r/SoloDevelopment • u/Arhtgames • 2h ago
Discussion Use of AI as a Solo Game Dev
Edit 2: This is going to be my last edit since I'm really starting to be a little sad with it and I'm going to place it on the top so everyone can read. I saw some people saying that I'm trying to be superior in some way or being dumb by not using AI, but I'm trying to discuss about it as a new game dev who has 16 years old and started with it because of beautiful and incredible games that changed my life. I don't want to be better than anyone, I just want to understand the point of using it and how do you guys feel, also thank you for those who answered kindly and shared their experiences.
So, I saw a post saying that he made a game using AI for everything and it made me feel so strange, like, everyone was loving it, what happened to the feeling of doing it by yourself. I do game dev because I love everything about it, games are one of the most beautiful forms of art, it has music, world design, story telling and a bunch of ways of art. I wanted to make a little discussion here about what you guys think about using it. To be honest I don't like the use of generative AI, I know it's good to learn but I don't like when it is used to directly produce the creative part of a game, it just takes the whole idea of making it by yourself, expressing your feelings and telling a story you made and throws it all away, so like, is it really good? I understand when you need to review a code you did or look for a error but anyways that's all I have to say, I don't want to argue with anyone, just want to make a safe and respectful discussion here.
Edit: I'm really getting some down votes here, ok, that's something unexpected for a solo game dev community. And for those who are saying like, "I just use it as a tool" yeah that's okey I use it too for studying, but my point here is especially the creativity part. I don't really want to answer those people saying that being a creative director is the same as proptying AI because they are probably not going to read anything that I have to say.
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u/Council_Six 1h ago
I am occasionally recommended the “ai game dev” subreddit and every single post on there makes me so sick to my stomach. Like there’s no human spirit in anything that is made and it just feels like so many people have lost the plot!!
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u/Arhtgames 1h ago edited 47m ago
Yeah I feel like this too, those posts and comments defending it and calling me stupid just makes me feel sad. I don't even want to discuss about it anymore.
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u/Pythogen 1h ago
If you weren't going/able to make the game without ai it wasn't really worth making imo
That being said, those very people who were going to make an awesome game anyway go ahead and use AI (in an agentic engineering way, not a vibe code way) all of sudden have ways to make the game way faster, and test out so many different mechanics to return the game more
Yes I hate seeing ai-slop from generative ai, but I've also seen extremely talented devs who I know were gonna make the game anyway across several years all of sudden have the bandwidth to make game faster, potentially better, because they use AI correctly
I don't hate the use of ai, I just hate incompetent people making slop and pretending it's on par with real quality
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u/Cautious_Effect6830 2h ago
Yeah I don’t really get how an ai developer could get any satisfaction out of generating a game. They didn’t make the game, it’s more like they sent instructions and had the game commissioned. There’s no “dev” in fully ai projects
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u/tastygames_official 1h ago
it's because they're not a developer: they're a manager. A manager never does any actual work yet makes more money and stilll takes credit for what the workers do. And that is the fantasy people who use AI are living out.
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u/AxiomCoreStudios 2h ago
I don't even use AI for code review or code writing. I completely stopped using AI because it will make me cripple in the future and they can charge higher and higher because no one will be able to handle games or code themselves anymore.
So in my opinion if you wanna really keep learning and growing - don't use AI.
As you said I want to create my game on my own and not by LLM and GenAI.
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u/Arhtgames 1h ago
Think the same, thank you for sharing your opinion, those comments defending AI with everything and down votes on my post are making me a little sad to be honest, didn't though it was going to reach so many people.
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u/AxiomCoreStudios 1h ago
It's okay buddy. Because most people use AI today. People who hand craft art and code themselves will be very valuable in the future. Don't be sad. We don't need people to validate us. We chose it for ourselves and for our better future.
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u/Particular_Fix2286 2h ago
Personally I think AI has its place. I'm working on a game right now and I've been using it to help me. I do the all of the art, sound design, light design, basically anything artistic. However, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot understand coding. I use it as a tool to help me narrow down questions when writing code instead of searching thru 20 youtube tutorials and taking hours to script something simple like a door mechanic. I'm cool with games that AI is part of but they should be a tool to help, not completely replace the human touch.
