I think the issue is much more that they lied on the application
This is most of it, but it is worth remembering that using GenAI/LLMs for placeholders is still bad. It’s strictly unnecessary, has dubious efficiency gains at best, and you’re still using tech that is provably hurting people and the environment en masse.
I’m not going to hate Sandfall forever for this – it’s not original sin – but it’s still a very real error they should not repeat.
Agreed, it’s still one of my favorite games this year. Any placeholder that isn’t an obvious placeholder has a chance to make it though
What a mistake. Best game is best game. A few background assets that were replaced days after launch.
Expedition 33 is definitely a good game. I’m sure the Indie Game Awards judges would still heartily agree with you on that, too. None of that has anything to do with lying about GenAI use on a disclosure form for an awards show that specifically forbids GenAI use.
I get that you love the game and by extension the studio, but this was still a mistake on their part. They broke the rules, they lose the award. Letting them cheat this would’ve seriously undermined the integrity of the IGA, not to mention further enabling the use of AI in game dev.
I can see what you mean, it could’ve easily slipped through the cracks. I feel like the Indie Game Awards (much smaller than the regular Game Awards) had to do it on principle since genai is a disqualification
Yeah this is kind of a hard thing to have an opinion on. On one hand I want people in that industry employed and getting to do the job that has turned out to be pretty elusive and arduous to pursue. On the other I really appreciate the art that got made even when time was saved on making some assets.
But where does it lead? Where’s the line drawn between having the machine make some grass and rocks and having it do work a person should have done? First I thought it was okay but now I don’t know how much of a door opener or a gatekeeper these tools will be going forward
The best argument against it I’ve seen is “why should I care about the thing you didn’t care enough to put the work in yourself”
Which is also why I support using assets. You still have to find things that match what you need, but the human isn’t left out of the process.
Also that the unethically trained llms are an abuse of social contract for profit
Yeah I guess that’s my biggest hangup too, the training process I mean. It’s hard to examine the datasets and be certain this wasn’t stolen from somebody who won’t be getting paid or if it’s being operated from a facility that’s actively siphoning water from a drought affected community.
But I want artists to have tools to pursue the desired scope of their project. But I don’t want scope inflation to be incentivized by a tool that business people are proving to be impossible to not see as an infinite money glitch. And that lawmakers are refusing to regulate
The generated assets in e33 were minor and patched out so the project could’ve been made without them. This gives me hope for their future projects, they seem to know how to manage a decently sized team and had a fitting scope for their resources.
Good discussion! The audience clearly doesn’t like or trust the tech so the risk of backlash will hopefully scare off publishers and investors, the sooner the bubble pops the better.
Meh. Gotta throw a bone to the other games this year I guess
GOTY not going to the only game to break the store or payment processor of steam, Xbox, psn, and Nintendo already made the whole thing seem silly
E33 wasn’t advertised, it was a slow burn of purchases.
Do we know their sales figures?
Server load is not a great indicator of how good a game is.
Silksong is an excellent game but it’s absolutely not in the same league. COE33 is a much more sophisticated game with deeper story and advanced artwork.
Silksong was 1/3 the price so they could sell many more copies, and COE33 didn’t have nearly the same hype on launch. None of that makes Silksong a better game.
IMHO fart sniffing pick and the only person I know who will play it is a persona fan.
The description and trailers don’t seem revolutionary or mind blowing. Just a pretty turn based with a story that EA or Ubisoft didn’t half ass. BF6 just went on sale for $40 from $70 and is the best selling game of the year.
The whole thing feels very token and fake
So, from the way you talk about it, it seems you’re describing your feelings about the game moreso than an attempt at an objective take. Which is good, because there is no such thing as an objective take, and I definitely understand the perspective of not liking something that you feel is inexplicably ultra-popular. Especially if you feel that there was something you liked more that you’d rather see get the award.
That said, I do wonder how much you’ve seen of the game? Because I haven’t played it either, but everything I’ve seen strongly suggests that it is a genuine work of art that people put effort and passion into. Which – since you brought it up – is not a description I’d apply to Battlefield 6. So I’m kinda left wondering what specifically about it might put you off enough to want to slag it off like this.
