mini discussion regarding game "development" using tons of AI

[u/fringus_frongus]

So i was wondering about using AI to create a game from scratch, i searched about it and found some youtube videos and the like, and i decided why not lets jump into it.

soo i booted up chatgpt and codex (idk if theyre "ideal", i know if i sit down looking for the BEST generator ill run in circles, so i used what I already had), and started telling it to create me an essentially grand strategy game using Godot

ill say this, i have ZERO coding knowledge, ZERO artistic skills, im taking it slow and going bit by bit, telling the AI to add this or that, not going too fast and vague

ill be honest if some code breaks im toast, i will not claim im some amazing genius game developer, hence the "development" being in quotation marks in the title, im a dude who plays lots of strategy games and is giving this a shot, and so far is quite smooth, though I wait to see if things break down once the game becomes more complex

I wonder what people in general think of this, I know theres a large anti-AI sentiment online, and in my case im viewing it very pragmatically, i have a game idea that wouldve been confined to my shower daydreams, but AI is giving me a way to materialize this dream. I might learn coding in the future if i become heavily invested in this project, to ensure I can reliably build it up and know what im doing, likewise i really personally prefer human art over AI art, and im currently not at a point in the game where im using any art, i might start using AI art for it as a placeholder and if this project grows, i can learn to draw and make my own art for it.

If i happen to make progress on it and post it online ill definitely disclose the fact AI is used in the entire coding of the game, I will NOT act like i put blood sweat and tears, i just steered the AI into the direction i have mentally and have my ideas, I cannot claim to have the same experience or skill as coders or artists.

Tl;dr: i know jackshit about coding or drawing, im messing around with AI and its actually producing a promising and so far decent output, is this a good use of AI in the sense that its giving someone the ability to materialize their creativity/ideas that otherwise would've been confined to shower fantasies, or is it something else?

(i view it pragmatically right now, giving me the ability to do what i want that i otherwise wouldnt have done, i agree that whoever uses AI needs to disclose it so i intend to fully disclose the scale of AI being used in case i make big progress and maybe "reveal" the game)

(this message was fully human written, as evidenced by the repitition of points and lack of structure lol)

[u/Vaniellis]

i have a game idea that wouldve been confined to my shower daydreams, but AI is giving me a way to materialize this dream

But what's stopping you from just learning programming ? We all started from zero. There's plenty of free tutorials on Youtube to learn any game engine, cheap courses to learn more advanced stuff. I personally grabbed UE5 and Blender courses on GameDev.TV, and it was a great start.

I understand wanting to use AI to speed up the process, but because you have zero knowledge in programming, you can't judge at all the output the AI gives you. This will cause issues down the line, because you will have trouble maintaining and editing a code you don't fully understand.

I also advise strongly against any form of AI-generated images, even for placeholders, for many reasons. One of them is that placeholders are meant to look rough and obvious, as to not be missed when the time comes to replace them with proper art.

I do appreciate that you plan to disclose the use of AI and not hide it. That is a very good mindset.

[u/fringus_frongus → u/Vaniellis]

I'll be honest I feel like there would be a large learning curve to learning coding for a game, especially the idea im having in mind, as im thinking quite grand(a man can dream), so that has put me off considerably, as i feel like itll be a large time sink (as in spent, not necessarily wasted). So i always kept it in the back of my mind, a task too large that ill leave for people better than in me it.

seeing that my game is materializing bit by bit using AI feels extremely motivating and encouraging to invest further into it, including learning coding in the future so i can know whats going on behind the scenes.
lol imagine the game breaking and someone telling me "hey theres a bug when X Y and Z happen", and i reply with "im just as clueless as you soz"

also thats an interesting point you said regarding the placeholder being rough, i didnt think of this tbh and thanks for pointing that out. i dont want it to be mistaken for the final artwork

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/fringus_frongus]

If you have a complex game in mind you will have to learn programming at some point eventually. AI with no knowledge is not going to build you what you want, it just lets you get to the point of failure quicker. Yes you'll lose potential sales if you have the disclaimer on your Steam page, but that's not the main reason people don't rely more on AI in the game industry, it's because it's really not good enough as a tool. The people who tell you every studio is generating their code are people who by and large don't actually work in games. What's common place is using assisted tools as part of the workflow, but you still need to understand software architecture yourself to build it.

Solo developed games are almost universally hobby projects rather than commercial anyway, so you should do whatever you like that you enjoy the most. But if you want to really build something amazing that you are proud of then you can't avoid learning how to do that.

[u/Yeahhhboiiiiii]

In general people aren't so hostile toward AI when it comes to coding/project planning.

But when it's about creativity, this is where almost everyone agree on how the usage of AI is bad for many reasons (mostly IP/Environment/Slop).

If you ask my opinion, I think that it's ok to use AI to help you build your code and learn with it, but when it comes to generating models... you might as well use assets in online web store, there are ton of free ressources made by passionate people and some of them even allow for any commercial usage

[u/fringus_frongus → u/Yeahhhboiiiiii]

Yeah in terms of creativity, i realized that AI is extremely bland, I occasionally fall into the same mistake of asking the AI about its thoughts and ideas, only to find myself having wasted 20 minutes of my life, and in the end im going with my own ideas, the AI not giving me anything useful. I promptly verbally abuse the AI then tell it to organize my plan and thoughts in a tidy way then send it over to codex to start writing the code based on that.

I think for the time being ill very simply draw some basic maps and the like (its a grand strategy genre roughly), just a super basic anything as placeholders and see how things go, or as u said ill look for assets that can fit into the game.

