Big Walk developer House House has sparked a brand-new generative AI debate after revealing that it utilised LLMs "sparingly" during the final stretch of the game's development.

The revelation came in the hours following a statement from a handful of jurors participating in the Independent Games Festival awards. In the statement, it called out the "significant increase in the number of submitted games developed with generative AI tools," adding that it had "set off some fairly intense discussion and disagreement across the judge and jury pools."

The statement specifically called out AI-generated code, saying it was "not an exception," adding: "Programming is a creative discipline whose labour deserves the same respect we extend to any part of making a game. This extends to the past work used to train these models without the creators' consent."

While no game was specifically called out, as Aftermath reports, it didn't take long for word to spread that one particular title had caused so much of the debate: Big Walk, and the recent discovery that it had made use of generative AI during development.

House House's cooperative puzzler has been a huge hitter this year, striking a chord with many (myself included) and standing as a strong awards contender in what has been a relatively quiet year for videogames.

It's also developed by a team that is no stranger to taking strong stances, as evidenced by its decision to keep the game off Xbox consoles to support the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

Source link