As much as I agree that there is a difference, it still feels like trying to skirt around the disclosure. Clever way to avoid looking generated at least, I'll give you that. Agree to disagree on this.

I'm very staunchly against using genAI for anything in the games I play, so if I find out a game uses it in any way my opinion of it and its maker quickly shifts negative. If I played a game that doesn't disclose any genAI use and later find out genAI was used, I will go out of my way to avoid any further games made by the same people and leave a negative review citing the genAI use as the primary reason.

In my actual opinion, creatives using genAI to do work in the mediums they don't work in is a betrayal of, and voluntary isolation from, people who should be your peers. I would definitely choose to stop associating with someone I know if they tried to utilize genAI as a part of something creative.

Not everyone has that negative an opinion, or even cares if all the code is generated given they'll never see or know. It's a hard-line stance coming from a need I feel to oppose genAI regardless of what it's generating. Generated code is not something that's particularly enforceable when it comes to disclosure, anyway.

If you're following the rules as written then I guess you're welcome to not disclose genAI use and all I can do is cope.

So, based on how you describe it, you're trying to avoid having to make a required disclosure by generating code that makes the visuals rather than generating the visuals directly? To put it in the way I see it: you're willfully trying to find and abuse a loophole in the disclosure policy because you know having that disclosure makes your game less desirable to a potential audience?

This is why there's very little trust for anyone who uses genAI. Rather than recognize that its use is creatively bankrupt, ethically questionable, and disrespectful towards the art form it's emulating, they'll use any little loophole or technicality to justify deceiving their audience.

Respectfully, I get that you have a worthwhile story to tell and are putting a lot of work into the writing, but either make the game with the help of genAI and make the disclosure, or tell the story in a medium using the skills you have without resorting to genAI. Trying to weasel your way out of making the disclosure is, in my opinion, more disrespectful than the low quality spam.

Tunic is very good, just note that it does cross into soulslike a bit. The combat is reminiscent at minimum.

I'm not so much upset as I am curious why one might label friendslop as exclusively bad games. Peak was used for comparison simply because it's a good game in the friendslop genre, in the same vein as CS2 being a good game in the competitive shooter genre. The comparison was being made to point out that direct comparison is futile; one game lacking something the other has doesn't make either better or worse than the other because they're in completely different contexts.

It's part of why I'm growing to loathe friendslop as the name for the genre. As much as people try to insist it isn't an insult, the connotation is that a friendslop game can't be a good game. To which I say, why not?

Just want to drill into this real quick: a game like CS2 is a good game because it's enjoyable to play with strangers, but a game like Peak is a bad game because it isn't as enjoyable with strangers?

Alternatively, a game like CS2 is a good game because it's mechanically well made, but what is it about the mechanics in Peak that make it a bad game?

Take care to not conflate a personal dislike of the genre with objective quality within a context. Liking action movies doesn't mean rom coms are all terrible (no matter how much one might think they could be improved by a sudden firefight at the climax).

I have a friend that I did some EVE work for once. Nothing dangerous or weird, just making tactical warpgate bookmarks; two above, two below, and one just off-grid for every gate in every system in a region. Paid well for something that could be done in a cheap frigate, just tedious as hell. They would then copy the bookmarks and sell them in packs on a per-region basis.

They eventually had ALL of the tactical bookmarks for all of nullsec. As it turns out, that many individual items is problematic for the game to display in a single inventory. Not because of RAM or anything, but the game itself would refuse to show an inventory with too many items and lock you out of accessing anything. I forget the exact reason but it wouldn't crash the game or anything. The number is also exceptionally high, to the point you have to be trying to hit it.

Because EVE Online players are bastards, they also found a way to weaponize it. Luckily, it was considered an unintended exploit so I was one of few (willing) victims to it. To this day, they have to warn people buying their complete bookmark packs that they can unintentionally brick their inventory unless they follow the directions they give to work around it.