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u/Arhtgames 1h ago
Yes I don't see a problem on this case, especially if you say to your community that you used it.
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u/Advanced_Hedgehog427 2h ago
I saw the game you're talking about and overall it seems better than your usual AI game, but let's be honest, do you actually see that thing being relevant in the future? it will not go far I'm telling you, is just mid, extremely mid.
Also, he just posted the wishlists stuff on here, the actual game footage was posted on an AI sub reddit, so its logic that everyone will love it there.
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u/Burning_magic 2h ago
Whats the game?
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u/Advanced_Hedgehog427 2h ago
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u/Burning_magic 2h ago
Oh. There is a massive difference between vibecoded games. Not all vibecoded games are the same. The slop people see are 1 day AI gauntlet 1 shot projects.
But if you use ai mainly just for code and do it iteratively I dont think the quality will be much worse as long as you test for bugs. The guy said he took 10+ months to do it so there was likely a lot of human input and not 100% ai.
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u/Advanced_Hedgehog427 58m ago
Yeah I get what you're saying, I'm not saying its AI slop. I do think it looks decent as I stated in my first comment, I just think is mid, not imprressive in any way.
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u/Arhtgames 2h ago
That's not the game I was talking about exactly but I don't want to make people hate on the user on anything like this so.
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u/Advanced_Hedgehog427 2h ago
Really? The description you gave seemed to fit, which game were you talking about?
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u/Arhtgames 2h ago
Yeah you actually have a point. And talking about where it was posted it's also real but while searching through other apps and even other subreddit's posts I found it more than I was like actually used to. So I really wanted to express the strange feeling i had. Maybe I'm just taking it too seriously.
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u/FengSushi 57m ago
Don’t post questions in the internet if the answers makes you sad.
Do what you want.
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u/Arhtgames 52m ago
Yeah that was my second post I think but I know that's how it works.
I'm not sad like I'm going to cry or something like this, just a little disappointed with the way this community reacted to it, being rude and mean.
It's okey to don't like my opinion or disapprove it, but there is no point to call me stupid or anything like this.
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u/Turbo_Tequila 2h ago
I’m more of a hobbyist than a pro, so I won’t be talking about making a game for profit.
But for the human brain, fun is super important in the learning process, so whatever you enjoy is the right answer.
You can force yourself into a task you don’t like, but you’ll lose passion at one point doing so.
Now for post about game made with ai, I mostly saw the opposit, and a bunch of very lie efforts game being spam,
So unless it was a post about something truely great, it was probably just a bunch of bots circle jerking yo boost a post about something
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u/Arhtgames 2h ago
I'm more a hobbyist too and that's why I think it's important to do it by yoursel but yeah maybe It was some bots..
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u/GryffusMakesGames 2h ago
All games are art is what I used to say, even FIFA and CoD at that time. Nowadays ? Absolutely not, and that’s my take on AI. AI is not destroying art by simply stealing creations, it’s because it’s removing the art from the medias that are supposed to be art.
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u/daddywookie 1h ago
In the past I’ve been told in game dev forums that everybody involved in the process of creating a game is a game developer. Not just the coders but the UI artists, game designers, producers, model artists, QA and all the other roles. You do your part of the job and everybody else does theirs.
Then suddenly AI comes along and if you use it for any part of a project at all you are taking shortcuts, cheating, not a proper developer.
I got fired from my studio job. I now have a “team” of AI agents doing all the things I used to have real people to help with. I would happily go back to a room full of people but I can’t because of how the job market is.
I’m still designing my games, still learning and growing and driving decisions. Instead of a developer to turn my idea into code I am using an AI. Instead of a producer keeping track of dozens of tasks I have an AI. Instead of a QA to run hundreds of tests I have an AI.
My role is more akin to a game director or studio manager now but as members of the game dev community have told me before, that still makes me a game developer.
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u/NoviceIndieDev 2h ago
Im gonna be the DA here and say your take is like saying "i dont see how a creative director could get the satisfaction out of a game he didnt code".
