Post by arukagiri in Jam Rules! (README.txt)

Boss Rush Jam 2025 ($4500 Prize Pool!!!) 🚨🚨🚨 » Community

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So after being disqualified for using AI to generate a pixel-art image for a cut-scene, which was a totally fair decision and we should have read this page extensively before even thinking of doing it, I do have to say that I'm detecting some double standards in rule enforcing.

An excerpt of the rule for relevance:

17. No use of AI-generated content. Only licensed material is allowed in this jam.

Apparently the spirit of the rule is to "encourage the non-replacement of roles":

We don't encourage replacing roles or people with AI though so if it's clear it is AI replacing a role it's against the spirit of the rule.

This was in response to someone asking about web art (css, html and js) generated through code above, which was one of the examples of the grey area that is allowing copilot and AI code.

Again, I agree with not allowing AI assets, but if the spirit of the rule is to not replace a role, then what about replacing a developer? I'm pretty sure there are some models capable of producing the whole code for a decent game just tweaking it enough to adapt it to the theme. And let's not forget that license infringements by AI is done outside art and music too, code being public doesn't mean it can be trained with as it might infringe open source licenses, a long-standing debate by now. May be that license infringement is just another excuse for this rule, as AI fed with owned materials seem to not be allowed as well. Never mind the fact that CSS AI art being allowed in theory just because it is code-generated, which is quite the stretch when one can very easily translate a pixel-art image to CSS.

I hope this can be taken into consideration for future jams and don't allow such gray areas and fully enforce the non use of AI as a whole, I know is harder to detect in code and would mean taking code submissions alongside the distributables, but I think it's only fair. More so this being a trigger-happy disqualification rule, our game was almost immediately disqualified (meaning no user ratings at all,) whereas I have been reporting games for clearly going against rules 1 and 4 and not seeing much action taken. And again, I agree with the rule and I think the enforcement is fair, just a little disappointed that coding is not seen in the same light as art and there is clear bias in rule enforcement.

Thanks for reading and the best of luck with the rest of the jam.

🕹️swagshaw7 hours ago (1 edit)

Been chewing on this a bit, I kind of wish you just reached out to us personally.

But I hear you.

I am sorry we're falling short.

There are a lot of reasons we don't want AI used, and while it might be lower on the list, we currently hold it as a high priority. I only referenced one reason in the case you brought up, but there are a few other reasons we don't allow it as well. If nothing else, we want to ensure we're respecting our community, including our artists.

But you make a fair point about AI code and programmers.

We're open to ways to moderate AI code properly. Still, it isn't as feasible to moderate AI code as AI art -- as AI art is a visual component, whereas moderating AI code would require us to look through and moderate the code of hundreds of entrants without any clear sign of AI code being detectable anyways. And many of programmers are using something like co-pilot as an industry standard.

We haven't seen any examples of AI generating full-fledged games on its own; while we could have ruled on the CSS differently it wasn't something that was replacing an artist as a programmer wouldn't use CSS usually-- we saw it as a programmer using code.

We have looked at the games you've reported, and we do our best to make rulings private so people retain their anonymous reports. We do want to be as lenient as possible in subjective cases with a jam this size. The point is people are making games, and we do want to encourage that. That said, in objectively easy-to-detect cases -- for example, using AI art assets, having NSFW content, or being made before the jam -- leniency isn't as required to make rulings.

We're human and we're doing our best.

We are simply two guys navigating 8k members and 800+ games and we won't be perfect.

But we'll do our best to improve.

arukagiri5 hours ago

Fair response, at least it shows you are giving it a proper thought, I know it must be quite complicated navigating all this and keeping everyone happy. I didn't intend to throw shade at your effort, I just felt you might be missing one perspective that could be constructive to hear.

While I value trying to keep the human factor, from my pov the jam is big enough to warrant a not so subjective judgement system, you could easily overload yourselves just by discussing every minor detail and considering all the possibilities on all cases. You said it, only two people for 800+ entries, more so a reason to be clean-cut with the rules.

Obviously there is no right or wrong on how to do this, but definitely as someone who spent almost three weeks working just to get insta-dqed for going against one rule, it did feel a bit unfair that a skating game where there is no other character but the player and was clearly made for another jam with absolute no overlap with the spirit and theme for this one still gets the pass to get ratings. I was honestly saddened just because we weren't able to receive as much feedback from people, forget prizes, we knew we weren't going to hit top 30 anyways.

Don't feel too discouraged from my comments though, I don't mean to attack you nor make you feel bad. I think you were already quite receptive and I believe this discussion served its purpose, hope it sparked some good thought.

Good luck on the next ones

itch.io

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