Hi! I am working on a website akin to steamdb but for categorizing games on their AI use in the following

Categories:

  • Handcrafted: The game has been confirmed untouched by GenAI
  • Tainted: Gen AI has been used in any aspect of this game's creation. Any usage of the technology puts you in this category.
  • Slop: Use of Gen AI is outwardly visible by players
  • Fraud: Developer lied about AI involvement in their products.

How the system would work:

It'd be a comunity driven, honor based effort. Users would summit reports and a group of trusted moderators would validate them.

Why I'm making this post:

I am looking for possible questions, problems, challenges and ideas you guys might come up with. I have a "Questions and answers" section down bellow with what I'd cover up myself.

Questions and answers

What counts as GenAI?

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, etc. Image generation models line Nano Banana, Stable diffusion, etc.

Why take such a harsh stance on GenAI?

AI use has been irrevocably tied to the problems it creates. It's being used as a tool to centralize power away from artists and creators towards a select few people with too much money on their hands.

Using AI is analogous to accepting all of the valid concerns against it and endorsing the problems it's wedged themselves in.

What counts as AI usage?

Any personal use by you or anyone you are in charge of on the project. It's the duty of the person in charge to ensure that your work stays human.

"I use local models I'd be allowed in handcrafted"

You're still furthering the use of a technology designed to steal and plagiarize. While local models address some of the enviromental problems of GenAI it's still an active endorsement of the theft done to train such models.

"I barely used GenAI for my game"

You made the choice to use GenAI on your game. You might have not been aware of the consequences of such choice but it's still a choice you made.

"My game has been tagged tainted even though I made it all"

This is a community effort, I'm sorry if you've been falsely targeted/tagged. There's always going to be bad actors. Contact the website at support@website.com and we'll do our best to rectify the error.

"Why shouldn't I just not disclose that I used GenAI"

No one's forcing you to disclose the use of such technology but it's something customers care about letting your customers make informed choices is how you build a reputation of quality and honesty.

"Why shouldn't I just lie about my GenAI use?"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fraud

Appart from that we have a special category reserved for this fraud. This is a website built around an honor system of reputation, do not tarnish it with abuse.

nerdspeakAnd with that the mess of ideas and html I've been messing with is out. My progress is slow but I'm making steps. The tech stack is based on the human-centric language zig, using a jsx-like framework named ziex, which I've been thoroughly enjoying. I plan on making the website fully open source but there's very little to showcase just yet. I'm just here to bounce ideas with the open web.

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[–] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

This is a good idea but I don't think the current design adds much over existing categorization. There are already ways to find no-ai/handcrafted games. And complete slop is (at least for now) fairly obvious to spot. Imo the opportunity to refine the scale is all in the middle which you've collapsed into a single category.

I think most people who are willing to accept some ai use would benefit from a more nuanced approach. For instance, many people might be ok with some minor AI assistance in the programming process, but draw a hard line at ai assets. Your scale doesn't serve those users.

I'm not arguing with your very valid points on the ethics and result of AI, just pointing out that to add utility past the current options you might need more granularity.

Also a major gray area is the use of libraries that may include ai code. For example, most games are now made with engines like unity, unreal, or godot. It's almost certain that unity and unreal now include ai code. So can a game dev never use an engine again without falling into the tainted category? Do they have to write their own quaternary code for 3d translations, sprite blitter, texture mapper etc from scratch? What about using the windows API for file handling? That's likely got ai code in it now. I guess to be considered handcrafted games need to be freebsd only now? Or ship with their own operating system?

I think we'd be better served by a scale like this:

0 - fully human made 
0.5 - used a game engine / libraries / os SDK etc which likely includes AI generated code but is itself not considered total slop 
1 - used some minor AI assisted coding techniques (e.g. code completions / merged an ai big fix after thorough review, etc)
2 - used extensive but human directed programming, assets all human made. Shows evidence of care put into design, graphics, story, etc
3 - vibe coded or close to it, but all assets still human made
4 - some ai assets, human directed work
5 - obviously totally vibe coded with generated assets
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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    It's a conscious choice. I want to design the index to encourage people working towards the handcrafted stage. Any kind of AI usage immediately putting you on either slop or tainted drives the point home.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Ah I misunderstood the purpose. I thought it was to provide the community with a guide they could use to decide which games to support rather than a tool to condemn developers for their choices. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    The second side of the comment about using libraries that coopt AI code. I think LLM use falls into a personal category. You can't control that someone down your tech stack used it but you can certainly not use LLMs.

    If you find out that your tech stack is tainted but your workflow is human asking for a rewrite is unfeasible. I'd argue that the next project should use human-centric tools but that is something for later down the stack.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I would actually argue that there is some validity to scrutinizing code supply chain. For example a dev could choose to a human-crafted library in c++ or use a vibe-coded "port" to rust or whatever because that's the language they're more familiar with. Those choices are worth investigating.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 23 hours ago

    For that I've got a personal example. I have a professional project made in laravel a PHP framework. I made the choice to use it before the AI craze, I am maintaining the project but I didn't choose for the tech stack to embrace AI like it did.

    The fact that these projects take long to make does bind you to the choices of someone else makes that you can't control.

    But you did nail it in the head, it's the focus on personal choice that I'm aiming at.

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