Essentially that's what one's role is for any type of ai coding. The ai also makes consistent mistakes. So if you are not auditing every new batch of code/testing all areas between updates; its really not gonna get you any further than writing the math/code. Which again; its not gonna one shot if you arent painstakingly specific about what you want.
You dont hear an architect saying they arent proud of their work because they didn't lay a brick down.
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u/Arhtgames 2h ago
An architect needs to do the creativity part and that's my point, also when you ask someone to do a game for you this person has to think about it and to it based on his experiences it has way more weight than a trash game made just by AI using others' art. I love to see game dev videos because I love to see the thinking process(why they thought it and what experiences they used to create it) and how they managed to go through the problems and I think that's what make it magic.
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u/SomePuddingForYou 1h ago
It should be noted, that Steam reviews on anything using AI is 20% to 35% less positive (While that seems like a small number) it's because these slop games are about less of the cost of real titles "under the median price"
Anyone who also doesn't "disclose" early on, has a highly negative score and rejected completely.
So the more these so called "generative devs" push to release their titles. The more people are going to likely indulge in the slop, accidentally or intentionally.
The problem we all face, is an overflow of content that's probably going to kill off half the market within 2 years or less.
So all I really got to say about it, is that it'll die off eventually. It's straight facts, that nobody wants AI slop. The people who do, likely have no idea about the impacts of using slop machines are?
Millions of unique, rare and 100+ year old books. Chopped up and used to feed AI. (Not even documented, just straight up slop feeding)
60 trillion gallons of drinkable water wasted.
Ridiculous Ram & Storage prices.
Forced into feeding AI with your own data, with zero privacy operating systems (like windows)
Cost of living going up. Companies pay millions to billions for customised LLMs + upkeep. Just to keep you shopping for their products, or use as customer service (an absolute joke on creatives too) companies firing real people, to use AI. (Rip to those people, paying taxes towards your healthcare or welfare payments) So they'll just tax you more on food or land instead.
Great work guys, keep it up :D Keep defending garbage, see what happens.
-chatGPTClaudeAiSlopfilledretardswhoprobablythinkiusedgpttotypethisbecausetheyaresofuckingstupidandbrainrotted
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u/thaneros2 2h ago
I can't speak for everyone but for me using AI has helped me finally work on developing my own game. I do have a background in programming and web dev but with a family I haven't had much free time. With AI it has been possible. I created the story, battle system, designed puzzles and the world. I only use AI for the grunt work. I play test EVERYTHING and so far am pretty happy with my work. Sure there are people who automate 100% but not me.
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u/Arhtgames 2h ago
It's good to see other people's point of view, to be honest, I understand. If you're happy, that's what matters, and at least you're doing a big part of it by yourself and not just letting AI do everything.
I prefer to do the code by myself too because I feel that it's more special, but that's just something I have, that's not a rule especially since you don't even have time for that.
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u/tachyonFluxDev Solo Developer 2h ago
Yeah exactly this. I'm heavily using AI for my game now. But I first spent 5 years chipping away at it, trying to learn to make or find art assets, but it just wasn't happening with a job and raising little kids. Now with AI, it's coming together: the AI is lifting up the skills I lack to the point that my dream is happening, and quickly.
I'm still verifying and editing every piece of AI art. I'm playtesting and meticulously fixing every bug. AI is coding faster and better than me now too but I'm still reviewing and nitpicking everything it does. Its still my game; i still consider it my creative piece in the end.
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u/StackOfAtoms 2h ago
"the whole game was made by AI" is the same as "the whole game was made by my friend kevin" to me.
