I mean, I hate Gen AI quite strongly, but if we're gonna get technical, DLSS is a form of AI which would mean like 95% of Switch 2 games would be deemed ineligible forevermore.

If you're firing all your texture artists or refusing to hire real voice actors so you can use AI slop instead that's obviously garbage behaviour, but if Clair Obscur just used it for placeholders that didn't even make it into the final game then that's hardly a cardinal sin.

There was a placeholder texture and it got replaced days (not even a week) after the release. I don't understand while people are so up in arms about it. If you played Clair Obscur it is pretty clear that human emotions and human creativity made the game. The discussion around the AI use is ridiculous.

I wouldn't even be sure Silksong, Hades 2 and DS2 are free of AI use. Sandfall just was transparent about it. Nobody would know if these other games used AI in concept phase or as placeholders that got replaced before release, if they don't say it. For Clair Obscur just a placeholder made it through QA and was replaced days later.

All this discussion about it makes me think that in the future studios just will not disclose their use of AI to avoid the hot water that Sandfall and Larian got into. I don't think that is actually better.

Given also how much AI already is in all the development tools and a lot of art assets you purchase, I would say it is incredibly hard to be AI free for future games anyway, you would have to put a lot of effort into making sure that all your sources and tools didn't use it. I say going forward all but very small indies which are not using standard tools or assets will be at some place be made with the use of AI.

And also to bring it back to the original object: anyone playing Clair Obscur and telling me it is not the product of human emotion and human creativity is unreal. It is clear this game was not made by AI.

As pathetic as the people who can't program and use tools made by actual programmers or AI to create their game code? People have different abilities and games need a lot of them. With evolving tools more and more people are able to create their vision of a game, which is the reason for the indie explosion of the last years. Why gatekeeping the creation of games? You still can decide not to play them, because of the way they are made or just simply because you don't like them. But we shouldn't keep people from making the games they want.

Well, see, there is the difference. Satya Nadella uses AI as an argument to fire actual people from the company. But also real people can use AI to empower themself to achieve something they couldn't without. And despite what you say it is not about art alone, many artist are empowered by AI to make up for their weaknesses in coding. I am all for empowering people to achieve their dream game (or dreams in general). I am against using it (or any other technology) to fire people. But an indie solo dev using AI to be able to make a game in the first place, this is nothing I am mad about.

One day left to vote! Don’t miss out!

Xenoblade Chronicles X DE was my game of the year.

Voted. If Death Stranding 2 doesn't win best art direction It'll be cause people don't understand the category and if Troy Baker doesn't win best support people are stupid. Regardless, Clair Obscure fore everything except best art direction where I think Death Stranding 2 excels. I only boted to vote for Troy Baker putting Hollywood actors to shame.