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Excommunicated devs making games with AI

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Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#41

Post by AllegedAlec »

makerofthings wrote: post #29
voidfunc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, just stop being silly. Being a game dev means you're building games which means you're thinking about the mechanics of the game and what makes something fun to play. The programming is not "game dev" and offloading it to an AI agent doesn't make someone any less of a game dev.

Well as long as they keep labelling it as AI so I can avoid buying it, we’re all good.

Totally! I'm sick of not being able to see what tools they use. In fact, I feel that we should also start tagging devs that use an IDE instead of properly coding games in notepad.

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#42

Post by sampullman »

makerofthings wrote: post #29
voidfunc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, just stop being silly. Being a game dev means you're building games which means you're thinking about the mechanics of the game and what makes something fun to play. The programming is not "game dev" and offloading it to an AI agent doesn't make someone any less of a game dev.

Well as long as they keep labelling it as AI so I can avoid buying it, we’re all good.

If you buy a game and can't tell it's made with AI, isn't that just as good?

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#43

Post by peteforde »

bilekas wrote: post #36

I think the article is being s bit disingenuous. The real problem is triple A developers and publishers pushing for it to replace a not insignificant amount of creative work. While still over charging everyone and scalpling every $ from everyone with micro transactions and game mechanics that need xp boosters.

What you are describing is a completely different set of problems.

They are both real and coexist, often at the same time.

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#44

Post by peteforde »

tezza wrote: post #33

My latest game BossBattle[1] (html5, have a play) uses AI for graphics, some strobe effects, a C64 loading screen shader. I have decided to lean in to it and I will document all the places I use AI in the game on my blog[2]. Not everything works, notably 3D assets[3] and sound effects. There is a lot of human content… i paid for a lot out of my own pocket and have limited budget. It started in 2021 before chatgpt. LL…

I commend you for being willing to share.

The "able to make the X" thing is something haters love to ignore.

Best of luck with your beta!

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#45

Post by tototrains »

Arainach wrote: post #16
tototrains wrote: post #12

I am so bullish on this. AI is obliterating the barriers to game production for the next generation. Will this be the next flash revolution? Or is the underlying 'brainrot' actually destructive to creative potential? I am optimistic about the human spirit in this regard. Making games with AI will be cool when the games are cool, and the only barrier is design.

>Or is the underlying 'brainrot' actually destructive to creative potential? Creativity comes from constraints. Writing code hasn't been the hard part since the 90s. Deciding which things make for a good game and are worth spending your limited time on is where fun comes from. AI makes it easy to spit things out, but it doesn't make things fun or good at all.

Writing code is not the hard part if you're a developer.

Otherwise it's an insurmountable barrier.

I think it's a bit like writing a novel.

Everyone's got a novel in them, but you absolutely need to know how to write to get it out. Unless you can dictate it but then... you could also hire a developer.

Those without the resources to hire a developer, without the years of education and practise to code at any level of proficiency, can now realize some form of their ideas.

I just logically can't see how the increased accessibility and output won't increase the amount of interesting games, even if 99% are slop (so is fan fiction, let them enjoy it).

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1414/

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#47

Post by tototrains »

stale2002 wrote: post #37
makerofthings wrote: post #18

Having AI generate a game for you no more makes you a game dev than ordering a happy meal makes you a chef.

Call it whatever you want, the game wouldn't exist without them doing something about it. And because they did something about achieving their vision other people get to play the game. How about we just call these people the game Producers instead. Thats what a producer does anyway right? They make decisions of how the game is built, what goes into it, ect, ect, ect.

Exactly. The artist is in their output.

Paul McCartney can't read music or speak in theory, is he not a musician?

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#48

Post by tototrains »

peteforde wrote: post #21
tototrains wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've build 10+ games which I am ashamed to show :) Straight JS/html/css front-end with zero dependencies works well. Ask for a node.js backend and can be instantly deployed as client/server or straight to html - multiplayer feels trivial. C# Monogame works well for something heavier. You can actually edit Unity scenes directly using the LLM as they're a readable text file which works ok, but Unity is bloatware when y…

I've had my own rollercoaster relationship with Unity over the past decade, but telling people to roll their own game engine so that they can finally make a game is almost universally terrible advice. People who want to build game engines should build game engines; people who want to build games should absolutely use Unity, Unreal or Godot in no particular order. It's no different than needing to build a web framewor…

Problems I've had with unity in my last 3 installs. All LTS default installations on windows. (I have delivered professional projects in Unity in the past):

1. Inspector for lists/arrays works once, crashes editor, must be restarted each time.

2. Race conditions in the basic animator functionality making animation events useless, killed a project because we couldn't edit the underlying code, didn't have time to redo animator-based functionality which should have worked in theory.

3. Segfaults in compiler -> 6 hours of debugging, gave up, still can't build reliably.

Each of these killed the workflow and therefore the ability to deliver the project dead, and were completely out of my control.

Vibe code your engine, at least you'll die on your own terms.

Unity is also just a fundamentally hostile organization waiting to pull the rug, as evidenced by their past behaviour.

Do not build your castle on someone else's land.

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#49

Post by domga »

EagnaIonat wrote: post #35

I wanted to create a game (Pre-AI) and thought it would be easy. Turns out it is not at all. Sure you might get lucky with the next Angry bird, but there is a whole range of skills required to make a good game, and actually get people to play it. I even read a couple of books which gave me a better understanding of how out of my depth I was. Books were "Theory of Fun", "Achievement unlocked" and "The art of game desi…

I don’t really think AI would help much with the gaps related to the actual game design. It should allow for faster feature development, adding QoL, etc, but you need the actual game part coming from you.

Re: Excommunicated devs making games with AI

#50

Post by raincole »

peteforde wrote: post #38
raincole wrote: post #27

> Nobody's sharing their work, because they used AI. Really. What a stupid statement. As if AI bros aren't screaming all over the internet telling people their vibe-coded projects. I do use AI for code, but I really don't know why AI users seem to have some sort of victim mentality when there are literally billions of capital stacking on their side.

I strongly disagree. Let me try and change your mind. Let's say that you have been building your passion project; it could be a game, it could be a synth, it could be a mobile app. You were a year into development already when LLMs blew up, and you very quickly realized that you could leverage them to move much, much faster. This allowed you to tackle a long list of features that realistically would have never left t…

Steam has an AI disclaimer now and many games with the disclaimer still sell well. So yeah it's totally victim mentality. The evidence is just right on Steam, but instead of actually looking at the largest market in the gaming world some AI bros chose to fight an imaginary enemy in their minds.

https://www.totallyhuman.io/blog/games-with-ai-disclosures-h...

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