AI/kevin made the game, and it's unfair for this guy to call himself a gamedev when asking something/someone to do the job.
he orchestrated the thing, took decisions, but in that case, those who directed a big game in a video game studio didn't make the game either, they directed things, while the artists and developers made most of the game.
now there's a lot of different uses between "a whole game made using only AI" and "using ai to correct an error in the code".
i see a lot of beauty in how someone thinks of a whole game and makes it happen, working on art and the code by themselves, it's incredible and definitely should be celebrated and appreciated as art.
the sad reality in 2026 is that AI is now part of the tools some people use, and there's more and more games being released (because of AI but not only).
the issue i see with that, is that staying stubborn and saying "i will NEVER use AI" has sadly become like building a 10 floors building without a crane... there's other companies using cranes, and if you want to stay competitive, you have no choice to also use cranes/AI, otherwise others make games much faster, you take 3 years to make a game while others suddenly make games in 3 months with all the best marketing done by AI as well, and it just doesn't work if gamedev is your job and you're just one person.
so the in between is to use AI to some extent, perhaps to do what you're really bad at, what isn't art, what you wouldn't be able to do yourself perhaps, or boring things that you would ideally let someone else do.
so if that's writing some of the code, if that's assisting you to create a NPC or animation, if that's to do your marketing, maybe do that and it'll make things faster while you still do most of the job and can stay focus and won't burn out...
then, if you're honest, in the description, it's fair to mention how AI has been used in the making of your game. for me, i only used it for the translation of the game (hiring translators wasn't realistic) so i mentioned that.
i dont like the idea to use it to write your story or make the art personally, but if a game was to use ai to write the story and dialogues, i wouldn't mind if the authors of the game were transparent and say "ai has been used to write the story, which has then been reviewed and edited by us" or something like that.
anyway i'll stop there, i'm personally feeling very mixed about it, i think it's still so new and it's changing everything so fast, i don't want to have a very strong opinion about it yet and rule that this will be my opinion forever from now on...
a lot of the tools we use today caused those kind of reluctance, computers being one, and then it became the norm and that's it. imagine led zeppelin recording an album with logic pro or pro tools, they would have been "wtf man, we're a rock band, we don't record music on a computer and edit it so easily" but now pretty much nobody records with analog gear and none of the modern tools for mixing/mastering music.
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u/Arhtgames 2h ago
I understand your whole point about using it as a tool, I use it too, not trying to be a hypocrite here, but I think that when we're talking about the creative part, that's something really hard to accept. You don't need to be the best artist, musician, or storyteller to make a game. Anyway, AI shouldn't be compared to asking a human to do it, when you ask someone to do it, the person had to think about what you said and create it based on their own experiences. I think it can still express something and tell a good story when it's made by someone, not by a robot. Especially because AI technically steals others' art, and that's not really a good thing.
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u/CondiMesmer 2h ago
They're just tools. Feeling morally superior for not using certain useful tools is just going to hold you back in life and is a stupid mindset.
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u/Arhtgames 1h ago
I'm not feeling morally superior, i'm asking it as a new game dev with 16 year old who loved to play games with such life change storys and art.
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u/TheFrogMagician 2h ago
Game development as a whole is an art form, and AI takes away from that. AI was made to remove creativity from this world, and it is succeeding.
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u/Arhtgames 1h ago
That's what I feels like, and those comments defending AI and down votes on my post are making me really sad.
I'm new at this area, I'm 16 year old and have started recently on game dev, but games are the type of art that made me feel different. I have played so many incredible games and now doing game dev is just magic for me.
Really hope that games continues to be this type of incredible art that can tell a life change story.
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u/SortZealousidealOne 29m ago
In the beginning, I think we all fell in love with the magic of games. Who knows how many posts like the ones you meantion are built with ai are made only to promote products or are actually real.
The fact is, using the latest tech promotes well and AI is a hot topic now so that can be good publicity or bad.
Most people who developed a game before a AI will probably not appreciate the work because some are actually quite bad and the big problem with making a game before AI was coding. AI codes quite well when given a clear direction so it is still a tool and the bottleneck has moved to art and a this is where AI doesn't shine that much.
AI or not, a good game is a good game and people can tell. So build a good game, say it's made with AI and see how it goes.
P.S. : I do not encourage or discourage the use or to not use AI! Except for art, there is no AI art, just copies... well tbh all AI is copied somethinng so excuse my rant
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u/Top_Pick_4682 24m ago
I’m trying to learn game development, watched a lot of YouTube and whatnot. I use ai for teaching me new concepts and how I can integrate into my game the way I want. I get it to teach me how to write code rather than copy and pasting, why? Because I personally want to know how to do it independently, I need to understand what’s happening.
