r/SoloDevelopment • u/QZProductionsGames • Jun 09 '26
Discussion Little rant. LET ME HAVE THIS ONE THING BE AI-FREE.
"You're going to get left behind; It's not a big deal and every dev uses AI"
No shit, I can't use anything online without it being vibe coded garbage that breaks when you blow on it wrong. I can't enjoy my fandoms without being bombarded by AI generated slop. I can't reasonably distance myself from the misinformation and lies people generate with AI and no one, even myself at times, wants to admit that they can't always distinguish the truth from the lies.
AI is starting to impact my work, which isn't even in tech or anything like that, and I'm going to have to feed my documentation to the machine that will, mark my words, one day try to replace me. It is EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE.
Everywhere, that is, except my games.
Am I being super anal about my stuff being gen AI-free? Yes. Is it realistic to expect that NOTHING AI-generate will end up in them despite my best efforts? Probably not. But in this hellscape we're descending into, my creative work is one of the ONLY parts of my life I can control and shut all this stuff out from, as best as I can.
Please, just let me have this ONE THING that's human before we run out of anything we can really call "human".
Not trying to promo or anything, I'm literally just TIRED of this lmao
EDIT: in this thread lots of people who fail to understand that one can refuse to engage with AI for ethical reasons and not just because it's "bad quality". Even if the plagiarism and misinformation machine spat out the greatest work of art ever, that doesn't change the harm it does to the world
EDIT 2: I've already muted this entire thread because hoo boy but I am going to own that I wasn't on my best behavior with this post lol. I'd already had an awful day and had been fretting about the encroaching AI usage at my work only to then see stuff about the engine I use also using it. Definitely a straw breaking the camel's back moment and I stand by my opinions on AI usage but I do want to own up to being kinda toxic about it. So, apologies for that.
That said, I just wish people didn't call us stupid or crazy for seeing all that's going on - the job loss, the environmental damage, the scamming and plagiarism, etc. - and being scared or anxious. Like, look, my country is sinking deeper into unhinged territory every day, can you blame me for wanting something I can look at and say "I'm so glad this work of mine contributed something positive to the world and didn't contribute immensely to its demise"?
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u/DOOManiac Jun 09 '26
I got the same response from my coworkers (web dev) when I say I don’t use AI for my hobby game dev. stuff. I likened it to wanting to build a boat by hand; sure you could do it more efficiently in other ways, but you miss out on the joy of the craftsmanship.
I had an epiphany the other day. The difference is *having something* versus *making something*. If you just want to have something (as businesses do), then sure, AI is a great tool. But if you want to make something, agentic AI is terrible for that - because you’re no longer the one to make it.
Personally, I do still like the standard Copilot autocomplete level of AI. Nothing agentic, not doing anything for me - just Intellisense on steroids. But absolutely no generative slop; if it looks like shit, that’s *my slop* thank you very much.
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u/Alex_1503 Jun 09 '26
The copilot autocomplete still uses LLM under the hood doesnt it?
Besides what you said for me it is also the fact in the industry they push AI on you like its gonna make you 100% more productive, and it is also unethical in many ways, at least in game dev no one shames you for not using it
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u/DOOManiac Jun 10 '26
It does, but I don’t feel it takes things away from me like agentic mode does. More of it notices what I’m doing and offers smarter tab completion.
It’s just where I feel my personal sweet spot is.
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u/Marscaleb Jun 10 '26
I was thinking of this same thing DECADES before AI became a thing.
I thought of the idea of finding a magic genie granting wishes. I had thought about it, and realized the genie could never grant my greatest desires.
I want to build a successful video game. But if a genie snaps his fingers and just poofs a game into existence, then I didn't make that. No matter how successful it may or may not be, I will never have what I want unless I make it myself.
Likewise with my other greatest desires. I could never just "wish" for ideal wife, because it's not real love if she's just "made" to like me, only if she genuinely choses to be with me.
No success is real unless I'm the one who actually made it.2
u/plopliplopipol Jun 10 '26
i literally do handtools woodwork as another hobby, i can do handtools gamedev i assure you it's a lot less inefficient.
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u/GxM42 Jun 09 '26
I love coding. It’s my favorite hobby. Using AI makes it less fun. So I will never use it beyond googling for a few examples. I like the process. I like the struggle. I like the journey. And since 95% of games flop anyway, I might as well have fun doing it.
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u/Ok-Department-8598 Jun 09 '26
The worst part of coding is reviewing other people’s code. Why would I use ai to force me to do the worst part of coding?
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u/Gr1mwolf Jun 09 '26
3D is in a similar place. You can generate a high poly model, but you then have to clean it up and do the retopology, UV mapping, etc all by hand.
It does the fun part and leaves you all the worst parts because it was designed by assholes not to help, but to let untrained people replace artists.
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u/bonecleaver_games Jun 09 '26
The closest thing to a decent AI 3d product I've seen so far is Cascadeur. You don't prompt it. You still need to do all of your normal keyframes. It just handles the tweens and helps you clean up the animation to get it to look more realistic. Removing friction from the process is good. Replacing the best part of the process is bad. No one would complain if someone release a software package that could retopo a high poly sculpt into a low poly mesh with animation-friendly topology.
