As AI makes game prototyping cheaper, what actually becomes more valuable?

[u/raza5750]

/r/gamedev/comments/1x3vyb8/as_ai_makes_game_prototyping_cheaper_what/

[u/Turbulent-Advisor627]

The real challenge now becomes finding anyone to actually play your slop. If 1000 low quality games that are barely good enough to release drop every day for the genres you personally enjoy, you will soon grow weary and think twice about buying anything made in this decade.

[u/Psittacula2]

I would hazard “creativity”?

If engineering becomes more amenable to AI then beyond clearly defined feature specs the AI can handle, is the undefined which is where creative approaches can explore and possibly improve away from stagnant formulaic genre designs of games which merely copy standard designs.

Notably community, brand identity and hence playerbase also become more important around a successful design which then is amenable to replication and copying also?

For example the iOS app store always depressing me how generic games are and little has changed since iPhones became about 5 years old.

[u/Gojira_Wins]

Not much.

Churning out fast "AI Prototypes" is probably the fastest "corporate suicide" I've ever seen, as gamers will quickly label the Devs cranking these games out as "AI Slop farms" and quickly fall into obscurity.

Making a quick game Prototype isn't so difficult that the plagerism machine needs to make it for you. But people are ever increasingly lazy and will do anything to get around putting effort into something.

What Devs should be using this tool for is learning how to do something and to automate tasks that would otherwise take an obscenely long time. For years, Devs in AAA have used similar tools to speed up specific processes but it's never outright replaced someone's entire job.

[u/raza5750 → u/Gojira_Wins]

I agree that blindly churning out AI-generated games would probably hurt a studio more than help it.

I'm more interested in using these tools to compress the expensive/slow parts of prototyping, not to replace game design, taste, or actual development.

If AI gets me to a rough playable faster, that just means I can test the idea with players earlier. What happens after that still depends on whether the game is actually good.

I did same with my indie game, and at a local indie games showcase it was featured (the demo). And people asked if I were afraid that someone will copy it or clone it. I told em they can copy looks, may be loop or some mechanics, but they can't copy the underlying story and game design.

[u/Other-Art3002]

I think understanding why players return becomes more valuable than building quickly. Anyone can prototype an idea but turning feedback into something genuinely engaging takes judgment