Several jurors of the Independent Games Festival (IGF) have published a statement saying they will not vote for games using generative AI “in any capacity”. Shortly after, the studio behind the independent game Big Walk issued a statement acknowledging having used AI “sparingly”.
According to this statement, a copy of which was published by Austin Walker, the works submitted to the IGF this year are “incredible”, but the number of games “developed with generative AI tools” has seen “a significant increase”. This development has sparked “pretty intense discussions and disagreements”, with no “universal consensus”. The text lists several convictions: generative AI has “negative effects”, AI-produced code is “not an exception to this harm”, and the use of these tools is “not a foregone conclusion” in the industry.
Among the signatory jurors are Sam Barlow, creator of Telling Lies and Immortality, and Lena Raine, composer for Celeste. The jurors specify that this text does not speak on behalf of the IGF as an organization, nor on behalf of all jury members. Some expressed concern about being able to sign without facing professional repercussions.
The case of Big Walk
The game cited as the subject of controversy is, according to the source, Big Walk, a cooperative adventure game from studio House House, developer of Untitled Goose Game. In a statement sent to the site Aftermath and published on the game’s website, the studio states that “in some cases, snippets of LLM responses were copied as a starting point to be modified into game code”. It estimates that “significantly less than 0.1%” of Big Walk’s code is affected, and claims that generative AI was not used in any other context. An LLM, or large language model, is a program capable of producing and rephrasing text, including code.
House House specifies that its primary use was to “research, via chatbots, problems encountered with third-party code”. The studio cites in particular a shadow problem, corrected by modifying code suggested by an LLM, after having, according to its account, extensively researched the issue and consulted with a Unity engineer, the game engine used. The studio states it reported this use in its IGF submission, but not on the game’s Steam page, as the platform does not, in its view, require declaring the use of code or chatbots.
The studio adds: “This is not an endorsement of the use of AI tools, however minimal, nor an argument in its favor.” It also expresses concern that this type of voluntary statement “contributes to the normalization of this technology, or to its treatment as ‘inevitable’.” It acknowledges having worked without an AI policy during Big Walk’s development, which it calls a “failure”, and says it wants to “put a more comprehensive policy in place in the future”.
After the article’s publication, Sam Barlow clarified that Big Walk was not the origin of the discussion within the IGF, but that it became “the tricky edge case”. He stated: “This is not a call to boycott a particular game, nor to economically harm a team.” Austin Walker, for his part, published a lengthy blog post on his position regarding AI and the IGF awards.