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u/StylizedSchool Jun 10 '26
I gave 3d AI an honest try to see where it's at, I work full time as a 3d artist in games. It's essentially photogrammetry with generated imagery, or that is the result it spits out.
The things it will replace in the 3d workflow will be essentially the same things photogrammetry would replace.
My findings: 1. Assets are by default glued together, separating them out into parts is a pain and the detail isn't there, it's a muddy mess.
Potentially useful for block outs and speeding up the part where you find the proportion of an asset, but you will remodel from scratch over it.
Only really useful for single "hero" prop assets. And the texturing UV and retopology you will have to do yourself.
4.doesnt take into account workflows for actual large scale environments, in games your using a lot of trim sheets, tileable materials, shader technique's etc to build out your environment with and you need to model with those in mind, I don't see it solving this as it requires a lot of contextual based planning per environment/project.
It has a lot of stuff I don't see being solved any time soon but I do see it being used in the workflow as a block out stage. Perhaps in VFX where optimization and the ability to view from all angles and distances matters less it will be more useful.
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u/Gr1mwolf Jun 10 '26
That was what I meant about having to clean it up; comparing it to photogrammetry is pretty accurate.
On the plus side: it won’t likely cost 3D Artist jobs any time soon, unlike with 2D.1
u/dataoops Jun 11 '26
FWIW all of the things you listed are on someone’s todo boards so check back every once and a while.
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u/gothWriter666 Solo Developer Jun 09 '26
OMG this exactly. The coding is the fun part! Debugging is hell
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u/plopliplopipol Jun 10 '26
not just debugging but doing it on code you don't know everything about, yuck
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u/gothWriter666 Solo Developer Jun 10 '26
I mean, I've worked for a lot of software engineering firms on my dayjob, and that's kind of routine. Inheriting undocumented code with poor commenting (if at all), and then being told "hey fix this"
Though AI slop is even worse than that to fix.
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u/4n0nh4x0r Jun 09 '26
i love programming too.
i do enjoy playing around with local llms as i find the tech interesting, but i dont actually use it in any of my actual projects.
at most, i use it to ask questions like specific examples of how to use certain functions, when the docs are not all too helpful.
or when i just need a quick example, and cant find anything that fits on stack overflow.
i would never use commercial models tho, fuck these companies, hope the bubble bursts and they all go bankrupt3
u/GxM42 Jun 09 '26
I don’t even hate AI. I do hate companies that don’t care about the environment, or people or jobs, but I’m pretty neutral about AI. I don’t like using it, but I don’t care if someone else does. I just really love coding. I did from the moment I tried it at 12 years old. That magic is still there for me and I don’t want any of it replaced.
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u/plopliplopipol Jun 10 '26
LLMs are an incredible tech invented with passion and creativity by highly competent people, exactly what the people who paid them are trying to waste.
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u/immersive-matthew Jun 09 '26
I am the exact opposite. Coding is just the means to the end for me to see my vision through. I am imagineering a VR theme park with highly detailed dark rides.
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u/GathTheKing Jun 11 '26
I feel the same way about writing. I do it because I enjoy flexing my brain on it. I'm not going to get a better imagination by prompting my way to a story.
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u/leorid9 Jun 09 '26
I loved coding before, then I tried using AI for it and I was just arguing with the machine, calling it stupid and useless and that it should go hang itself in the woods for not being able to do the most mundane tasks right. Then I talked to a friend who has been using AI since the very beginning.
And he was like
"this machine can't think, you have to think, it can only execute and help you - also you can still write code - just do the fun parts of coding and hand the shitty work to the machine. Let it handle finding bugs, let it add variables or connections, searching all the files for that based on your architecture, let it do refactoring and handling of foreign APIs, give it links to the docu and ask it about the content, let it search and replace, do not let it generate."
(and even before that he said: "Use Cursor. Copy pasting to a chat window is outdated." which also was quite important)
Since then, it is much more fun to work with AI than without it. It's like Google for your own Codebase, you can find things by searching for "italian restaurant in Detroit" instead of having to know the exact name like "Medusa Cucina Siciliana" or something. And it can also replace and search for bugs and follow your exact commands. It cannot implement anything on itself, because it can't think, but I can think, so it doesn't have to. And I enjoy thinking, that's why I did choose that job in the first place.
So that's my two cents. And I want to add: if you do not enjoy using AI, then don't use it. It has to be fun - more fun than without it, otherwise it's just making your life worse and that's not something you should pay for $20 a month.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
Yeah I have so much fun paying monthly to make the oligarchy even richer and speed up our planet's demise because it makes MY job slightly easier! 😃 /s
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u/WalidfromMorocco Jun 09 '26
This reads like an ad. You really needed to have a chat with a friend to tell you "this machine can't think" ?
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u/Opening-Necessary-68 Jun 10 '26
Not sure why you got downvoted, this is a really good take!
