‘Party Animals’ Cancels AI Contest After Major Backlash

On May 12, Party Animals, a physics-based multiplayer game from Recreate Games, announced a contest. The “Golden Paw Awards” were going to be a great way to encourage players to create videos and engage with the game in creative ways. The only problem was that the rules required players to use Generative AI as a “core creative tool.” What followed is what you’d expect if you were anyone but Recreate Games, apparently.

The developer explained that the inclusion and requirement of AI were intended to get more people involved, noting that “[their] original goal was to lower the barrier to creation.” With categories like Best Story and Best Creativity, and a $15,000 USD prize for the Golden Paw Trophy, players were meant to create content that uses the Party Animals IP in a positive way. What followed instead was a massive campaign to uninstall the game, review-bomb it on Steam, and lose goodwill among a pretty dedicated online fan base.

Following the announcement, Party Animal‘s official X account, formerly Twitter, decided they wanted to address the issue they observed, which (in their eyes) was not “[communicating] with everyone clearly enough” about the contest. They opened a poll, which gave X users three options: “Cancel the AI Contest,” “Change to non-AI Contest,” and “Keep AI, add non-AI track.” Receiving 57.3%, 34.6%, and 8.1% of the 15,000+ votes, respectively, backlash continued as fans perceived the third option as counterintuitive to the apology that Recreate Games offered.

What major game companies don’t seem to understand is that just because shareholders want AI in games does not mean players do. Shareholders might support the company through investments, but without players, there’s no company to invest in. An unforced error like an AI contest, followed by another slip-up like asking players if you should still do it or not, is sort of baffling to me. Is there nobody in the room or on the team who said maybe it wasn’t a good idea to do this?

Even the team’s final update, where they announced “Effective immediately, the ‘Golden Paw Awards’ event is officially canceled,” misses the mark. Players ran the message through AI chat apps, and many scores on various platforms came back as AI-generated. Even more interestingly, more complaints arose from the pro-AI players, who said this was a “bending of the knee” to non-progressive gamers who can’t accept the inevitability of AI creation in games and art in general.

This is unlikely to be the death of Party Animals, any more than it’s the death of developers trying to shoehorn AI into their games. It’s a weird time to live in, particularly because AI seems to be the technology many want us to accept without questioning or concern. Both responses are valid and necessary, especially in the arts. With so much backlash, I’d like to think the next developer dreaming up an AI project for fans won’t fall into the trap given this result, but we know they will.