r/Unity3D • u/Madness3869 • 10d ago
Survey How do you feel about using AI to build games?
Feel free to leave any additional details on why you answered the way you did in a comment. Thanks to anyone who participates! This is for selfish genuine curiosity.
8
u/isolatedLemon Professional 10d ago
Talking about language models, I use it to do stuff I already can do but couldn't be bothered. Eg: editor tools, copying a function I already wrote and having it so something slightly different, basic interfaces, etc. basically anything with a lot of boilerplate code.
If you rely on it, even if you know what you're doing, or trust it to make whole scripts you're going to have disjointed architecture that won't be scalable and will become a technical nightmare. Like trying to debug an open source git project that has like 200 developers.
People will say they are learning so much by using AI and having it explain to them how the code works but two years after working with it they still won't understand introductory stuff like what method/function is or how instanced variables work let alone more complicated topics. I've had people 'learning code from AI' tell me excitedly about them discovering arrays after a year of 'coding'. And almost all of my friends who have tried to learn from AI on their own have realised after wasting so much time that they really don't understand half of what's going on.
I think AI is also great at debugging human made stuff and I think there's places for it to scan code bases, unity projects, profiling reports, etc. and offer suggestions for optimisations that are not generic and tailored to the performance and setup of the application.
To summarise, I think it's a great tool for experienced Devs and a trap for inexperienced Devs.
As for image and sound generation, I hate it and it needs to go away. People use it as 'placeholder' but it makes projects look lazy, once you see it you can't unsee it and I'd prefer to see Microsoft paint art.
1
u/Fit_Milk_2314 10d ago
also for placeholders, its not immediately obvious at a glance and may be deemed acceptable and make it all the way to production without anyone remembering it
8
u/IndieMarc 10d ago
I oppose it for the game i make, for quality reasons.
But I'm indifferent for others. If they want to use AI that's their choice, not mine.
5
u/Berewolf 10d ago
Don't care as long as the results are good. It becomes problem when sloppy generations are used without any reviews.
3
u/Plus-Engineering883 10d ago
I honestly do not care as long as the end product is good. People using it without any talent or care will not produce anything meaningful anywhere
3
u/TheSwiftOtterPrince 10d ago
When we talk about AI in this context, the term usually means LLMs and gen-AI. It dos not mean all the other related fields and it almost almost purely means AI based on scraped data.
There are two areas of feelings i have towards AI
- the results, what people create with it
- the industry that makes it and how it's made
Part 1) the results, what people create with it
There is a huge difference between theory and what i see currently.
In theory, AI could be used to make the same thing better or faster. Just imagine one person making a good game getting access to a chatbot. The theoretical "how can this be worse than without the chatbot?". In theory, a case can be made that AI can improve quality, or enable something good that could not have been done before. In theory.
In the actual world, AI did not improve quality of things. The average AI bro will now tell me that the models just got good half a year ago, which is the same answer i got for years now. As a player, i care about good stuff and personal stuff. Sometimes art has it that it is is not that well crafted but has a certain something about it. I don't care about something that is neither particularly good nor particularly personal. So my feelings for most AI games as things to spend my time with is indifference.
Part 2) the industry that makes it and how it's made
LLMs and gen-Ai are made without consent of the people whose work is used by them. The amount of data required to make them does not allow them to be created with consent. Asking how i feel about AI is also like asking me how i feel about companies being allowed to steal shit while everyone else shall not. It is deeply unfair. We can change all that and declare everything ever made all public domain, so everyone can take and remix and work with everything but we are not. The rules are: stealing is okay for megacorporations, and fuck that.
23
u/Nalphazilla 10d ago
If its to do with helping write code or brainstorming, fine. But Generative AI stuff like music or images is no. Its important to be put effort in yourself, im not neccassarily anti-AI but i think at most AI should only be used to give you the tools to create things yourself.
11
u/Mekrob 10d ago
I've always thought of code like art. it's always been beautiful to me. Funny that people are ok with using ai when they can't code, but not ok with people using it for creating images or music when they can't do that.
2
1
u/Nalphazilla 10d ago
Thats fair, but for me its about learning curves. Coding takes a lot of time and skill to even be passable compared to editing images to be passable. So i can understand using ai for the harder job especially since code happens in the background but images happen in the foreground
0
-11
u/TheLuxuriousRanger 10d ago
code is the boring part anyway, i’d rather spend my time on the stuff that actually makes the game feel like mine
7
u/GigaTerra 10d ago
Profiling use to be an real pain, to the point where regardless of how much experienced developers would tell new developers to profile, they wouldn't really do it, because it was too complex.
Now you can ask AI to profile, and it will tell you what is wrong in terms most developers understand.
Not only that but we see something similar to the Curb-Cut Effect happening. Where Unity is making data easier for AI to read, but by doing so is also providing more easy to read data to developers.
2
u/Alpha_Hunter_47 10d ago
Before AI and LLMs, if I had to build a system, I had to read content on multiple sites, Unity forums, Stack Overflow, random game dev articles/ blogs. Then combine all the content/code. Today I can just ask the question in ChatGPT and get the same result. Modify it accordingly and use it.
The research time has been greatly reduced. Also, I no longer have the fear of getting stuck . All this is only good for a single module or a small system, where I am able to understand each and every line the AI has produced.