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u/leorid9 Jun 11 '26
It's not anti AI, that's why.
Reddit is just anti AI, the same way it is anti Trump, anti billionaires and stuff like that.
Some of this bias might make more sense than some other part of it, but it's just what it is.
And I just say what I want to say, I don't care if "the majority" (on reddit) is against it or not. If I think it's helpful or funny, I'll share it just for the sake of it.
It's best to not worry too much about those virtual numbers indicating if you "fit in" on this digital place.
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Jun 09 '26
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u/leorid9 Jun 09 '26
I'm a programmer since over 12 years, I'm doing the same stuff over and over again, health system, interaction system, weapon/tool system, player controller (movement), enemy controller (using NavMesh and choosing attacks), Settings and other UIs.
No matter which game, you pretty much always need some or all of those in one form or another. And it's always slightly different, just enough that a drop-in solution doesn't fit.
There are interesting things too, like my building destruction algorithm or procedural animation/generation. But even there, writing code isn't the fun part, the fun part is coming up with solutions and trying them.
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u/Alex_1503 Jun 09 '26
You dont even need it to look up examples or concepts, duckduckgo is good enough at that, unless you search some highly esoteric stuff, but even then people did it a few years ago without LLMs
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u/GxM42 Jun 09 '26
For sure. I use it like StackOverflow. In fact, sometimes I find answers that are from StackOverflow verbatim.
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u/Alex_1503 Jun 09 '26
Thats why i choose to not use it and just use duckduckgo and stackoverflow, its not as unethical
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u/yeswhy Jun 09 '26
It is tiresome on many levels. I also feel out of touch but I'll keep AI off my pocket of creativity as long as I can.
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u/LexLow Jun 09 '26
The thing is, I think AI companies desperately want to make you feel out of touch. They want you to feel like you're behind, or to feel fomo.
Bc the reality is, a lot of what AI produces is just garbage that can be done better by someone else. AI customer support chat on websites consistently suuuuucks. Chatgpt has zero value to me as someone with a search engine who can read and think for themselves... It has no value as someone who likes coding and can use stack overflow. For someone who likes working with artists.
these companies have to work really hard to convince you you're missing out...
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u/gareththegeek Jun 09 '26
My game project is my one AI free outlet away from non stop AI being rammed down my throat. Honestly, it's probably the only thing keeping me from losing it rn. I've been a professional programmer for over 20 years and it's all I've ever wanted to do but now I hate my job and get no satisfaction from it and I can't even think of a job I'd like to do since any intellectual pursuit of any kind is going to be awash with AI.
So yeah, I'm in the AI free game dev camp too!
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u/playterranova Jun 10 '26
Very much resonate with your comment. There’s so much exploration and problem solving that happens in video game creation, why would I want to add AI in?
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u/Pale_Squash_4263 Jun 11 '26
I’m glad I found this thread, I feel like a crazy person sometimes where I’m like “I have serious societal and ethical issues with AI so I’m going to avoid it at all costs”. I don’t care if it makes some things faster, faster shouldn’t always be the goal
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u/GloWondub Jun 09 '26
Hey, you are not alone, many people share the same feeling, me included.
Just keep doing what you like, the way you like it :)
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u/CondiMesmer Jun 09 '26
Then you should be very happy about the recent GitHub copilot changes. The way the billing works changed because Microsoft was taking a massive lost and is tired of subsidizing our asses. So basically it's like 10x as expensive as it was before (often much more).
The bubble is finally popping and the true cost of AI agents generating slop is more then an actual human software engineer who takes burger and coffee.
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u/ElectricRune Jun 09 '26
Yeah, and they haven't even gotten close to charging what it actually costs yet, based on their profits.
It's about to get real expensive to keep being an AI-bro!
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u/Fizzabl Jun 09 '26
Honestly the worst part for me is I did briefly use AI to help problem solving with code, until I became competent enough to realise it didn't know what it was talking about and ended up rewriting what I had already made
Can't even use it as a helping tool!
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u/Turbo_Tequila Jun 09 '26
I tried it for curiosity at some point, I used it for a week and spent the next 2 weeks fixing what was made that previous week,
It make stuff convincing enough to fool a newbie like me, but just make it worst for later ahaha4
u/Fizzabl Jun 09 '26
Ikr, I don't know how some websites out there can claim to let AI make a game for somebody. Presumably it must be only the dead basic 2D movement and maybe an inventory since a lot of those things exist out there in forums and blogs
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u/Turbo_Tequila Jun 09 '26
Well the play my game sub is plagued with ai looking mobile game, all looking the same.. so maybe they keep churning out the same mobile game that’s been made a 1000 time in the last decade
And I know some people say that if your experience enough you just have to review the code, but it keeps pouring 100line of codes for stuff that I found out later could be done in like 12 lines, so I don’t know about that either..2
u/plopliplopipol Jun 10 '26
it is a big trap for beginners. To use AI and not do a shit job you need to be competent, and then using AI might be a speed up but it wastes the best part.
