Do Gamers Hate AI? Indie Game Awards Disqualifies 'Clair Obscur' Over GenAI Usage

'Perhaps no group of fans, industry workers, and consumers is more intense about AI use than gamers....' writes New York magazine's 'Intelligencer' column:

Just this month, the latest Postal game was axed by its publisher, which was 'overwhelmed with negative responses'
from the 'concerned Postal community' after fans spotted
AI-generated material in the game's trailer. The developers of Arc
Raiders were accused
of using AI instead of voice actors, leading to calls for boycotts,
while the developers of the Call of Duty franchise were
called out for AI-generated assets that players found strewn across
Black Ops 7.Games that weren't developed with
generative AI are getting caught
up in accusations anyway, while workers at Electronic Arts are
going
to the press to describe pressure from bosses to adopt AI tools.
Nintendo has sworn off using generative AI, as has the company behind
the Cyberpunk series. Valve, the company that operates
Steam, now requires AI disclosures on listed games and surveys
all submitters. Perhaps sensing the emergence of a new
constituency, California congressman Ro Khanna responded in November
to the Call of Duty backlash:'We need
regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to
extract greater profits,' he posted
on X....

AI is often seen as a tool for managers to extract more productivity and justify
layoffs. Among players, it can foster a sense that gamers are being
tricked or ripped off, while also dovetailing with more general
objections to generative AI. It can sometimes be hard to tell whether
gamer backlash is a bellwether or an outlier, an early signal from our youngest major creative industry or a localized and unique fit of rage. The sheer number of
incidents here suggests the former, which foretells bitter, messy,
and confusing fights to come in entertainment beyond gaming — where,
notably, technologies referred to as 'AI' have previously been
embraced with open arms.

And now 'the price of the sort of memory PC gamers most want to buy has skyrocketed' (per Tom's Hardware). 'The rush to build data centers is making it much more expensive to game. Nobody's going to be happy about that.'

Insider Gaming shares another example of anti-AI sentiment in the gaming industry:

The Indie Game Awards took place on December 18, and, as many could assume, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took home the awards for Game of the Year and Debut Game. However, things have changed and The Indie Game Awards are making a big decision to strip the Clair Obscur and developer Sandfall Interactive of their awards over the use of gen AI in the game.

In an announcement made on Saturday afternoon, Six One Indie, the creators of the show, said that it's removal comes after the discovery after voting was done, and the show was recorded. 'The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself,' the statement reads. 'When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.


Polygon notes the award-stripping is 'due to inclusion of generative AI assets at launch that were quickly patched out.'

Quotes from earlier in the year from Sandfall Interactive's FranÃois Meurisse made the rounds on social media last week amid a news cycle caught up in the use of generative AI in games... In June, the Spanish outlet El País published a story including an interview conducted around Clair Obscur's launch, in which Meurisse admitted that Sandfall used a minimal amount generative AI in some form during the game's development... 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.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.