Big Walk developer House House reveal genAI use in final stretch of development, only revealing it now as "it has become a matter of public interest"

Off a short pier

Friendslop du jour Big Walk is the latest in an unfortunately long series of games that have been confirmed to use generative AI in their production, with developers House House clarifying their use of it in a statement to Aftermath (thanks!). House House state that "LLMs were used sparingly by House House to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs", and that "well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code had anything to do with this usage", but are quick to note that "generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game."

A specific example is given in the case of Unity's apparent weirdness around shadow casters in its rendering pipeline, as it's seemingly difficult to have unnecessary shadow casters behind the player culled, which resulted in the game running at half speed around sunrise and sunset. House House explain that they couldn't find a solution themselves, asked a Unity engineer for help who said it was impossible, and then decided the only answer was to ask 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." While absolutely not the most pressing thing to mention here, it is very funny to me for House House to clarify that they "had to modify the suggestion extensively", almost as if this tech isn't actually helpful in giving useful answers.

So, House House touched the stove, despite how easy it is to simply not touch the stove. The thing is, this wasn't a case of being forced to by upper management, as is sometimes the case. This was a choice made entirely voluntarily, and House House are attempting to have their cake and eat it by ending their statement with the reflection that "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." But then, you know, that's followed up by saying that 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." So, not to worry, they learned touching the stove is bad by touching the stove, and definitely won't do it again in future. If only there were thousands of other cases informing them why touching the stove is bad.

Very relevant to this reveal is the recent statement by select jurors of the Independent Games Festival which, after much internal deliberation, came to the conclusion that those who sign the statement would decline to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity, with signees including Austin Walker, Sam Barlow, Lena Reine, Brendon Chung, Aura Triolo, aurahack and more. The statement specifies that "AI-generated code is not an exception to these harms." Fellow juror Liz Ryerson confirmed that Big Walk was being considered by the IGF, and was a matter of discussion in judging as to whether its use of genAI would be acceptable.

As for House House only disclosing this now, they state it was not only because it was necessary for their IGF submission, but also that "we have not made any disclosure on Steam as the platform does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage", and that they have spoken on it publicly to Aftermath because "it has become a matter of public interest."

If I were to be cynical, I would say that House House would prefer to be the ones breaking this news themselves rather than having the IGF reveal that they had been hiding their use up until now; it's usually easier to control PR if you release it yourself. Big Walk had already been securely in everyone's good books for its support for the BDS boycott, for example, so why ruin that clean rep with something like a genAI disclosure?

I don't know how better to close this article than with an excerpt from that very IGF statement:

"We know that change does not come at the individual level, but as independent developers, we also know firsthand the value of pushing back on what an industry has deemed "inevitable." As jurists, we feel a responsibility to push past defeatism and aspire to a higher ideal.

The future is not yet settled. You are not alone. We can stand together."