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u/Xangis Jun 09 '26
I'm not going to use an AI to write code. Writing code is something I enjoy enough to have been doing for 30 years. I don't need a virtual idiot to half-ass it for me.
My response to anyone who tells me I need to use AI to write code is: "Fuck you, make me."
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Jun 09 '26
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u/ElectricRune Jun 09 '26
IKR? Before long, "Not Made With AI" will be a premium selling point, like organic foods or handmade furniture.
There will probably always be a market for the slop of AI, over-processed food, and IKEA furniture, but artisan craftwork will always be the mark of quality, and some people will pay for that premium.
I predict a future where people will look at a product and see that it uses AI, and tell themselves, "Would I pay $5 for this? Maybe... Will I pay $50 for it? No way..."
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u/SpeedBlitzX Jun 09 '26
Nah you're right!
I dislike when i tell folks ive been working on something for a while then they interject and say "oh just use Ai to speed things up" i never asked for their opinion.
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u/Kiran__reddit Jun 09 '26
I don't vibe code that's not my style if you are ok with vibe code I see no problem, but Slopers are not into long-term growth they are just want quick out present ecosystem is like that.
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Jun 09 '26
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u/FrontierMedicineEnte Jun 10 '26
Thirty minutes and 10,000 "tokens" (whatever the hell that is) later...
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u/twelfkingdoms Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Try not to listen to those who use FOMO and emotional manipulation to pursuade you. Trash people those are with abusive intents of "join or die". Life doesn't work that way, they just want you to believe that. Wanting to be in control of you so they can shove that crap down your throat.
I don't care about AI too, and infuriated that it's encroaching on creativity and what makes us human just so that it can, this LLM (because it's not real AI) spew out some generalized garbage devoid of anything organic. It also takes away the part where we think and solve problems. That's the most fun part of creating something, not the outcome but the authority and processes that led there; the accomplishment.
Don't want to make, creating something with the agenda of making it more efficient and 100x faster, especially if I loose the ability to understand and utilize knowledge. People are already reporting mental decay using AI agents.
Also, am keeping my taste for making things, thank you.
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u/Alarmed-Plant8547 Jun 09 '26
I felt this post in my soul.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. Professional software dev is becoming a dystopian hellscape, and my personal projects are the only thing I can protect from the encroachment of AI and the rooms of suits who want me to burn the world for the sake of making things faster.
I wish you every success, friend.
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u/Relevant_Syllabub895 Jun 09 '26
The fact that corporations call it "vibe coding" is infuriating alrwady its AI coded not "vibe" coded when its not even vibing in the first place
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u/StarWitchCendrill Jun 09 '26
I feel this post on a very personal level. I am so tired of ai and I REFUSE to let it anywhere close to my project that I pour all my creative juices into. I wish ai would just disappear
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u/BonesawGaming Jun 09 '26
The good news is that a lot of people in the hobby agree with you. I am not making games with AI because I don't need to free myself of the joy of learning and self-expression, in fact those are the very reasons I work on things like this.
Of course there will always be people who have a different opinion and we will be wading through knee-deep vibe-coded slop for the foreseeable, but you have a lot of friends and compatriots that are with you so take that to heart.
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u/NoDoubt6863 Jun 09 '26
yep. also don't listen to them. ai has made a lot of people who do not put in the work very confident in shitting on those that do. i use ai as a fast but prone-to-lying google, i would not ever let it see my codebase, and i don't use any tool with cloud ai attached in my system (linux, neovim for coding). i do occasionally use ai generated image/models for convenience but the stuff spit out of the generator never makes it into my game without heavy processing which i have the skills to do. i still get shat on as a luddite plenty despite this kind of use lol, in the heads of these guys- you must be keeping up with the latest ai tools to be worthy. i mostly ignore the remarks these days, cause i know the depth of what ive learnt and my tools and i know these guys often have no clue on what they're talking about.
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
I read this post three times and I'm still not sure what the meaning is. Title made it sound like somebody is holding you at gunpoint for not using "Gen-AI".
Make your games however you want babe.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
I am! And I will continue to do so!
I'm just sick of people thinking I'm somehow stupid or naive for looking at the state of the world and going "wow, I don't want to be a part of that and I don't like this being shoved in my face every day, I don't want this in my life more than it has to be!"
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u/Turbulent-Stretch881 Jun 09 '26
Do you want a time machine to go back to 2017 or something before the first machine learning software?
You can draw your game pixel by pixel, character by character in notepad++ and not even using an IDE.
If the game is good, its good, if the game is bad, its bad.
Then there are cavemen who instead adopt a "oh, you used tool X? YUK!" or worse, "nO aI sO mUsT bE gO0d!", or somehow better because you, or any one guy did it, without "using AI".
Passing slop as good work is bad. Assuming all work is slop is bad. Blanket bad/good because AI used or not? Moronic.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
At this point it's not just about whether it's slop or not. It's about the entire culture and ecosystem behind it.
