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I may have faulted a little formal, lol.

Okay, thank you, I can see what you’re trying to say a little better now.

🤔

Again, I haven’t played any yet, so I don’t know which one is being talked about here; I’ll look through today (yay weekend).

I think what I said still stands - I’ll allow someone to use AI for an entire project. Legally speaking, Using GPT to create the entire game is different than Astrocade in terms of legality. But “CHATGPT, MAKE A GAME FOR THIS JAM: [link]” and using that output as the sole basis is still AI slop. I 100% agree.

But should I disqualify it?

I try very hard to have a reasoned approach to AI (as you can tell, lol). I get AI hate, and I’ll admit my own biases - I’ve spent the last four years working as an AI trainer (I started with AI just before GPT became GPT). So, I have a little bit of love for AI, but I like to think it’s one with eyes wide open - AI is just a fancy autocomplete, or at best, a mechanical parrot.

I say that to say that, yeah, I’m probably a bit permissive with AI use. If someone as a game developer wants to use AI to make their entire game, go for it. However, I have yet to see one game that is extremely well made with AI, and I’ve come down hard on those entries (or at least, I’ve tried to, maybe some have fooled me). But I am reluctant to disqualify people that have entered only my jam and used AI to create the game (I look at each entry’s game page - if I see that someone has spammed jams, ESPECIALLY when it’s obviously pure AI, they get disqualified fast). I guess I’m trying to give the creator the benefit of the doubt.

Let’s say Joe Blow is a budding game designer with big dreams but zero experience. He sees my Jam, and decides to take his brilliant idea for a game to chat GPT. “Chat GPT, make me this game for this jam, I want it to be brilliant and win.” And GPT spits out some code, maybe using the godot engine, maybe a web app, it doesn’t matter because Joe Blow doesn’t really understand the mechanics, he just wants to try to make a game and win.

Now take his counterpart, Art Fart. Art is a lazy and pretentious POS that knows about as much as Joe blow, but has the stones to think he’s brilliant. Art twirls his mustache as he prompts GPT to create his AI slop monstrosity and unleashes it upon my Jam with a gleeful cackle. “That will show them!” He says with a maniacal laugh. “Those game devs are so stupid - making a game is easy now, thanks to AI. But I guess they wouldn’t know, because they’re all dumb!”

Now, over to me. Joe Blow has submitted “Joe’s fantastic wonderful game horray gj lol”, and Art has submitted “Art’s dastardly snub at the art world because I’m brilliant lol”. Lets say neither of them disclosed that they used AI - Joe is just dumb, and Art is just an ass, but I can’t tell that on my end. So I look at their games.

Like I said, I’ve worked around AI for a long time. I use AI daily in my own dev. Even assuming that GPT somehow managed to sneak their entry past their layman, it’s usually pretty obvious to me where AI was used, if not the extent. I have no way of telling Joe and Art apart in terms of motivation, so I have to assume good intentions from both. So this is why I don’t disqualify them. I legitimately want Joe to grow from this Jam. And I am willing to stake a million dollars that both games stink.

I’ve seen AI turn around some half way decent stuff first turn, but it usually is a result of an extremely well thought out prompt, requires a higher functioning model, and if possible also involves the use of references and materials supplied to the model (so a bit of work on the prompter’s part before the model ever starts to work). Hell, the entry that I submitted this week was purely AI (given that it might serve as the prototype for a future game of mine, I have not included any further iterations that I’ve done with this). Is the Asteroid Prototype AI slop? I’d be annoyed if someone said it was - I put a lot of thought into the prompt that went into it, and had some pointed iterations before I cut the release out here from what I thought was a cool little toy. But it is pure AI in terms of the code, graphics, writing - all that is mine is the direction. So did I make this prototype, or did AI make it (and if so, in what sense is it mine?)? Where someone might fall on this is a matter of debate. For what it’s worth, I released the prototype as it was for free because it is an experiment done with AI for something I’ll probably end up using human labor for later. It’s my intellectual property, and the AI was the grunt that actually did the work. In a sense, the AI was my ghostwriter. I am careful to give credit where credit is due - even though I see AI as a soulless autocomplete, AI always gets credit for ‘its’ work, and I am very careful to log what is AI and what is mine.

Ok, I’m probably laboring a point here (and I fear that this is turning into a gmail style communique on my end anyway, lol). But to TLDR this: creative direction is still ownership over a final product, all else being equal. Someone whose sole contribution to a game is a prompt owns that creative direction - the AI couldn’t have made it by itself - that’s not the way AI works. If that is all that the person entering my jam is capable of doing, then I’m going to make a comment about what they produced, and it’s probably not going to be a great comment.

Sigh, I know, I’m long winded. Blame it on my age (I’m in my 40s). Don’t feel like you have to reply gmail style please - what I meant by professional is just a well reasoned “Hey, I disagree because x.” I think I’ve addressed your concern? If I missed the point again, my apologies.