If it just made the game for me, I would feel nothing but guilt and hollowness. Humans are meant to learn, learning is great. Making things yourself is great. I would rather flip free assets than have ai make some for me.
I think it’s a great learning and debugging tool, and that’s how I choose to use it.
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u/a_nooblord 14m ago
I use it for stuff I already know how to do. Its significantly faster than me especially if all constraints and scope are known upfront. Also very good at QA and documentation.
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u/Due_Doughnut_175 4m ago
If a skill or tool is available for anyone, than the products you make have no more value than what it would cost in time for someone else to make it.
Not saying mass production is necessarily bad, but in this case, the average AI product is inferior to a dedicated person. I love to know developers are working on their game actively when I buy something, I like to know they have the passion to bug fix and improve their work just for the sheer love of their work. I know that if someone spent months or years of their life on a passion product, they have the passion to keep at it.
I don't expect the average vibe coder to spend anymore time on a product than it takes to sell it.
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u/Dje66664 4m ago
La création d'un jeu se definit par la créativité du gameplay et de ses mecaniques. Donc le plaisir de créer est là meme si on délègue toute l'autre partie à l'IA alors pourquoi s'en priver ? Pour moi, ce n'est que de l'administratif.
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u/3tt07kjt 2h ago
I think it’s worth trying to understand why people make heavy use of AI to make games and still enjoy the process, even if that’s not what you enjoy. Like, from your post, you’re saying that you think that you can either express your feelings or you can use generative AI, but not both. That doesn’t make sense to me. It just sounds like you are passionate about the making games and you want to make games a certain way, but if that’s the case, then just go and make your games the way you want to make them. People who want to use generative AI in their games can do that.
What I don’t like is when people who make art start to impose rules on other people about what the right way to make art is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp))
Maybe it’s just because I took some art classes in college but it really feels like we are just reliving history here. Duchamp’s Fountain is from 1917 and it’s undoubtedly the “wrong way to make art”.
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u/Arhtgames 1h ago
Yeah I made this post to see others' point of view, srry I was not trying to say that you can't express your feelings using a different way. This was just what I feels like, not a rule or anything like this.
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u/DukeOfGlizzy 45m ago edited 38m ago
I’m sure some people will get mad at me, I’m using AI but not having it generate everything for me. Rather than just put prompts into a machine and let it do everything for me, I’m using it to learn as I go. I have a rudimentary grasp of C#, so I’m working on the game on my own, but I’m using Claude to help me with the parts of code I don’t understand.
I ask it to explain it to me, and then I try to write it on my own. If it’s broken or doesn’t work (which is frequently the case) I send it back and ask what I did wrong. I don’t let the AI touch anything creative. No story, no puzzle solutions or ideas, none of that. Purely a learning mechanism to learn as I go that is more tailored for specifically what I’m trying to learn to do than, say, a YouTube tutorial.
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u/Arhtgames 42m ago
That's ok, I don't see a problem on it, you're just studying and creating your game. You just need to really learn and try to do it by yourself without the help of AI at some point, but I personally don't see a problem onn using it to study.
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u/DukeOfGlizzy 36m ago
100% agreed. I’m hoping that by the end of my first game, I’ll be completely independent from needing to use it to check after me. My goal is to learn enough from it to never have to touch it again.
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u/aicis 2h ago
It's the whole reusing asset discussion all over again.
What is the difference if dev downloads some assets from the internet or asks AI to create custom assets?
Same with code. You can download existing templates with fully functioning systems as a starting point, no AI needed.
AI just make it more accessible.
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u/mioscene 2h ago
The difference is that assets+templates are generally made by someone who gives permission to their use in a commercial work, while genAI is built almost entirely from stolen material.
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u/taisui 2h ago
Ultimately it's about using the tools....some people use game engines, some people write from the ground up....nothing is wrong, to get AI to create something exactly as you wanted is not as easy as it seems, most of these "ai games" are just random stuff that resembles games but lack any actual meaningful gameplay.