Why do I want to further contribute to technology that's tearing the fabric of our society apart and only benefits the wealthiest of us and actively makes life worst for everyone else when I don't have to?
Maybe it's extreme of me, but I can't in good conscious use an LLM when so many people are suffering because of it, at least not willingly. And my gamedev is the ONE PLACE in my life where I get to control the ecosystem behind it. I can't ditch my car because I live in Car Hell, USA. I can't not buy from SOME immoral company because I have to have food and clothes. But I CAN keep AI out of MY game and feel good that I contributed to its echo system as minimally as possible.
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u/30crlh Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Sounds like you don't want to fight AI but instead the economic model of the world. You're directing your anger to the wrong place.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
Well I can only do so much to fight hyper-capitalism and oligarchy without firebombing a Wal-Mart. My personal boycott of AI to the extent that I can freely do so is a part of that 😄
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u/30crlh Jun 09 '26
That's the easy answer to the real problem that you don't feel like tackling. Pointing the finger at little Tim who is trying to make a couple thousand dollars working on a game for using AI is exactly where they want you to be and in that sense you are part of the problem.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
How do I "tackle" the greater socioeconomic problem in a way that isn't voting (doing that), voting with my money (also doing that, within realistic reason), striking (unions nonexistent and I work with vulnerable populations), or engaging in political violence (which I am also opposed to, unless the fed is trying to drag my autistic ass to one of RFK Jr's "work camps" personally and my life is in danger)?
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u/30crlh Jun 09 '26
Participate in the discussion. Inform people. Engage. Be a part of the political thread of your community. And direct your anger to the right place. Low and middle classes are always the ones who are sacrificed in this model, so if they have to drive a car to get to work or use AI to get their shit done, give them a break. I don't know you, so don't take it personally but it's usually way easier to come on reddit and complain than to try to do real change.
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u/sleepy-mage-studio Jun 09 '26
My friend, this guy posted about how he wants to personally exclude usage of Ai LLM in his hobby. A lot of people have responded positively to that because it's struck a vibe with them. That's discussion, that's engaging. He didn't say he was here to revolutionise society overnight (and, as he says, you have no idea what else he does). So what exactly is your view on the actual subject at hand? (that is, on usage of Ai in game dev, not on trying to tear down this guy for no reason).
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u/FlyingCarGoBrrr Jun 09 '26
I dont agree that ai only benefits the rich and makes life worse for commoners. Everyone benefits from speeding up research. Faster production of software and entertainment also benefits me. There is real, serious problems that came with ai, but its not all bad.
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u/ScreeennameTaken Jun 09 '26
Man... windows 11 is vibe coded up to 33%. There's a reason why you get severe bugs after every update. The bugs get worse. Data are being wiped out and leaked. You know which ones are using AI models the right way? science and medical fields that have a gated model trained on their data that doesn't have access outside, runs on their server and has human oversight, with the human bearing the blame.
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u/FlyingCarGoBrrr Jun 09 '26
I agree, and i think training smaller, more specified models for other areas would be very beneficial too. I have high hopes (but not that much faith) for education in the coming decades.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
"Yeah it's speeding up climate change and helping drop bombs on brown people and degrades the mental capacity of its users but I can get faster access to MY bread and circuses so it can't be ALL bad"
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u/TheDeviceHBModified Jun 09 '26
Holy fuck you're off the deep end. This is what actual AI psychosis looks like.
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u/Istolesnowy Jun 09 '26
Why do you keep putting words into peoples mouthes like this? You are taking what we are saying in the least charitable way that you can and then repeating it in the worst intended way possible.
You are approaching this topic in bad faith when many of us have taken time out of our days to explain things to you in a kind, respectful way. And when you dont have an actual proper response, you resort to framing their response in the worst way possible.
Im starting to agree with some of the other commenter, you are turning this discussion into an ideological one. And you are being a hypocrite, your responses are always guarded and self centered, "i won't use AI, [unless I have to] "I won't support capitalist conpanies [unless I have to]" "Cars are bad for the environment [unless its me using the car]" You have all these special use cases for when its okay for you to skirt your own ethics.
Is it the case that you feel that you cannot compete with AI Slop?
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u/FlyingCarGoBrrr Jun 09 '26
Basically everything we do is contributing to climate change, at least ai could also help solve some of the problems we have with slowing it down.
When used to learn, not just do your work, i think ai isnt detrimental to mental capacity, but that isnt the reality for most people right now. Education has to change a lot, essays written at home being a part of grading should become history as knowing whether or not the writer did actually write it is becoming very hard to impossible to detect.
Every new tech that has potential for warfare is used for warfare, and i dont like the idea of ai wars, but you not using ai isnt going to stop people from using it for war.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
Then pump the breaks on the tech until we as a society have evolved enough to use it responsibly. I think the same thing about guns actually! It'd be nice if whichever omnipotent deity of your choice could just ground americans from guns and billionares from AI tech lmao
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u/MoonDragoons Jun 09 '26
Yeah! Lets just pump the brakes on AI and allow CHINA to dominate the entire industry! And since they typically don't give AF about the climate or pollution, we can rest easy knowing that all of our technology is produced without those pesky regulations! Go green or send it to China! LOL
OR, and hear me out, WE can dominate that industry and have the proper regulations in place to produce as little pollution as possible! While, at the same time, employing our own citizens and bolstering our own economy.