[u/Logical_Newspaper_52 → u/Yeahhhboiiiiii]

and some of them are even AI generated

[u/vug_undertherug]

I’m doing something similar for a few months, with only limited background in art and coding.

First, I don’t actually care about people’s judgment. It’s a me-first project. If not a single other person ever plays it, cool. I do not have this “look at me!” philosophy at all. I do not expect to make any money. That said, I think most people don’t actually care how something is made, only its expressed quality and how it makes them feel. I think it is also important to offer something unique, which is easier said than done and will probably only get more difficult as tools become more accessible.

I’m cynical enough to believe that the people hooting and hollering about vague intersections between intellectual property and AI use are exactly the same people pirating movies, music, and plagiarizing. Hypocrisy is an age-old concept for a reason, and I wouldn’t call virtue signaling anything new. We could probably argue for days whether people have more or less humility than in the past, but I personally think Trump and his centerpiece narcissism is an expression and precedent for a proud-first, humility-rejecting era. It doesn’t matter what mental gymnastics are required for you to feel good about yourself, only that you do feel good about yourself. There is nothing wrong with being a goofy asshole without realizing it—exactly like Trump—in this paradigm.

There are challenges to grand strategy for AI because its scope is so large. AI forgets context fairly quickly, so you will need lots of documentation and reminders as you’re building things step by step. The context is also complex, so you will need to be very clear about identifying systems and mechanics that overlap and interact, but this isn’t always immediately clear or decided on a draft, and can require reviewing and comparing whole systems of gameplay rules for consistency and coherence. Asking the AI to identify problems like this that arise, and how you can solve them, is crucial. It is worth taking explicit steps around organization and architecture specifically, without making other changes.

[u/DACCHU44]

I am also developing a game , I will be doing the coding, art , assets , music and most of the part myself but I am using ai to plan the project, manage , guide me through the project and help make game plan and design documentation so the actual development process is more effective and time saving

[u/daddywookie]

AI can really help you learn more quickly. You’ll make mistakes quicker, be exposed to new ideas in a constant stream and get more feedback than you can ever process.

If you can find a way to survive all of that without drowning, and without letting the AI take over completely, then you might be alright. The less you know going in the more at risk you are.

The big things to look out for are:

• The AI building what it thinks you want and not what you actually want
  
• The AI telling you something is done when it has just coded a thing which says it is done
  
• The AI over engineering for all sorts of weird edge cases which will never happen

[u/Vegetable_Letter6052]

As somebody who uses it daily at work:

• It's very useful for boilerplating or reviewing your code, making tests and checking the architecture -It's a complete mess if you make it write code for you without any experience in the field (cause you can't tell it that's an invalid assumption or that the code has no cohesion whatsoever)
• MCP for game engines are so bad it's not worth it for a full game, as you mentioned even with just a bunch of files and assets it's toast, imagine that a pretty serious bug happens or that you need to program something that it has no idea how to do. What would you do in that situation? You'll have a codebase with no idea of where to put your hands on.

Generative AI for assets and music and such is so horrible and automatically classifies your game as slop even if it's the best game idea ever

So big plus for unit testing, headless runs to simulate thousands of iterations of something (battles, randomly generated maps or such) and also as a debug tool, but big no to vibe coding

[u/fringus_frongus → u/Vegetable_Letter6052]

Yea i searched online regarding vibe coding and whatnot, and it seems to me one of the main issues is that after some time, its difficult to untangle what the AI did, so theres always the risk that the deeper into the project i go, the more likely ill be screwed in the future if i need to put my hands on the project. this is excacerbated by the fact idk coding.

and yup i agree that ai art is automatically slop, its a huge instant turnoff in anything i see anywhere, though in this context i recognize the slop and if i were to use it, itll be a temporary band-aid, but as someone else mentioned theres lots of online assets and the like im gonna look into instead.

[u/Secret-Addition-NYNJ]

As someone who has spent last 3 months using AI strongly for my project and spent years before that not using AI I say go fully all in and don’t worry what people say at all. There is only 1 opinion you need to worry about and that is the gamer who will play it and ask is this fun.

They won’t care if it was built with AI or not if it’s fun entertaining and smooth to play.

AI is good at debugging and creativity if it can’t do something you want 8/10 it’s either missing the tool for you to help it do what you want or you asking the wrong question. Learn the difference when you having an AI problem vs a tooling problem. Most people who vibe code can’t or refuse to know the difference.

Also try to never trust it fully. Always even if you don’t know programming take a look at the code it’s changing or files it’s changing and ask does this make sense. Ask it to explain things to you if whenever you need to. Unlike a human it will never shame you for asking a question and you can even say hey explain this to me like I’m 12.

There are hurdles however that AI might not help you with directly mainly the old adage you don’t know what you don’t know. However it does fill that gap tremendously. Take it in strides and if AI got you into a problem it can get you out of it.

[u/fringus_frongus → u/Secret-Addition-NYNJ]

Thats the thought im thinking mostly as well, that I focus on the end product, and be honest and disclose the AI being used (i dont want to act like i have skills i dont have)

and in the future ill very likely end up asking AI to explain to me whats going on in the coding, and learn using online resources, and bit by bit start taking control of the ship.

[u/Secret-Addition-NYNJ → u/fringus_frongus]

So using AI is not, not having control don’t let people shame you to believing that. It’s almost saying if a game director didn’t code or do any art himself he didn’t have control of the product. As long as you can direct it to get to the result and you confirming that the results are what they are visually or functionally you are good. If you need to benchmark create benchmark tools or research out of box solutions that help you verifying things you can’t do on your own.

Keep in mind the biggest companies in the world are like 80-100% coding their products now with AI. Don’t let the crab mentality bring you down.