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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 loses Game of the Year from the Indie Game Awards (www.xda-developers.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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Clair Obscur won multiple awards but used generative AI art as placeholders during production.

The Indie Game Awards revoked Clair Obscur’s Debut and Game of the Year after the AI disclosure.

IGAs reassigned the awards (Blue Prince, Sorry We’re Closed) and reignited debate on gen-AI use.

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[–] 20 points 8 months ago (12 children)

This feels kind of more like finding a valid excuse after the indie-or-not debate and backlash, but fuck it. Blue Prince is a great Indie GOTY (the correct choice imo).

I don't think E33 should have qualified as an indie game to begin with.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    I don’t think E33 should have qualified as an indie game to begin with.

    Besides the Ai talk, why do you think so? It is an independent game, without a publisher.

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    They do have a publisher: Kepler Interactive. But so does Blue Prince in fairness, it was published by Raw Fury.

    What constitutes an indie game will always be debated, because it's almost impossible to define it through black and white rules. If Kojima created a game with a budget of $300m, a cast of Hollywood A-listers and a development team of 200 people and published it himself, would that be an appropriate nomination for the Indie Awards?

    Larian self published BG3, should that have been nominated for Indie Awards?

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (9 children)

    Alright i didn't know they have a publishers.

    What constitutes an indie game will always be debated,

    How? It's a well defined term. If you don't have a publisher and are independent, that's what indie means. It has nothing to do with budget. Even an indie game can be AAA, because the term AAA refers to how expensive it was. These are two different subjects.

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    How? It's a well defined term. If you don't have a publisher and are independent, that's what indie means. It has nothing to do with budget. Even an indie game can be AAA, because the term AAA refers to how expensive it was. These are two different subjects.

    That’s not how the term is used. Definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. Wikipedia’s definition is far more useful.

    Take the game “Animal Well.” Go look it up if you haven’t heard of it. Animal Well was programmed by a single person, Billy Basso, as developer “Shared Memory.” It was then published by Videogamedunkey’s company “Bigmode,” the very first title Bigmode published.

    By your definition, Animal Well is not an indie game. But it’s exactly the kind of game meant by the term “indie game.” So your definition isn’t a useful one.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    For an even more funny example, Devolver digital (who published Enter the Gungeon, Cult of the Lamb, and I think Ball X Pit to name a few) market themselves as "an indie game publisher". An oxymoron by previous definition, yet most would agree it's true.

    I thought of "not publicly traded" since shareholders usually are the ones to kill creativity, but it turns out DD IS public. And Valve isn't, so that'd be a bit silly. (Even if I think the game dev part of Valve had/has the indie spirit of "fuck it, we do whatever")

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Which means Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate 3 and GTA 6 are indie titles, while the majority of the indie game award nominees and winners are not because they have 3rd party publishers.

    Well defined indeed.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Are you trolling? How is GTA 6 an indie title? Rockstar is under Take2 publisher. Same for Witcher 3, which is published by CD Projekt. The developers are CD Projekt Red, two different things. And Baldurs Gate 3 is an indie title.

    You should randomly put popular game titles into the mix, without explaining your point. Whats your point again?

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    GTA 6 is developed and being published by Rockstar Games. BG3 was developed and published by Larian. If you want to be that strict about the difference between CD project and CD project Red, we can ignore it for now.

    Blue Prince was developed by Dogubomb and published by Raw Fury. It has a 3rd party publisher, therefore it's not indie by your very clear definition, no?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Take 2 owns Rockstar. GTA 6 is not an indie title. BG3 is developed and published by Larian Studios. BG3 is an indie title. CD Projekt is the publisher. CD Projekt Red is the developer, there is nothing strict about it, they just have similar names.

    I think you confuse with developed without publisher and releasing the game to the public. It's like saying Steam is the publisher, after the game got released on Steam.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    So you would call Half Life 2 and Alyx indie games? But any game published by Devolver Digital like Loop Hero or Gato Roboto aren't indie despite having tiny budgets and tiny teams?

    That's kind of a ridiculous definition. It makes way more sense to include criterias like team size and budget, however vague they are.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    But that is then something else you compare to. Indie refers to be indipendent from publisher when developing the game. At some point at the end of the development, the game has to be published, but that's not what indie means. And major first party store holder are excluded from this for obvious reasons. But if you want, then count Valve indipendent. That's not our discussion here.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Indie games aren't made in a vacuum then shipped off to publishers. Publishers help with playtesting, QA, translating, certification, and in many cases even marketing in the middle of development. Even by your definition it's not as clear cut as you think.

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    • [–] 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    This debate is getting really stupid in my opinion.

    Edit : my previous comment made no sense cause I'm also stupid ! I will develop a bit more.

    Indies should be allowed to tried new technologies, I don't think Sandfall and Larian should be shamed like that, they clearly tried to do the good thing not do ia slop but still are curious trying things and be balanced.

    (Blue prince is a great game btw, well deserved. It should have gone to it in the first place because of the indie thing but that's another topic)

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    • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    They were already floating against bad publicity because of famous "anti-woke" streamers constantly giving them shit, this move sadly doesn't help: I understand they wanted to shift away the focus from COE33 - after all, it got enough publicity as it stands.

    But they could've taken so many different approaches; like, for example, instituting a different prize and move Clair Obscur to their own category (I don't know, call it "shine of the year" or something), but CLEARLY state you are doing this in honor of Indie Awards core concept, which is to highlight less known games.

    Calling out a very minimal and almost accidental usage of AI that has been patched out for months just to ban it out... meh.

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