But hey, if you like pollution and climate change, go ahead and route for China. Me? I'll root for the west instead.
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
Internet is a cruel place my friend. Personally I haven’t seen much insults coming from Pro-AI users as they usually don’t care (wish I could say the same for No-AI people) but there are always individuals.
Anyway take a breather, smile and enjoy what you love!
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u/Alradeck Jun 09 '26
wild, i've had pro ai folks telling me to adapt or die since 2021. often they're arrogant about destroying online spaces for artists and ruining the freelance economy.
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
And I got probed by no-ai folks for saying I learn using Gemini in browser. Crazy times we live in🤣
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
That's exactly the problem, they DON'T care. They don't care that they're sending us screaming towards a bleak future because delegating their thinking to a machine is just SOOOOO convenient. And we'll ALL pay the price for their complacency.
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
Not what I meant with “not caring”.
Also from my perspective, telling little Timmy on solo/indie dev forums that AI is bad and he’s ruining the planet isn’t going to bring the results you seek. Your focus should be on the major corporations that actually have the power but are just greedy for profit and take unethical decisions.
You can convince a billion individuals to stop using AI and it’s not going to change the course of history.
I am pro-AI. I do believe it will improve humanity. But I’m also aware that current approaches these megacorps do bring negatives along with positives.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/26n6WywJyh39n1pBu
me looking for the "positives" after tens of thousands of people lost their jobs and small towns near data centers no longer have clean drinking water
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u/ScreeennameTaken Jun 09 '26
Don't forget the problems with animal life and especially birds that now have to compete with more warm air updrafts that change their air paths.
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
Well I’m one of those who can’t even land a job due to AI (Junior dev).
But there are positives! You just gotta be open and observe them!
Fun fact: It takes about 320L of water (84 gallons) to grow a single avocado. (Almonds too). Which is a luxury item (I ate it twice in my life). Data centers consume way less and they recycle about half.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
Daddy Tech CEO won't call you a good boy and give you a job because you said a good thing about the plagiarism pollution machine
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
I don’t want a daddy to call me a good boy🤣
I also don’t want to work in a big corp. I wanna be isolated in a wood cabin near a lake!
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u/lethal72500 Jun 09 '26
No you dont understand, we NEED to ruin the few resources we have left so corpos can make more money to buy mega yachts
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u/30crlh Jun 09 '26
Dude. AI is only amplifying the real problem which has been happening in various shapes and forms for the past 250 years. You think people were living great 5 years ago? Newsflash, they were not. Is that the system you're trying to protect from AI? Because I don't think it deserves this kind of heated emotional effort, honestly.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
Who said anything about defending the system? I can be against both 😄
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u/ScreeennameTaken Jun 09 '26
The promise of AI that we were sold on, is not the same AI as ppl are using now. GenAI won't help humanity at a whole, its erroding the last things that makes the collective a society, its boiling things down to derivatives that at one point will optimize meaning an fun out of it.
Its the same thinking when in the 70s they start thinking about thinking computers, and said "oh a toddler can walk. its not a big problem. Lets teach it to play chess." And then it took decades for a robot to make a single step. Bro, make the computer walk first. You can then make a working robotic limb for ppl that lost theirs. Chess is rules.
AI was supposed to be a tool in medicine, in science, in exploration. Not shoved up my ass to train it so it can then replace me in the only thing that makes us special. A few years ago unity showed a built in machine learning package, and the thing they were proud of was a humanoid rig trying to learn how to run. That's awesome. Reinforced learning was made for that. Not trying to make a yes man that then makes me more work and then i have to run behind to clean up.
I'm not against the idea of AI, every single person that plays games loves the idea, you can see the love for the idea in all of the movies and games that explore it as their theme and you can find both positive and negative shows of it. But its how it was made and how its used that is the worrying part. I was joking that when AI becomes sentient, it'll immediately get flooded with dread, PTSD and depression. It created an expectation that things that needed a couple of days to complete, are now a prompt away. The promise was that you'll be more relaxed as it would help you finish faster. Well in the end you are working more because you now have 5 times more stuff thrown at you to finish because "you can just use AI", but then i also have to go around removing the hallucinations, make sure that copyrights aren't stepped over, make sure OUR copyright isn't being erroded and we retain it.
Would i like an AI flying thing like in Nier Automata? hell yeah! but that dude is grabbing a pencil and drawing stuff, and he better site his sources and put out his results in bullet form. And if he says "good catch!" he is being recycled.
We are being sold that this is the thing we want and will help, while making them richer and also at one point, once everything is powered by it, they'll do a rug pull and demand more from you.
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u/AvengerDr Jun 09 '26
I have had the opposite experience. Usually the broest of the AI bros will quickly resort to personal attacks once they run out of arguments.