If you’re upset at it for winning a billion awards, that’s fair. Most awards shows are always very silly and this one game getting practically showered honestly highlights that a lot — even a really good game like this probably didn’t deserve quite this many accolades. Still though, it looks to have a clear message, purpose, with good art and gameplay to go along. I think that deserves some awards.
So you didn’t play it, and yet your opinion is more important that that of those who did. Got it.
And never will. The total selling point is “a deep story” and but I haven’t heard single specific that sounds deep or even interesting.
You come off like the kid who insisted I play Persona. It’s not that deep, try some more adult media. We have a guy here on Lemmy who highly recommends A Brave New World 🥲
Seems like you really just don’t like Persona.
This isn’t Persona.
As far as I understand it, the comparisons pretty much end at the combat system / gameplay mechanics.
Without giving away too much, you have a world where, every year, everybody of a certain age is erased. Every year, those with one year left to live set out to try and stop that from happening - and for ~77 years, none of them have returned.
This sets the stage for exploration of grief, loss, and associated trauma. In most games, there’s death everywhere but the emotional side is relegated to a 3 minute scene with sad piano music before the characters get back to the action. In this game, they drill a lot deeper and it really makes the characters come alive.
They’ve nailed the blend of sadness, joy, and even comedy.
This is all then set in a backdrop of some of the most visually interesting environments ever presented in a videogame with a completely insane musical score that brings all of those moments to life, the game is effectively a frisson machine.
Sounds like a good TV series. But doing a turn based game with a good story is like a musical movie with a good story.
I’ll never play it or Baldurs, spoil away. It’s the gameplay I find so boring and immersion breaking.
I’ll add to the other comment for anyone else that’s actually open to new things, because I traditionally don’t like turn based games:
The combat is excellent and the enemies are varied. Party members have fun synergies with both your team and the enemies, and the Pictos system adds a ton of flexibility for each character. You can have some crazy setups, at one point I gave a character the explosive death + instant-death perk which let me skip a lot of the easy battles later on.
Plus there is a parrying mechanic that is challenging and rewarding!
e33 is a fantastic game and is well worth your time
I’ll never play it and miss nothing. Just like Persona.
lol
It’s game of the year, not hype of the year
It’s a turn based.
So are chess, Magic The Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons. What’s your point?
Chess has staying power. D&D might. Magic has less staying power than Pokémon. I wolnt even remember hearing about expedition 33 in 5 years
Magic has less staying power than Pokémon.
Nobody even plays the Pokemon TCG. Well, I guess a couple dozen people might, but that’s about it.
The video games are basically the same game repackaged over and over again. No disrespect to people who like Pokemon of course, but the Pokemon Company could do a lot more than they do now. But it has stuck around because people really like the brand for some reason.
MTG, on the other hand, is shitting itself currently, but the core gameplay has evolved over 30+ years into the framework for a very detailed game with countless possible interactions. There are dozens of actively played formats for the game, and despite WOTC’s best attempts, will not be dying anytime soon.
E33 is not even in the same category as those games. To begin with, it’s a single game, not a whole franchise. It seems a bit unfair to compare it to those games in terms of staying power. Regarding gameplay, E33 is far more interesting than Pokemon. It doesn’t have the same depth as MTG or D&D, but MTG’s comprehensive rules is a PDF with around 300 pages, and D&D has entire rulebooks. E33 is far easier for people to learn than those two games as a result.
Chess, uh, is not a very popular game. People play it of course, but it stuck around because of its history. Also, the demographic of people playing video games regularly and classic board games regularly doesn’t have a huge amount of overlap.
despite WOTC’s best attempts
For sure. I mean, they sent the Pinkertons on someone that got shipped product early. That they purchased.
Magic has less staying power than Pokémon
lol, Magic came out 3 years before Pokémon and is currently more popular than ever. Especially with the Avatar TLAB and Final Fantasy releases.
Just because you don’t like a mechanic doesn’t mean it won’t last. Hell, Civilization is one of the most popular video game franchises of all time
Agreed. As much as I don’t care about Silksong either way, having “so many people wanted me, I broke the storefront” on your resume has to count for something.
The fact that Silksong did that is insane to me, there was so much hype
