Indie Game Awards did something amazing, and I have already said this before in another article, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the game and its usage of multiple “new technologies”. Finally the studio behind it has admitted usage of generative “AI” for placeholder textures despite people asking them to properly disclose what they did and what people found in the first version of the game. However some of the people responsible for Clair Obscur Expedition 33 acting in bad faith and decided to keep shut about it and not even put a disclaimer on the store page.
Indie Game Awards did something cool
It was known by everyone that this game used placeholder assets generated by “AI” and while some might try to justify the process, they are only justify another people losing their jobs. Concept artists are important, and they often get ignored by big studios like Sandfall who have billionaire funding behind, if you leave this aside the game is interesting but more things are put into doubt when companies act in bad faith. They could have used this a good moment to get a score with public relations but they simply didn’t.
To top it all, Clair Obscur isn’t even an Indie, so there’s no reason to be in the Indie Game Awards in the first place. The sweep that happened at the Game awards was unfair and most of those prizes should have gone to Silksong instead that clearly had way better art than whatever Clair Obscur attempted to do. Some might say that catching “AI” usage is hard, but the reality is that the stagnation of this models becomes more evident day by day. Goonswarm Games got caught doing the same and instead of taking the loss and maturing they just closed the studio down. The Indie Game Awards did the right thing by disqualifying the use of “AI”.