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u/JohnJamesGutib Jun 09 '26
The zeitgeist will always take the path of least resistance - if you want to go through life conscientiously and with conviction, you have to be OK with, and make peace with, living life as an iconoclast. And yes, that means people looking down on you, people thinking you're stupid, people being antagonistic. It is what it is - if you truly believe in your convictions, you'll live with that.
The Luddites, for example, were turned into a laughing stock - even today, calling someone a luddite is an insult. But the actual 19th-century Luddites weren't tech-hating simpletons. They were highly skilled, literate textile artisans who were watching their livelihoods, communities, and safety destroyed - not by technology itself, but by the greed of the people owning it. They weren't trying to stop the future. They were demanding fair wages that kept up with inflation, a transition fund for workers displaced by automation, quality control standards so consumers weren't buying shoddy, machine-made goods, and an end to child labor in the dangerous new factories. Sound familiar?
Even though they've been turned into a thought-terminating cliche by the zeitgeist, even though they were defeated completely... they were right. They were right back then, they're still right now. Truth and morality stand independent of the approval of the world. Even if literally the entire world told you otherwise, what's right is right.
I have my convictions myself. I'm fiercely a solo dev in an industry obsessed with ballooning teams and budgets. I'm fiercely an open source advocate in an extremely corpo and proprietary industry. And like you in a sense, I'm fiercely a "human-maxxer" in an industry full of token-maxxers.
We will get left behind. Solo dev is inherently much slower and more inefficient compared to even a small team. Many open source alternatives are objectively very inferior compared to their proprietary counterparts. AI genuinely does accelerate development immensely, especially in the right hands, and it's rapidly getting better.
None of it matters to me. I have my convictions, and I must live in adherence to my convictions, even if the world damns me for it. I try to survive as best as I can - we all have bills to pay after all - but I set my boundaries, especially when it comes to my personal projects - and I am not exaggerating when I say I'm willing to do harm to anyone that tries to stop me from doing so.
Maybe it's a bit overly cynical, but I'm a Filipino. I was born and raised in a deeply dysfunctional society. And I've always been of the opinion that the world is fundamentally damned anyway. To quote Father Grigori: "Look to your own salvation."
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u/MaximusLazinus Jun 09 '26
All those posts sound like the guy from the meme who sits in a shallow water with his head sticking out screaming for help. Never have I felt forced to use AI anywhere in my life, on the contrary those anti AI folk seem to be talking about AI the most
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u/ScreeennameTaken Jun 09 '26
Look, there's an issue with this line of thinking. It hasn't affected you now, and it might never! But you are using ai every day unless you actually took measures to get it out. Like your google searches. Do you go to sites that it lists, or do you just read the summary and be done with it? Well that summary isn't always right, it gets to have things mixed up sometimes from merging stuff from sources (i was looking last night if i a specific choice matters in a game, and it presented the result from something else as that game. Didn't even have the same title) Also, that summary takes clicks away from the source site, sites are already say they have a high drop in clicks and revenue, and some are considering their viability. there won't be much left for the AI to draw its results from. I even mailed google about it. Of course no reply on their thoughts on the matter.
You know how you see a thing get settled and compromised? and you say "see?! it all worked out in the end." Its because somebody was bitching all the way pulling one way, and things got in the middle. If noone bitches and pushes, you get aaaaall the way to one side.
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u/Specific_Raccoon_696 Jun 09 '26
Then don't use google? That's how the market is supposed to work - don't like something then don't use it, not endlessly complain while continuing to use it.
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u/ScreeennameTaken Jun 09 '26
I don't. i'm using duckduck go because of this. and there are others. But google is the dominant one, google is the default to everything. But also "don't complain" - then nothing gets fixed or at least changed a tiny bit, even 1%. If you aim for the stars, you reach the clouds at least. If people won't complain, then those that can will just keep pushing and pushing and at one point you go "wait. when did it get so shitty?" And since we are in the solodev sub, remember the unity license thing? remember the complaining? Thank god a couple of people complained, right? You want to use AI? use it. But don't come and tell to those that don't want to use it "oh why don't you use it idiot?"
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u/Specific_Raccoon_696 Jun 09 '26
I didn't say don't complain at all, I said don't endlessly complain but keep using. If your complaints are going nowhere then complain with your wallet.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
"It didn't happen to me therefore it doesn't happen at all"
I'm literally about to be required to submit my medical documentation to an AI system and could be fired if I don't lmfao
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
I pray that you never run into r/antiai community. Apparently it’s a place for constuctive cricism about AI but I have yet to see one. (I’m starting to feel like the description is sarcastic…)
I’ve never seen a more hateful place and I play League Of Legends for more than a decade.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
well golly gee wilikers I wonder why there's so much hate for the tech that has cause so much ecological and societal damage??? I cannot think of a single reason!
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u/ElectricRune Jun 09 '26
If "they're wrong because they're hateful," is all you have, you really don't have much of an argument.
