House House says it used generative AI ‘sparingly’ to develop Big Walk

Photo source: Eurogamer

The studio says it used large language models to solve technical problems and fix bugs. It estimates that their use was connected to well under 0.1 percent of the game's code.

Australian game developer House House explained how it used generative AI in a statement to Aftermath. The statement came after a disagreement about judging at the Independent Games Festival (IGF).

This was reported by Eurogamer.

House House said it used large language models near the end of development to solve technical problems and fix bugs. Sometimes, developers copied small pieces of text produced by the models and used them as starting points for code. They then changed the code themselves. The studio estimated that well under 0.1 percent of Big Walk's code was connected to this use. It also said that generative AI was not used for anything else during the game's development.

The studio said its main use of large language models was to research problems with third-party code by asking questions through chatbots.

The statement came after 19 IGF judges said they would not vote for any game made with generative AI. They said the number of submissions involving generative AI had grown a lot. This had led to strong discussions and disagreements among the judges and jury members. Some jurors decided to make their position public instead of simply choosing not to vote for those games without saying why.

House House said it had not mentioned its use of generative AI in Big Walk before submitting the game to the IGF. It explained that it had not made a disclosure on Steam because the platform does not ask developers to report whether they use AI to write code or chatbots. The studio said it was now sharing this information because the issue had become a matter of public interest.

The studio said that sharing this information did not mean it supported AI tools or believed they should be used, even in small amounts. It was also worried that voluntary reports about AI use might make the technology seem normal or unavoidable. House House said it supported efforts to reduce the harm generative AI causes to video games and the wider world. It also apologized because its use of large language models in Big Walk might not meet the standards of those efforts.

House House said it had developed Big Walk without an internal policy explaining how AI could be used. The studio considered this a failure and said it would work on a more complete policy in the future.