A compromise could be to allow AI works in the Back Garden, which allows even weirder and more experimental works.
Unlikely. Anyway, AI uses en dashes, not hyphens (unless instructed). Using hyphens in place of en and em dashes is common for humans, especially on cell phonesmAnd many people in the IF space are typographically inclined and might even use actual en dashes too (I have it mapped on my computer keyboard, so I use it often, but not when I’m writing on my phone).
No, of course not. But that is not the point. We also learned over time that interactive fiction doesn’t require parsers.
But implementing a game is bringing a story to life is often a very personal little project that follows your own ideas and imaginations. Pictures are not required, but perhaps wanted. And if it is only for the author because he wants the work to have pictures.
Just to expand on this, presuming myself to be one of those reviewers: we’re like three years or so into these tools being widely available, so I think we’re mostly past the point of hypotheticals. There have been events with a wide variety of policies towards generative AI in that time, and I think that experience has shown that the risk of out of control witch-hunts is pretty low, even in the events with no restrictions or disclosure requirements – people, myself included, have definitely said “I think this game has some AI generated text” in reviews, both as a point of information for folks to whom that’s important, and also because that’s kind of necessary to explain your critical approach to a text. But I haven’t seen it tip over into harassment.
On the flip side, I’ll say I have seen some events where the number and quality of games using generative AI text has been an issue. To get specific, last year’s ParserComp had I think 2-3 such games, and playing and writing about them was sufficiently unpleasant that I seriously considered dropping it from the list of events where I try to play and review all the games. In 2025, there’s a ban on AI-generated text and a disclosure requirement for the art, so I’ll be sticking with it – I can’t speak to the motivations of the organizers, but to my mind that’s a rule created to address a real-world problem, and that’s the context I’m seeing Brian’s proposal here.
This is all just about the “slop” argument, of course – there are the ethical and environmental sides of things, too, which of course different people view differently. It’s maybe worth emphasizing that even for folks who do think those are important issues, this isn’t necessarily a Manichean thing, though? Like, I think there are significant ethical and environmental issues with raising animals for human consumption, but I’m a vegetarian, but not a vegan – but I do only buy the most-expensive, humane/pasture-raised/etc eggs – but I don’t buy things made out of leather – but I do have a leather belt someone got me as a gift a couple years ago that I occasionally wear…
So again speaking personally, if folks who are more open to and interested in using gen AI to make games, run events, review and criticize them, think about ways to minimize the impact of the issues raised above, and surface the best examples, I’d be open to playing and reviewing them! My views are the product of my experiences, of course, and the fact that there really haven’t been strong games using gen AI text over the last three years weighs heavily in them – if that changed, my sense of the value of these tools, and what competition rules are appropriate, might well change.
The stuff I outlined in the first sentence of the previous paragraph is a lot of work, admittedly. But again, after three years, I feel like it’s past time to talk about the hypothetical upsides of these tools: someone is going to need to do the work of establishing those upsides. And the drift of the poll and this thread, as I read it, is that the Spring Thing community is not volunteering for that work (I certainly am not!)
Mike, I know how much heart and work is in your reviews and I can fully follow your thoughts.
It is not that I do not see a potential problem here, in the end it is just about the question: is AI strictly prohibited or is a „labeling approach“ sufficient? I would have full understanding for anyone who doesn’t want to play AI stuff, because of quality concerns, because of ethical concerns or simply because of personal preference.
But perhaps others have a different view on the matter. So, it is about permitting choice.
I think–I can’t be sure–that this is because the original poster did not choose to consider that option. He’s a thoughtful person, I’m sure he made the poll with care and didn’t forget about labeling things.
I don’t want to camp out in this thread so this will hopefully be my last post here, but there’s a lot of talk about people being excluded or shut out. I think this says a lot about the state of the humanities today. Nobody who can’t run a marathon, for instance, says they’ve been “shut out.” If someone wants to build a rollercoaster without engineering knowledge, the safety inspector hasn’t “shut them out.” If I try to enter a juggling competition when I can’t juggle, nobody has shut me out. I can’t do what is required. If I want to practice medicine out of the trunk of my car… et cetera and so forth.
