When a number of IGF jurors took a hard stance on AI-developed video games yesterday we wrote a fairly standard blog about the news, but not long after the story was first published some additional, and deeply divisive, discussions emerged concerning one of the best video games of the year.

While the IGF jurors did not name any games in particular when outlining their opposition, it only took a few hours for news to emerge across social media that one of (if not the) biggest contributors to the “fairly intense discussion and disagreement across the judge and jury pools” was the revelation that Big Walk had used AI “in the final stretch” of the game’s development.

Developers House House tell Aftermath “LLMs were used sparingly by House House to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs”, and that they “estimate that well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code had anything to do with this usage”. They also stress that “generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game”.

House House also say they understand opposition to the news, adding “We have some concern that voluntary disclosures like this might contribute to the normalisation of this technology, or its treatment as ‘inevitable’. We support the work of those who are trying to limit the harm generative AI is doing to videogames and our world, and apologise that Big Walk’s LLM usage may not meet their standards.”

Despite this seemingly minor use of AI, the fact remains the game used AI in development, which for some in the IGF jury pool (and beyond) was clearly a huge disappointment, especially given the game’s other progressive stances. For others, however, it’s merely a sign of the times, or an instance where people’s distrust and exhaustion with the tech was causing them to alienate a game that otherwise had been among many’s shortlist for GOTY.

As for why House House is only confirming AI use in the game now, rather than at release, they say “We have not made any disclosure on Steam as the platform does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage. We are posting this disclosure as it has become a matter of public interest.”

For future games, the studio says “Big Walk was developed without an internal AI usage policy in place, and we consider that lack of policy a failure. We will work to have a more comprehensive policy going forwards.”

Here is House House’s statement in full:

In the final stretch of Big Walk’s development, LLMs were used sparingly by House House to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs. In some cases, snippets from LLM responses were copied as a starting point to be modified into game code—we’d estimate that well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code had anything to do with this usage, and generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game.

The primary use case for House House’s use of LLMs was to research, via chatbots, issues we encountered with third-party code. If you’re technically-minded, and curious, here’s an example. We needed to cull shadow casters by distance from the camera, but Unity URP only allows culling shadow casters by distance in camera forwards, so shadow casters behind the player were being rendered at an infinite distance. This made our game run 50% slower for around 20 seconds at sunrise and sunset. We researched the problem extensively, and we looked at the URP code ourselves, but we couldn’t find a way. Then, we were able to speak directly to an engineer at Unity, who asked around and ultimately concluded that what we wanted wasn’t possible. Finally, we posed the question to an LLM chatbot. After a few dead ends, it suggested a possible fix, and while we had to modify the suggestion extensively, it worked. This fix represented about 10 lines of code inside URP.

We originally wrote a version of the above disclosure as it was a suggested part of our IGF submission. We have not made any disclosure on Steam as the platform does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage. We are posting this disclosure as it has become a matter of public interest.

This is not an endorsement of, or argument for, the use of AI tools, however minimal. We have some concern that voluntary disclosures like this might contribute to the normalisation of this technology, or its treatment as “inevitable”. We support the work of those who are trying to limit the harm generative AI is doing to videogames and our world, and apologise that Big Walk’s LLM usage may not meet their standards.

Big Walk was developed without an internal AI usage policy in place, and we consider that lack of policy a failure. We will work to have a more comprehensive policy going forwards.