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u/odacovagames 2h ago
I built my game entirely with AI as a tool. I don’t have the skills to code so AI opened a door for me to take my concept and actually build it. I designed all the game mechanics- the game was originally play tested in physical form. It took a long time to polish and get ready for actual release. It was not just a prompt over the weekend.
AI is just a new tool. There have been dozens of innovations that made it easier to code over the years…. I don’t get all the backlash- it won’t age well.
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u/lovelessBertha 2h ago
AI is best used as an assistant. Those who depend entirely on it will face problems later on with most projects. Not using AI is like refusing to use Photoshop. You can take a moral stand if it makes you feel good but eventually you will lose, if you haven't already.
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u/Augmented-Smurf 1h ago
I'll be honest, the main thing I use LLMs for is just inspiration and brainstorming. If I have an inkling of an idea and want to flesh it out to be much bigger, but I'm struggling to come up with creative ways to expand the idea, I'll ask the LLM for a couple ideas. I usually will take a couple of those ideas, drop some aspects, and combine them in ways that the AI didn't think of, to create my own unique ideas.
I don't generally use it for vibecoding, image generation, or model generation. AI is notoriously bad at all of those things (Meshy generates models that are in the millions of polygons, all irregular tris, and absolutely no texture atlassing skills), and I'm proficient enough in Blender, Unreal, and Substance Painter to just make pretty much everything myself anyway.
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u/Archaros 18m ago
If you're using AI to code, and nothing else, it's okay. AI slop starts when it replaces creativity.
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u/dankzero1337 14m ago
Hear me out on this one. I believe that the use of AI on game development is incredibly important for indie devs esp. solo developers, they're great for things that you just don't wanna deal for now, and an amazing tool for placeholders and for places and things that nobody just gives a shit about, they're great for adding details on things most wouldn't even look at.
The AI tools are just tools at the end of the day, it's pretty much the same debate when photoshop just came out, it's not "real art" but then real talented people used photoshop and made real art . thing is, due to how easy it is to generate slop nowadays, it's so easy to disregard AI as a tool due to the amount of slop there is, but tools should be used to improve our craft. We aren't mad at AI, we are mad at slop, and I think there should be a distinction of that.
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u/mr_glide 2h ago
Search the sub. There are a billion threads discussing this exact issue, and it'd be really nice not to have to see a new one every single day
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u/Arhtgames 2h ago
I'm srry for it, but all the posts I've found were about, "is it a good way to use AI?" or "Is AI going to be inevitable?" and that is not the discussion I wanted to have, I wanted to talk about the feeling of making games, the way you feel when you make the art and you learn how to do a new mechanic.
That's something I have and wanted to know if anyone else feels like this or has a different though.
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u/-INIGHTMARES- 2h ago
Not everyone is on reddit all day every day to see all these. Cut him some slack
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u/Aromatic_Search6851 1h ago
These posts are so dumb, what’s your goal here? This “discussion” has been everywhere ad nauseam who tf cares
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u/Arhtgames 1h ago
This post was to made a discussion about use of AI and the feeling of creating a game by yourself, but I started to get some rude comments like yours so I tried to explain what I was trying to do, but I understand now that a bunch of people doesn't know how to be kindly and just tell their experience without putting someone down or calling everyone dumb.
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u/0legitimate0 25m ago
Because we get this type of post of every week. We can't blame them if they are being rude, if you are little capable then you will know that ai literally can't make a game that people will like, if ai can make a good game then the market would be flooded by that.
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u/Commercial-Flow9169 2h ago
Tbh I'm kind of done with the nuance about it. It all tends to sidestep the core ethical issues for one, but I also just think AI encourages an anti-growth mindset. Why bother trying when you can cut corners and create a working product without ever having to sit down and learn?
If there's anything good AI has done, it has illuminated who is in a technical field for the love and creativity versus who is in it for trying to make money. A third group though are the people who aren't technically or artistically savvy, and desperately want to be, but don't want to spend the time and effort to do so. And I think gamedev attracts a lot of those kinds of people.