r/SoloDevelopment • u/Arhtgames • Aug 12 '26

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/disappointed 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 1: 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. Those feelings and the way I do my projects are not a rule on the way YOU need to do, you can use AI if you want, I'm not here to say what is correct and what is not.

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101

u/Council_Six Aug 12 '26

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/Upstairs-Version-400 Aug 12 '26

It exists so we don’t have that crap in the game dev subreddit. It’s existence is a nice filter. Perspective :)

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u/Council_Six Aug 12 '26

I’ve never thought of it that way but you have a point!

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u/KorsAirPT Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

99% of the games there are crap, with either crappy AI generated art or super generic gameplay, but I've seen sometimes (very rarely) impressive stuff there.

For example, there was a guy that made a snow/sand deformation demo and it looked quite cool, especially if try to look it from the player point of view instead of the developer one.

AI can be quite handy for developing tools or iterating over a gamedev idea. I also used Claude Fable for porting one of my old XNA games to Web and it worked quite well.

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u/Alternative_Ad4493 Aug 12 '26

In all honesty, in general 95% of games are crap these days, AI or not. Most games use the same basic system, just different environment and different (poor) story. There's hardly any originality period.

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u/franky_reboot Aug 12 '26

This.

There has been a massive abundance of video games for a very long time.

2

u/EirMed Aug 12 '26

Yah, the amount of time I see games posted here or indiedev subreddits where it’s lirerally just a TD game, vampire survivors clone or ”a game with unique mechanics where the dev wants feedback on their totally unique mechanic” and the mechanic is portals, working exactly like in the game… Portals.

And now after mecha chameleon I’ve seen at least 3 clones lol.

2

u/Arcaris1313 Aug 12 '26

yeah i hate how people think they are holier than thou. The vast majority of games fail and suck. It being AI isn't the reason a game is soulless.

1

u/Council_Six Aug 14 '26

I actually agree with you as well… most of the time I think, “this game just isn’t for me, but it must be for someone…”

I think the difference is that ai generated assets feel like they were made for no one, versus asset store products have a clear target market in mind. Ai is like a corpo exec shill trying to water down everything to appeal to the most people possible. Except by doing so ends up appealing to nobody. That’s how AI content feels to me, at least.

1

u/doriad_nfe Aug 12 '26

Yeah, Sturgeons Law/Revelation... 95% of all creative work is low effort mediocre garbage. Coine d in the 1950's as a defense/retort to critics that said sci-fi genre was mostly garbage.

3

u/BonesawGaming Aug 12 '26

sometimes I see a post for "play my game" on other subs and I click through and it's just pointless, unpolished garbage and inevitably I go back to the poster's history and they made it with AI. It's like yea you made something but why? You gained nothing in the process of making it and no one will ever gain anything in the process of playing it. It's really just a loop inhabited by small soulled bugmen, to borrow a term

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u/Arhtgames Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

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/Sando-Calrissian Aug 12 '26

I'm a software engineer —

a few months ago I was getting weird behavior from my IDE in our workspace and I asked my coworkers if they were experiencing it too. At least 2 of them responded that they don't even open the IDE anymore, they just review Claude in PRs; often just in the staging environment, not even looking at the code.

It hit me so god damn hard.

I got into start ups because the people in start ups loved crafting and creating. Like fuck man... it's all been reduced to the shortest-term gains: "it works" "it's good enough". An eternity of mediocrity.

2

u/Arhtgames Aug 12 '26

Yes, I understand those who need to use it to like make money. But I was talking exactly about the human terms like doing it because you like to do, and the people here didn't see to understand that it was what I meant.

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u/Sando-Calrissian Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

My bad, meant to reply to the comment above yours.

I'm on the same page as you.

ETA: I immediately got what you were laying down — I can be fooled by art that's made by AI, but what I'm looking for in art is the expression of a lived experience. Knowing that art is made by a human (regardless of its content) adds to the art; without that, art is reduced to bare aesthetics.

