Should we have a separate AI Games category?

[Gryzor]

@cpcitor

The form currently has a typo. Hint: s/deails/details/

Um, where’s that?

@cpcitor

What is the result of filling the form? Can viewers filter posts based on it?

No, that’s purely a (forced) guide to let people know how a title was made.

Now, one could argue that the form is not needed; one could just post in that category without having to go through those details. But, as I’ve experienced in other communities (as well as here), people tend to be more interested in the process when AI is involved; and also, it hopefully forces/inspires a level of transparency.

@cpcitor

I see at least two projects:

Well, it’s not like I spent an inordinate amount of time to come up with the segmentation/categorization, and it can be changed easily and quickly. However, looking at ai-declaration.md, I don’t think that there’s any advantage to do so?

I’m open to tweaking the schema, no biggie, but if we do so it’ll be geared even more towards our own particular needs and workflows, not closer to the generic declaration.

@cpcitor

Does AI use warrant a specific category in this forum? I’m not convinced

You have to look down the road a little. I’ve seen a lot of communities facing this issue at some point: AI (aka SI according to Trump ) begins to be used, then the community is literally flooded with AI releases, then everyone begins to demand ways to filter said AI releases. I’ve seen it happen to communities ranging from games to mobile apps and from watchfaces to music. And, seeing such releases coming in hot and fast, I am ready to bet my right arm it will pose the same problem for our community as well.

@cpcitor

Perhaps a nomenclature of tags would be better suited?

No, because:

A. People tend to misuse/ignore tags altogether. If nothing else, your kinda-regex solution would flood the tags repo. And

B. Because of the previous point; my guess is people will want/demand a better, clearer demarcation line and separate AI titles completely.

@cpcitor

But even of that I’m not convinced: I can have a first draft written by AI (so, fully vibe coded) and massage it to a near-complete rewrite. What should I declare then? Declare about the final result? That surviving LD A,(HL) was originally written by AI but since it’s now in a fully rewritten context it’s ai-code-none?

Or start with a fully AI-generated image and rework it extensively. What should I declare then? ai-graphics-hint? Something else?

The form is flexible enough; we’re not doing forensics here, we just want some transparency and some idea of how a title was made. No need to get bogged down with the many nuances.

@cpcitor

And build tools… to push it only slightly further, would I e.g. have to declare that my tools run on Linux because Linux has some code written by AI? I don’t see the point.

That is an absurdum point, but I do get it. Again, though, we’re not putting stuff under the microscope. Whatever a dev feels like sharing, it’ll be enough.

@cpcitor

After much hesitation, I’d say now let’s try tags

To reiterate, tags is an impossible solution. Plus, it faces the exact same problems you yourself outlined with regards to the current implementation anyhow.

@cpcitor

• These are not finished games, putting them into a games category tends to upset people.

Not really; we already have a WIP tag and @XeNoMoRPH wisely puts [WIP] in his titles whenever such a project appears. That’s a solved problem.

Personal note: I am not against the use of AI. In fact in my personal/work life I use a variety of LLMs and methods to help me produce deliverables: from simple research to local LLM training and knowledge graphs building, and from market research for the best strainer for my kitchen to aid in building complex taxonomies. But I don’t do art, which I consider games to be, and I never pass on the LLM’s work as a final product at work.

By the way, thanks for taking the time to comment so thoroughly I do enjoy the back-and-forth.

Say, how about an agent to interrogate the knowledge found on the wiki and the forum?

[cpcitor]

@Gryzor

@cpcitor

The form currently has a typo. Hint: s/deails/details/

Um, where’s that?

In the placeholder text under this:

Project Notes & Prompts
List the models used (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.), specific tools, and where human intervention was required.

Note - this form is only intended to describe AI involvement. Feel free to reply to the post generated with deails about your game, scheenshots, videos etc.

Also s/scheenshots/screenshots/

[cpcitor]

@Gryzor

I’m open to tweaking the schema, no biggie, but if we do so it’ll be geared even more towards our own particular needs and workflows, not closer to the generic declaration.

Sure. The point of showing them is to maybe reach a satisfying state more quickly, not sticking to an external reference without a benefit.

@Gryzor

(…) the community is literally flooded with AI releases, then everyone begins to demand ways to filter said AI releases.

I think the flood started here in recent weekd.
We’re looking at the same road.

@Gryzor

By the way, thanks for taking the time to comment so thoroughly I do enjoy the back-and-forth.

Thanks for the quality conversation.

@Gryzor

my guess is people will want/demand a better, clearer demarcation line and separate AI titles completely.

Have you also read this reply? Should we have a separate AI Games category? - #20 by cpcitor Could it be a good demarcation line?

[Gryzor]

@cpcitor

Also s/scheenshots/screenshots/

Both typos fixed, thanks.

@cpcitor

Have you also read this reply? Should we have a separate AI Games category? - #20 by cpcitor Could it be a good demarcation line?

My comment also replied to this The Games category(ies) is not necessarily only for finished games, it’s for WIPs, ideas, anything really. So every other rule also applies to experiments/etc.

[reno08]

I say, why stop at AI ?

Since 2/3rds of us seem to be after “purity”, why not add a category for games that were NOT fully coded in assembler directly on a real CPC, with graphics drawn in OCP and a hand-written music player.

No image conversions, no cpctelera (compilation is cheating), no cross-development of any kind (either modern or vintage on PC/Atari ST, like they did back in the day), no assembler macros or generated data, no tools, no Arkos tracker.

Let’s see how many games & demos made by real programmers we have left after that, and hopefully that will make some realise how futile these witch hunts are.

[reno08]

@Gryzor

I get the spirit of the comment, but rebuttal is easy: the other tools were easily accepted by the community, the use of AI is a paradigm shift that is not.

