this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Indie devs have begun adding a no generative AI stamp to their store pages (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 1 week ago by RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[–] AThing4String@sh.itjust.works 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hey man, don't get discouraged. AI isn't hated on because it doesn't have valid uses - assistive language-based problems are a great candidate for AI help, and coding is language!

What people are rightfully concerned about is AI being used to replace skilled work - especially artists - or use in establishing facts, not help teach newbies. Someone using AI to help word their resume or provide some help when stuck programming is not the issue - a game dev laying off artists and coders to let AI do the job worse but nearly free is.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

A very few bad games will put that badge, and in a few months no one would ever remember it. Like any other ridiculous anti-AI campaign. You can quote me on July.

If a gamedev want to use Stable Diffusion to render some art, or tortoise to make some voices/sound let them be. As it was predictable anti-AI people would began to pursue actual artist in the name of art.

I take the occasion to promote a really good indie game whose devs used AI to make some art for the game.

https://bitfans.itch.io/innsmouth

100% recommend.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 4 points 6 days ago

Yup, AI is a tool

[–] AThing4String@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago

I meant to reply to you earlier and accidentally replied to the whole thread - I agree with the sentiment below. Honestly, using AI as a coding partner when learning is actually a pretty great use for it, if you're reviewing it properly, testing, and know its limits. This initiative is much more focused on the same sorts of low quality content farms and c-suite "cost cutting" initiatives that have been making gaming suck since long before AI. If you're the sort of developer doing game jams, focusing on learning rather than volume, and taking pride in your work the quality will show through regardless.

[–] kemsat@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

I don’t think I would care if they did use AI. I would care about the game being fun. There are lots of games out there that suck even though no AI was used.

[–] Lemjukes@lemm.ee 0 points 6 days ago (3 children)

This feels discouraging as someone who struggled with learning programming for a very long time and only with the aid of copilot have I finally crossed the hurdles I was facing and felt like I was actually learning and progressing again.

Yes I’m still interacting with and manually adjusting and even writing sections of code. But a lot of what copilot does for me is interpret my natural language understanding of how I want to manipulate the data and translating it into actual code which I then work with and combine with the rest of the project.

But I’ve stopped looking to join any game jams because it seems even when they don’t have an explicit ban against all AI, the sentiment I get is that people feel like it’s cheating and look down on someone in my situation. I get that submitting ai slop whole sale is just garbage. But it feels like putting these blanket ‘no ai content’ stamps and badges on things excludes a lot of people.

Is this slop? https://lemjukes.itch.io/ascii-farmer-alpha

https://github.com/LemJukes/ASCII-Farmer

Like I know it isn’t good code but I’m entirely self taught and it seems to work(and more importantly I mostly understand how it works) so what’s the fucking difference? How am I supposed to learn without iterating? If anyone human wants to look at my code and tell me why it’s shit, that’d actually be really helpful and I’d genuinely be thankful.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I am pretty sure this is not what the people who made the seal are talking about.

Read their site. They're talking about "pictures, movies, audio (music or voice action) and writing". Code in itself, especially for simple tasks like basic game logic, is not art, and I am saying that as a developer.

I am still very doubtful AI can write quality code, but I really don't care. I am sure it becomes a mess if you try to write very complex systems, but that's not the case for most games. And if AI generated code is good enough for your use case, good for you.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm not quite sure I'm following.

Are you saying that AI trained on the output of humans is unethical, unless those humans are programmers?

Or, as a professional programmer, you understand the limitations of AI in your field so you don't feel threatened by it while simultaneously assuming, on behalf of another profession, that AI in "artistic" fields is somehow far more capable and an actual threat?

Terrible programmers don't become professional programmers because they subscribe to Copilot. It provides a crutch to absolute beginners, allowing even the least skilled individual to create some low quality output. For professionals, AI allows for some aspects of existing tools to perform slightly better but cannot replace the knowledge, experience and practice of a human when it comes to applying those skills in novel and interesting ways.

Terrible artists don't become professional artists because they subscribe to Midjourney. It provides a crutch to absolute beginners, allowing even the least skilled individual to create some low quality output. For professionals, AI allows for some aspects of existing tools to perform slightly better but cannot replace the knowledge, experience and practice of a human when it comes to applying those skills in novel and interesting ways.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 0 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I am not "assuming" anything on anyone's behalf. There is a clear difference that's practically not even about AI at this point.

You're not stealing from a programmer by frankensteining bits of their freely available code. As someone else said, it's basically stack overflow with an extra step. There's no secret sauce in coding, you can evaluate code quality, you can exchange tricks and techniques, but you're not expressing yourself through code.

However, if you take bits of one or several cultural products without the creator's consent and pass the whole thing as your own, that's called plagiarism, and this is a special thing for a reason.