Nobody would say any of those things. It wouldn’t even occur. But art and writing are treated as disposable skills. It doesn’t matter what anyone has worked to learn or do. What has been proposed is an event featuring handcrafted art, and some responses are “I can’t make handcrafted art.” Why are writing and art so different from practicing medicine or juggling? They are skills and abilities that people spend time–sometimes years of life–honing. The event is simply what it is.
There are events throughout the year. Nobody is discouraging anyone from using AI or entering other events. In fact, I hope people enjoy their AI experiences to the fullest! This is a question about one event, a question asked by the organizer, who asked the question that he meant to ask.
Exactly. And some competitions have rules that disallow parser games, while others only allow parser games, and some allow all types of IF (like Spring Thing!).
Right, but it’s not clear to me how a personal project that, as you say, follows the author’s own ideas and imaginations would benefit from pictures made by an AI. (But that’s a more principled discussion than I think this thread needs.)
I definitely did not perceive the missing option as intentional. This whole thread is about discussion and exchange of opinions. If my posts looked like I sensed some foul play in the poll, that was not intentional!
SpringThing is running for quite some time now and I enjoy it every single time, although I have only enough time for a handful of entries often. The proposed AI rules explicitly change the group of allowed participants for this special competition. I like the competition. That is why I am discussing at all and not simply moving away to some other comp.
But I surrender , I will stop it here. I hope I made my worries clear without offending anyone.
The average file size is more the issue. There’s already a 100 MB size limit, but if everybody started submitting 100 MB games there could be a problem, even though one 100 MB game isn’t a problem per se.
Yes, please! I really want to experiment with LLM APIs. I’ll happily declare it everywhere. I think the idea is really cool and can push the boundaries of IF if done well.
I think the existing submission requirements basically already gatekeep away trash spam submissions. You have to declare intent and then submit in a separate process. It’s not an easy button push which is what AI spammers gravitate towards. On top of this it’s in a niche community which gets low traffic. Maybe someone might be super dedicated but from my experience doing game jams even just having to enter a few words about your game filters out a large chunk of the spam submissions on itch, and that’s a much easier submission process.
I don’t think creatives want AI. I think tech companies and billionaires want AI.
I look up to many talented writers, artists, and voice actors, who have put years of effort into their craft. They want nothing to do with AI. It’s being used as a means to cut costs and replace them by higher-ups. That’s why writers and voice actors have strikes to negotiate that they cannot have their work cloned and reproduced.
If I just made Google Gemini write a game for me, it would be a waste. It wouldn’t be a reflection of my skill as an author. It wouldn’t have any ideas that I came up with. I wouldn’t want anyone to review it because their feedback isn’t assessing anything I’ve done.
And I don’t want to play AI-generated games for that same reason: they’re being pumped out super fast for the sake of having content. No human thought or effort was put into it, so why would I use my brain playing it?
Most of the “AI tool” submissions and advertisements we get are honestly suspicious. It never comes from people within the community. It’s always like “yeah, you could play a human written game, but wouldn’t you rather have Microsoft Copilot make the game as you play?” And I read a few replies and everyone is speaking from an IF insider perspective, saying why it doesn’t work and why it appeals to no one.
If I wanted to consume faceless slop by myself without sharing it, I’d use AI.
And the result would be worse than what you could have made on your own, even with no prior visual art experience. A GenAI makes an image that pretends to be a good one, but it’s all a surface-level and myopic understanding of visual art, as well as a misinformed understanding of how an audience perceives visual art; it echoes more the careless, shallow judgement of a billionaire CEO, than an art community.
I am 100% serious when I tell you that I would rather see a 3-color arrangement of shapes that you created in MS-Paint in an hour, than some shallow mimicry of a thousand professional works smashed and blurred together with a meaningless statistical algorithm.
I will also note that when it was implemented it got quite a bit of pushback, so seeing it put forward as the compromise everyone is happy with is… surprising.
, I will stop it here. I hope I made my worries clear without offending anyone.