There’s no hard, natural-occurring lines there; it’s what we make of it.

Your faith in democracy is commendable

But sometimes you have to take a firm stance against public pressure to be on the right side of history, recognise there’s a pattern here that we’ve seen before (photography as I shared above, photoshop, music sequencers, etc), and more pragmatically : there will be endless bickering on mislabelled entries that you’ll have to deal with.

It is very obvious to me the 2026 overreactions will be laughed about in 10 years time like we’re laughing now about painters scared of photography in the 1850s

[Gryzor]

@Typhon

Human ability to do mathematics didn’t disappear or wasn’t devalued when Excel was invented.

You would think so. Oh! the number of times younger coworkers have marveled at my ability to do “fast math” in meetings

[Arnoldemu]

BTW, itch.io has ‘AI Assisted’ tag which can be seen under ‘More information’ if the tag has been used.

[Typhon]

You old fart you.

With your damn full no doubt luxurious head of hair too.

(I am bald as a coot)

[Gryzor]

@reno08

Your faith in democracy is commendable

But sometimes you have to take a firm stance against public pressure to be on the right side of history,

Sorry, missed your reply earlier.

Pretty lofty. I’m not taking a stance to be on the right side of history here. I’m running a forum and I’m trying to make it enjoyable for my fellow members who have given me so much joy, simple as that.

[rexbeng]

If your point is to make a prediction with regards to how the usage of AI may go forward, in the wider general reality, then yeah, I see the point. However, this is were 'keeping the discussion within the CPC retro/homebrew/demoscene context" benefits the discussion, the way we see things and, ultimately, what we expect.

Crude metaphor to emphasize the point: we are painters and in this place photography is not allowed.

[eto]

@AndyCadley

I don’t have an issue with labelling content as using AI, but sooner or later that’s just going to be a very meaningless tag to apply.

Indeed. AI will be used as a tool by many, if not even most productions. I personally do not have an issue with the usage of AI as such.

I however do have an issue with the people that are using it to create slop or in an unfaithful manner. A game that is created within an hour and then released is probably always garbage and it wastes my time when I try it out just to then recognize that the author didn’t really care about anything. It’s just waste.

And it can become toxic waste easily. E.g. what we have seen that comes from asic28. Two quite big releases in such a short time? This is probably stolen content - and he even claims it was not using generative AI. I am pretty sure that such a behaviour is harmful to the community if it’s not discouraged.

[AndyCadley]

But most people here are not painters, they’ve just come to look at pictures (aka play/discuss games).

So you have a choice: try to become an exclusive club, where “lesser” people are not allowed because they don’t meet some arbitrary standard of what the elite decide is the “correct” method, or accept the reality that the world has shifted again and what is currently a novel approach will be commonplace in the next few years.

I saw an interesting quote from Russell T Davies the other day, whilst he was trying to evade questions about a fan-made AI generated episode of Dr Who. He mostly skirted the question but ended with the comment “this may be the end of copyright”.

At first I thought it crazy talk, but think about it: in a few years time it will, inevitably, be possible to watch any episode of a show or movie you want even if it doesn’t actually exist. Fancy an episode of Dr Who where he intersects with the Star Trek cast? Just ask AI and it will make it for you - even if you never share that with anyone. Want to see what Die Another Day would be like if Roger Moore was still Bond? Just ask.

And the same will apply to CPC games. Want to play a game a bit like a cross between Head over Heels and RoboCop, but with a story about cats taking over the world and fighting off hordes of killer ants? Here you go.

It doesn’t matter whether anyone’s opinion is that this shouldn’t happen. The genie is out of the bottle and it will come, faster than you think.

But anyone who wants to play at Don Quixote, tilting at windmills and fighting a battle with no meaning is welcome to continue.

[rexbeng]

Is there a ‘we are painters and all other people are not allowed’ in the metaphor? Saying, fe, ‘no racists, plagiarists and ai-sloppers allowed’ doesn’t mean ‘exclusive club’.

I don’t want to speculate what may or may not happen in the future. Perhaps when what you are describing becomes reality, this forum will see fit to indeed become an exclusive club for the members of old.

[salvogendut]

I think a simple ai tag would do but no reason to have separate categories. I understand that some people feel threatened but raging against the machine ain’t gonna work to buy their breakfast anymore so it is better we start a change of perspective and prize invention, creativity , usability, cleverness no matter the tools

[Gryzor]

The ad extremum arguments are silly. Most of us want good pictures to gawk at, so what we’re having is a paint gallery with a separate room with the sign “this is a room for photos; some of them may be good, some may be bad. Please come this way if you want to look at photos”.

The stuff about elites etc is nonsensical.

[Gryzor]

Simply because it’s easier to filter with a separate category, compounded by the fact that we’re still seeing a ton of AI slop.

[cpcitor]

@Gryzor

this is a room for photos; some of them may be good, some may be bad. Please come this way if you want to look at photos

This metaphor feels credible.

We can imagine that after a while, good productions will come partially made with AI, like good photos eventually came. Now the number of people making painting is smaller than the number of people taking photos. And they are not judged on the same level.

Then there will be just different classes of productions: with or without AI.

Like you judge differently running races vs bike races vs motorbike/car races.

Perhaps “not used AI” will be like a rare “I chose to run with a handicap” (like in golf game?).

[AndyCadley]

@Gryzor

The ad extremum arguments are silly. Most of us want good pictures to gawk at, so what we’re having is a paint gallery with a separate room with the sign “this is a room for photos; some of them may be good, some may be bad. Please come this way if you want to look at photos”.

There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. It’s just that, sooner rather than later, everything will be in that category. And then all that happens is all the discussion moves into the photos room and the same people complaining now will complain that everyone is talking about photos and ignoring their painting.

It’s a battle that can never be won.