Big Walk Game Developer Clarifies Minimal AI Code Usage Amidst Industry Debate

House House, the creators of the acclaimed game 'Big Walk,' recently shed light on their limited use of generative artificial intelligence during the production phase. This clarification emerged after a significant discussion ignited by jurors of the Independent Games Festival awards, who highlighted a noticeable rise in submissions featuring generative AI tools, especially concerning AI-generated code. The jurors' statement underscored the importance of respecting the creative labor involved in programming, including the foundational work used to train AI models without creators' explicit permission.

While no specific game was initially named by the IGF jurors, 'Big Walk' soon became a focal point of this industry-wide conversation. The cooperative puzzle game, which has garnered considerable attention and critical praise this year, is developed by a team known for its principled stances, such as their decision to withhold the game from Xbox platforms in support of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. This background made their use of generative AI, however minimal, particularly surprising to some observers.

In response to the growing interest, House House updated the FAQ section of the 'Big Walk' official website with an AI statement. They explained that large language models were occasionally employed during the final stages of development to tackle complex technical issues and bugs. The developers noted that snippets from LLM outputs served as initial frameworks, subsequently modified into game code, and emphasized that this constituted less than 0.1% of the game's total codebase. They also confirmed that generative AI was not utilized in any other aspect of the game's creation.

An illustrative instance provided by House House involved approximately ten lines of code generated by an AI to resolve a problem that proved difficult for their team to fix manually, even after consulting a Unity engineer. The studio addressed the absence of an AI disclosure on platforms like Steam, clarifying that such platforms do not currently require information about code or chatbot usage. They stated that their public disclosure was prompted by the issue becoming a matter of public interest.

House House concluded its statement by clarifying that their revelation is not an endorsement of AI tools, regardless of the extent of their use. They acknowledged that 'Big Walk' was developed without a formal internal AI usage policy, deeming this oversight a failure. Moving forward, the studio has committed to establishing a more comprehensive policy concerning the use of AI in their development processes.