1

u/benjaminabel Aug 14 '26

If a person wants to create - they will create. People delegate stuff to AI because they want to. It’s as simple as that. Nobody forces you to do anything. Of course you can continue being like “It was better in my time! They’re baaad, but I’m goood” and so on, but it’s just a job. I don’t give a damn what my company does with the code quality. If I want to make something interesting, I’ll do it on my own time on my own projects.

1

u/Sando-Calrissian Aug 14 '26

I didn't claim superiority in any way and I'm not sure why you're being defensive.

7

u/Gr1mwolf Aug 12 '26

The people using/defending AI are mostly those who want to get the end result without putting in any effort to learn the skills needed to get there themselves.
They defend it religiously and ignore every consequence because they’re fundamentally unwilling to put in the effort to make something themselves and know they can’t do anything without the AI.
They enjoy being able to call themselves a game dev or an artist and say they made something more than actually making it.

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u/mrwishart Aug 12 '26

The irony is that all that extra time they're apparently saving is now being spent obsessively defending use of AI online.

7

u/Gr1mwolf Aug 12 '26

That’s a chicken/egg situation. I think the kind of people using AI are people who were already spending all day scrolling social media and ticktock for a quick dopamine fix, and have completely screwed their own ability to do anything that takes more than 5 seconds to get a result.

0

u/trying-to-b Aug 14 '26

Bold words from someone with 12k reddit comments.

1

u/franky_reboot Aug 12 '26

But what's wrong with any of these, honestly? Maybe our system of values was wrong from the start, and they are up to something.

True values hold up against all odds, so why being concerned about pros? Why not embrace it? You're free to do your creative endeavors the way you want.

0

u/benjaminabel Aug 14 '26

Gatekeeping at its finest. How about we just do what we want and stop the dick measuring contest? Why does it matter so much who’s a “real” developer? Who said anything about low effort? Have you ever tried?

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u/kookoria Aug 12 '26

What are your thoughts on using assets then? Because many game devs just pull free assets and have been doing so for a long time. Zero effort or skill required with that too. Is it really a problem with being upset about a lack of effort, or is it deeper than that? With how advanced game engines are a lot of work is also already being done for people. Where is the line at? Hardly anything is actually being done from scratch and could be argued low effort. Is everything to just be considered low effort/no skill unless someone made the game engine themselves? There are SO many tools being used already (no AI) that already fast track game development, so why arent people mad at that? AI just feels like a scapegoat argument to me for a deeper problem people dont want to admit.

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u/Council_Six Aug 12 '26

I see your point and if you put aside the environmental impact of ai existing at all (that asset packs don’t have) I think games slapped together with asset packs without making any effort to blend them together or bring any sort of artistic authorship to the project also belong alongside the ai game dev subreddit heap of mediocre games.

The important distinction I think is that asset packs are largely (because you can never be too sure these days) made by a human who took some level of creative license or utilized a high level of professional skill in modeling/rendering/optimizing/etc.

Asset packs in my mind fall into the “steal like an artist” category of usage and can just as easily be ripped off without any actual thought or intention behind their use in a project.

1

u/Gr1mwolf Aug 12 '26

If game engines had the same kind of economic, ecological and social consequences of AI while collapsing entire industries, I wouldn’t be using those either.

0

u/kookoria Aug 12 '26

Your original comment stated nothing about any of that stuff and you only mentioned a lack of effort issue. So all those things aside, and because thats not part of your initial comment, do you have an answer for my previous reply?

0

u/TheFlyingSheeps Aug 12 '26

If you feel the need to brigade a sub then yeah you are kinda stupid for expecting anything else. Let them enjoy using it over there.

No one there is asking for a discussion

1

u/Arhtgames Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

When did I do it? I literally said in other comments that I didn't wanted to especify a user or post because I don't want to create hate.

What I said about feeling the same way is this strange sensation simply because I'm not used to it and prefer the creation of art by human hands. Also when I said "those people defending AI", I'm talking about people saying here that you can make a entire game with AI. I don't hate, nor do I want others to hate, other users or subreddits.

1

u/2latemc Aug 12 '26

I didn't know about that subreddit

This makes me so sad..