House House reveals generative AI use in Big Walk development
House House, the developers behind the upcoming title Big Walk, have officially confirmed the use of generative AI during the final stages of their game's production. The studio addressed the matter following its emergence as a topic of public interest, clarifying that while Large Language Models (LLMs) were utilized to resolve specific technical hurdles, their involvement was minimal and limited to code debugging.
In a statement provided to Aftermath, House House clarified that LLMs were used sparingly to assist with difficult technical challenges and bugs. The studio emphasized that the use of this technology was extremely limited, stating that well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code was related to AI usage. Furthermore, they noted that generative AI was not employed in any other capacity during the development of the game.
A specific instance of this usage involved a rendering issue within the Unity engine. The developers encountered a problem where shadow casters behind the player were not being culled correctly, causing the game's performance to drop to half speed during sunrise and sunset. After a Unity engineer informed them that a solution was seemingly impossible, the team turned to an LLM chatbot. While the studio noted they had to modify the AI's suggestion extensively, the resulting fix—which accounted for approximately 10 lines of code—successfully resolved the issue.
A voluntary choice and a lack of policy
The studio's decision to use AI was entirely voluntary, rather than a mandate from management. However, House House expressed regret regarding their internal processes, admitting that the game was developed without an internal AI usage policy in place. They described this lack of policy as a failure and pledged to implement a more comprehensive framework for future projects.
House House also expressed concern that voluntary disclosures like theirs might inadvertently contribute to the normalization of generative AI, treating the technology as an "inevitable" part of the industry. They stated their support for those working to limit the perceived harms generative AI may cause to the video game industry and the wider world, apologizing if their use of LLMs failed to meet those standards.
The IGF context
The timing of this revelation is particularly significant due to ongoing discussions within the Independent Games Festival (IGF). Several jurors of the festival have recently stated they would decline to vote for any game that utilizes generative AI in any capacity, explicitly noting that AI-generated code is not an exception to these concerns. Juror Liz Ryerson confirmed that Big Walk was under consideration by the IGF and that the use of generative AI in the project had been a subject of discussion among the judges.
Regarding the timing of the announcement, House House explained that the disclosure was necessary for their IGF submission. They noted that they had not previously disclosed the usage on Steam, as the platform does not currently require disclosure of code or chatbot usage, and chose to speak publicly now because the topic had become a matter of public interest.
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