For AI, I don't think anybody cares about a random beginner using it as "crutch". People care about big entertainment companies deciding they need 90% fewer artists because AI does "good enough" (even when it does quite poorly, and even when it's trained on the work of people like the ones they're replacing).

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Buddy, using AI as a coding crutch is not the issue for the same reason it’s not an issue if you rely on stack overflow for learning how other people do things. The issue is when generative AI is used to generate assets for a game.

[–] Lemjukes@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So would you think I’d be welcomed to join a game jam with a ‘no AI’ rule or would I be disqualified? Based on the amount of downvotes both iterations of my original comment it genuinely seems like most people think I don’t belong.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

In the game jam? no, because the point to write something yourself from scratch. You’d join the game jam once you no longer require the AI as a crutch. It’s ok to not be ready for a game jam.

[–] Lemjukes@lemm.ee 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

That's the thing, i will never be able to write a complete project unaided, full stop. I banged my head against that process for 10+ years trying to teach myself. I've tried classes, books, tutorials and i always end up failing out because i am incapable of actually writing code correctly, even when i know what im doing is the way its supposed to work. I struggle enough with just spelling english words, my native fucking language, correctly half the time. So remembering where the semi colon goes or that you need to use : instead of = in these specific cases but not these specific cases, is something my brain is simply incapable of accomplishing.

I'm not applying for jobs, i'm not trying to build any kind of major infrastructure, i just simply want to participate in a community and not be shunned and ridiculed because i use a tool that allows me to participate at all.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

You’re not going to be shunned or ridiculed for using an AI helper when coding. It’s not appropriate for use in a game jam generally, but that’s not the same as being shunned or ridiculed.

Like if you go into a big weightlifting gym, there will be people there on various chemical substances that augment your bodies natural abilities. These people aren’t going to be shunned or ridiculed from the weightlifting community just because they’re not 100% natural. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be allowed into most competitions and they understand that.

I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll even find some that allow the use of AI as long as you disclose what it is you use and how. But if the point of a given game jam is to demonstrate natural ability, why would they allow AI when that isn’t your natural ability?

[–] Lemjukes@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago

Thanks this helped me a bunch.

[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Are you learning something when making something? Could you make an app similar to one you already made, but without using AI? Are you having fun?

If the answer to all of these questions is yes, congrats! I recommend mentioning if you make something where a huge pert of the work was made with the help of AI on the page where it is posted though

[–] karpintero@lemmy.world 64 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I can dig it. For me it's similar to seeing physical products described as "handcrafted" to denote quality versus something mass produced. A lot of indie devs pour enormous amounts of time and energy into animation, scripts, music, etc. that a derivative gen AI would just spit out in seconds.

[–] ggwithgg@feddit.nl 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes that is a good comparison. Similarly, indirect use of handcrafted or no gen ai is impossible to trace / verify / do. You can't handcraft each component for every tool you will be using. Similarly, you can't write your own library / compiler for every software component.

Such a label will indicate only on a high level, 'that technology' is not used. Which I think is fine.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Handcrafted can still use any sort of (power)tool. The actual difference is that it is low volume instead of mass production, even if the same tools are used.

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago

Man, some real pathetic, deflated bullshit in this comment section.

This badge fucking rules. Let's make it a huge problem for the first game that uses it dishonestly.

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 21 points 1 week ago

I feel like this will work out about as well as "GMO-free" labels on food.

[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wonder if LLM companies will use that stamp as a way to identify original ideas they can scrape.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

More likely they just won't bother putting any effort into preventing their AI from copying the badge.

[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 2 points 1 week ago

True. Fake it till you make it as the flimflam fellas say.

[–] kevinsbacon@lemmy.today 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And who is verifying it?

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It says it right on the stamp. "This developer". So themselves.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Users will end up verifying it. Activision just got caught using gen-ai in call of duty and had to come clean.

If developers are caught lying they will lose credibility.

[–] EarMaster@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

There's absolutely no way this can go wrong.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

It's fine guys, "we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong" and "we will police ourselves" is always a surefire way to ensure accountability.

[–] hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Okay, but are the games good?

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Why wouldn't they be? We hand-wrote all our good games until, like, yesterday.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

My game was going to be good but then AI happened and now I only make terrible games

[–] merari42@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This 80s metal band is making real music without synthesizers!

[–] Womble@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

I just know people are going to flock to my novel that I manually typewritered each copy myself.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

I’m loving this idea!

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Does this include code

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Does it include human handpicked sentences that where gend.

Generate a dialogue script vs How could i rephrase this sentence to..

There is so much in between possible i feel like this label is more marketing then meaningful.

Of course i do know what they meant. They imply they did not cut corners with ai and put effort in delivering quality but i imagine there will be both low effort works using this label because they can and high effort works scrutinized after its found technically some gen ai was used.

[–] Lemjukes@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago

Also, not using AI in no way precludes you from producing low effort work.