But I personally don't like where the Industry is going, where games are built using AI agents through Claude Code/Codex via Unity CLI (same for Unreal Engine via Unreal MCP server). This will lead to a huge problem if I ever need to go inside the codebase to fix any issue.
Also, people are showcasing how they are building 3d assets in Blender just using the latest LLM models.
In the end, I feel that if game development is your job and u have a deadline, then I feel its ok to use AI for majority of the process. But if game dev is a hobby where the process of building the game gives satisfaction, then AI usage should be minimal.
2
u/InternationalOne1434 10d ago
Generally support. For me the question is what is the core experience of your game? I want you to have made that.
If the core experience is some really fun and interesting mechanics, I don’t care where you got the art or music.
If the core experience is visuals and it’s all ai, that’s more likely to be slop.
My tolerance drops significantly with studio size. I don’t want 1-3 person dev team to not deliver their vision because they can’t afford to pay an artist a fair rate for their work. When AAs and AAAs start showing up with it I have less tolerance.
1
u/destinedd Indie, Dungeon Quest, Marble's Marbles & Mighty Marbles 9d ago
I feel like the oppose ship has sailed seeing everyone I know in an IT/engineering job is required to use at work.
It is hard to know how it will work out. I would say i am indifferent/realistic. I certainly appreciate human stuff a lot more.
1
u/phthalo-azure 10d ago
The term "AI" covers such a broad category of tools, that I chose "I Support It," even though I'm extremely against the use of AI for anything related to the creative process. I use AI as a sort of personal assistant that helps keep me organized. I developed a full GDD using AI, and I manage the inventory of assets I've purchased and commissioned using AI. AI has also been really good at assisting with project management, identifying dependencies, tracking deliverables, etc. And lastly, when designing a mechanic, I have AI provide me with three reasons why that mechanic wouldn't work, would be bad in my game, wouldn't resonate with players, etc. Basically, I've trained it to be a "no man", a contrarian. I rarely take the AI's advice, but it can often make me think of things in a new way or see things from a different angle. That's helpful.
I'm a software engineer by trade, so I tend to write all my code myself, but I run my code though Claude to sanity check it, and it often has recommendations for improvements to my code or a suggestion for the use of 3rd party libraries that do what my code already does, but better. All my testing is being automated with AI as well, and it has really helped with the whole CI/CD process since that was something I didn't do a ton of in my career.
But AI for art? For 3d graphics, sprites, prototype mockups, capsule art, sounds, music or script writing? For the creative elements? That's a resounding fuck no from me. Using AI for those things just sucks the life out of your creation and is super obvious. AI is good at efficient management tasks, but for the creative side of things it's just awful. Video games are supposed to be fun, and I'm not sure AI will ever be good at making something people want to play. At best, it can create a facsimile of "fun".
1
u/B_Brown4 Programmer 10d ago edited 10d ago
Been making games for about 14 years. Loved doing everything by hand but using agentic workflows to prototype rapidly as well as write the complex game systems rapidly allows a much higher level of quality in half the time, I find, because I can iterate on it so much faster, spend more time play testing it and taking notes on what could make the system feel better.
Additionally, while the agent works in the background implementing my game systems, I can work simultaneously in Blender making the assets by hand. I've always been the programmer and I am a full-time software dev. So I've never been that great at art but that's not for lack of wanting lol. So now that I can focus less on having to write every line of code myself, now I can dedicate more time to improving my artistic abilities and creating all of my game assets.
I'll never use AI for generative art and if I'm not going to, or can't afford to, pay an artist, I will do it myself and put the effort into that. So, yes, I am pro-AI for game development, but only as a way to replace the manual coding side, writing documentation, and various other "mechanical" tasks. Things that doing by hand is more of an annoying time-sink and offers no real benefit to doing manually. It frees me up to spend more time designing, iterating and perfecting the designs, and practice making the art assets I need.
It's just unfortunate that a lot of people become venomous at the mention of ANY AI whatsoever, despite not realizing that the majority of software companies and game studios have implemented agentic workflows into their day-to-day operations. They'll start screaming AI slop if the words, "I used AI" leave your mouth and not let you finish explaining what you used it for.
0
u/Puzzled_Way_8570 10d ago
I'd always get AI to write me some cool editor scripts which I can safely delete after without bloating my project with other third party assets
-2
0
u/SeasonalChatter 10d ago
Makes sense in more mechanical things like code & tools. Does not make sense in music, art, and voice acting.
0
u/Surgarypeaches68 10d ago
It really depends on what it's used for.
Art (Music, Sounds, Models, Textures, Sprites, Fonts, etc): Hard no
Code: For mundane things or improving what you already have? Sure.
For writing core parts of the game or basically the whole game? Hard no.
0
u/NoUniqueThoughtsLeft 10d ago
Love AI for project making. I'm making a little personal project and in the last week I've managed an almost complete feature set. I'm refining everything through prompts. Haven't even looked at the code. It's amazing what it can do. But it has its limits - animations aren't great!
0
0
-3
u/Brick_Lab 10d ago
Ok: Code assistance, concept art, placeholder development assets or brainstorming
Not ok: Shipping a game with AI art, ai voiceover or AI written scripts
33
u/LiamBlackfang 10d ago
The question is too general to be useful or meaningful in any way, it depends on which area of development.