House House Says It Used AI Chatbots Sparingly in Big Walk Development
House House, the studio behind Big Walk, says it used AI chatbots sparingly late in development and estimates well under 0.1% of the game's code was affected. The disclosure followed a debate among IGF jurors over AI-developed games.
House House, the studio behind the video game Big Walk, said it used large language model (LLM) chatbots "sparingly" late in development, and estimates that well under 0.1% of the game's code was affected. The big walk AI usage disclosure came after a debate among Independent Games Festival (IGF) jurors about AI-developed games.
The IGF jurors did not name any game when they outlined their opposition. Within hours, news spread on social media that Big Walk's AI use was one of the biggest contributors to what the jurors called "fairly intense discussion and disagreement across the judge and jury pools".
What House House says it did
The studio said by email that LLMs helped "work through difficult technical challenges and bugs". In some cases, snippets from chatbot responses were copied as a starting point and then modified into game code.
House House says generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game. Its main use, the studio said, was researching problems with third-party code through chatbots.
It gave one example. The team needed to cull shadow casters by distance from the camera, but Unity URP only allows that in the camera's forward direction. Shadow casters behind the player were rendered at an infinite distance.
That made the game run 50% slower for around 20 seconds at sunrise and sunset. The team researched the problem and read the URP code, and an engineer at Unity concluded that what they wanted was not possible.
The team then asked an LLM chatbot. After a few dead ends it suggested a possible fix, which the studio says it had to modify extensively. The fix amounted to about 10 lines of code inside URP.
Why it came out now
House House made no disclosure on Steam. It said the platform does not ask developers to disclose code or chatbot usage. The studio said it posted the statement "as it has become a matter of public interest".
The studio acknowledged the objections. "We have some concern that voluntary disclosures like this might contribute to the normalisation of this technology, or its treatment as 'inevitable'," it said.
It added: "We support the work of those who are trying to limit the harm generative AI is doing to videogames and our world, and apologise that Big Walk's LLM usage may not meet their standards."
No AI policy in place
House House said Big Walk was developed without an internal AI usage policy. "We consider that lack of policy a failure," the studio said, and it promised to work toward a more comprehensive policy for future games.
Reaction is split. For some in the IGF jury pool and beyond, the disclosure was a major disappointment, given the game's other progressive stances. Others see it as a sign of the times, or as distrust of the technology turning people against a game likely to appear on many game-of-the-year shortlists.
