Artificial Intelligence Decision from Independent Games Festival Jury: Big Walk in Trouble

19 members of the Independent Games Festival (IGF) jury announced that they will not evaluate games in which artificial intelligence technologies are used in any way. This strict stance has plunged the candidacy process in the festival of the game Big Walk, developed by House House studio known for Untitled Goose Game, into uncertainty due to its use of AI chatbots to fix third-party code issues.

The decision made by the festival jury includes a broad ban that also covers AI-generated code. House House studio stated that less than 0.1% of Big Walk's code was optimized with the help of artificial intelligence and that this usage was done solely to solve a technical issue in the Unity engine. The studio stated that they transparently declared this situation during their application to the IGF.

Jury member Sam Barlow stated that the main purpose of the decision is to block applications where artificial intelligence is heavily used, but that the House House example creates a "difficult edge case." The studio acknowledged that they have not established an internal artificial intelligence usage policy, and stated that they support the jury's decision and efforts to limit the risks of artificial intelligence to the gaming industry.

Evaluation: The impact of the decision on the festival results is not yet clear. The presence of 19 signatories in the jury panel of approximately 50 people creates uncertainty as to whether the decision will be binding across all categories. In addition, the presence of other jury members who did not sign but share similar views shows that the general attitude of the festival is evolving towards an anti-artificial intelligence direction.