Aggro Crab Presents, the new publishing label from Peak co-creator and Another Crab's Treasure developer Aggro Crab, has a clear warning for developers: if your pitch contains an ounce of "generative AI slop" it will be punted into the sea.
There has been plenty of spirited conversation around the technology in recent weeks (you can thank Unity and Epic boss Tim Sweeney for that), but why is Aggro Crab Presents taking such a hardline stance?
During a recent conversation with Vertical Slice, Aggro Crab marketing and community lead Paige Wilson says that while the technology might be exciting for some people, it is already negatively impacting the indie scene by taking away jobs from creatives, who she feels are now being supplanted by prompt-hungry LLMs.
We've been making so much cool stuff without the use of [generative AI], we should keep uplifting that," she says.
Wilson notes Aggro Crab Presents is currently piecing together a document that fully explains its stance on generative AI (genAI), because the team expects a lot of people will want specifics. The plan, we're told, is to eventually make that document public.
Until then, she warns that if you're coming into the pitching process with the intention of seeing how far you can push the studio's limits with regards to genAI, then you were probably never going to be a good fit.
"That's just how we're going with it for now. We we love creatives and we've been [making games] for so long without genAI, so I think we'll be good without."
Aggro Crab's head of publishing Corey Warning says genAI is an instant "turn off" because it shows a complete disregard for creative expression. He claims the technology sacrifices the "human element" for convenience and essentially nullifies the "whole point of creating art in general."
"When you hand [creativity] off to the algorithm, I don't think that's where something really new is ever going to come from. That's the thing that's exciting for us, right? We are getting a mountain of pitches and so far the things that are standing out are the games trying to do something that we've never seen before."
He says Aggro Crab Presents has already received pitches from devs claiming to have only leaned on genAI concept art to get their ideas across, seemingly hoping to exchange transparency for forgiveness. Warning isn't moved.
"10 out of 10 times I would rather see somebody's absolute shitty sketches—because they haven't hired an artist yet—trying to convey their ideas than [have someone] throw it into the machine," he adds.
Wilson could't agree more. "Show me your dogshit MS Paint drawing of your vision," she adds, emphasising those diabolical sketches will convey more passion than "any computer ever could."
Chris is an award-winning reporter with over a decade of experience covering the video game industry. He was formerly news editor at Game Developer and is currently the founder and editor of this resplendent website.