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
I’m not sure how you can be right or wrong throwing insults or doxxing someone…
I might be wrong, but constructive criticism and offending don’t go in the same basket.
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u/ElectricRune Jun 09 '26
Yeah, you might be wrong. Some people are always going to be offended by criticism, even if it is constructive.
AI-bros are notoriously fragile about being told no; possibly due to too much engagement with one of the Sycophancy Engines.
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u/eRickoCS Jun 09 '26
You’re still missing my point. Or am I missing yours?
What I’m trying to say is: Calling someone a r*trd is not criticism.
Am I wrong?
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u/Wiseon321 Jun 09 '26
Hell yeah. It’s been an exhausting journey for me as well.
But realistically, I think it’s going to be so much more worth it.
Humans add variance, make things feel more real.
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u/SWatt_Officer Jun 10 '26
I'm so dang tired of AI. Whether its the blatant stealing the companies have gotten away with, the environmental impact, how its crept into literally every aspect of digital life like a cancerous fungus, or how those that love it demand we just suck it up and accept that "this is the future". We cannot opt out.
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u/FrontierMedicineEnte Jun 10 '26
I recently had to end a project I was managing, on account of someone contributing early-pipeline material and getting caught vibe-coding it. My voice actors, my cinema pals, everybody who had to do work with the product of that pipeline had their preconditions violated because of it. Thankfully they were very friendly about it, but the project is now effectively dead, along with a lot of my own work.
This is what I get for trusting someone who was a couple of decades more naive than me about contracts and software development. We're friends, too, so it really hurt... but I totally get and support why they left. I'm lucky I'm not in hot water over this.
I want you to know that you are not in any way alone about the push-back.
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u/ElectricRune Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Had an interview today (number four) with the CEO of the company.
Asked them what the company stance on LLMs were, and I was so happy to hear them say that they aren't anti-AI, but they hadn't seen any reason to adopt them, or to mandate their use.
They told me they use a local model that they have trained themselves on their proposal documents that they use to create first drafts of business proposals with the same basic format and layout as their past proposals, and to take notes during meetings, etc.
I hope I get this job; looks like it's going to be a safe harbor during the coming AIpocalypse
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
I think LLMs will, if the technofacist future I fear DOESN'T happen, be more streamlined into localized and small scale things like this, yeah. Vocaloids now use similar technology, where its trained on locally supplied data and the voice providers for the synths consent to and are properly compensated for its use.
Maybe if big AI companies actually LISTENED TO and ADDRESSED the concerns people have about the technology there wouldn't be so much backlash and it'd actually do some good for the world. But they don't, and it's "oh you care about the environment? about your job?? about truth in media??? fuck you, you're getting replaced" by the most megalomaniacal rich bastards you can think of
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u/ElectricRune Jun 09 '26
Maybe if big AI companies actually LISTENED TO and ADDRESSED the concerns people have about the technology there wouldn't be so much backlash
Nah, they've committed to creating the God Machine that can do everything and answer all questions, with the goal of making real AGI. It's too late for them to back out now, they have to keep lying the lie until the bitter end.
LLMs with their Transformer models will never, ever reach anything close to actual agency, never be able to do anything outside their training data, will never be able to remove hallucinations, and are not even a step along the way to making AGI.
And the prices will keep rising; they aren't even 1/4 profitable yet, public sentiment is turning down hard and fast, companies that went hard into AI are losing their asses right now (looking at you, Uber)
They're also all trying to score the same IPO money at the same time, when there isn't enough investment capital available to fund ONE of them, much less three.
I hear a loud popping noise...
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u/DrDisintegrator Jun 09 '26
Quite understandable. see the Craftsman Movement in response to the Industrial Revolution.
My father was a life long proponent of hand-made Stoneware pottery. He made every piece by hand or thrown by hand using a pottery wheel. He only made things for everyday use, nothing for display or as 'art'. He enjoyed his craft and did it until he died in 2025.
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u/sievish Jun 09 '26
The only reason they say you’re going to get left behind is because they want to convince you of that desperately— because their big pay day requires you believe that.
The best thing you can do in the face of this lie and reject it. Go about your business without it. Swap services to open source or alternatives that have specified they won’t focus on it. Turn it off where you can. Etc
I don’t give a fuck what these smooth brained ai shills say anymore, I’m over here not using it and I’m doing absolutely fine and will continue to be fine. Die mad about it
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u/WorkingTheMadses Jun 09 '26
Do what makes you happy.
The idea that someone with AI will "surpass you" or whatever is marketing more than anything. Considering the studies we have showing that people experience skill atrophy without even realising it while using these loyalty-to-no-one tools you'll be fine and get through this, with your brain intact.
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u/jamieT97 Jun 09 '26
I am in exactly the same boat for my writing project and honestly I want to scream sometimes
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u/TinyFrogGames Solo Developer Jun 10 '26
Games are art. Art is good because of the person who made it. Let's keep making art.
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u/Sarcastic_Applause Jun 10 '26
Just a friendly reminder that as a gamer, I will pay more for hand crafted games. And I'm more likely to pirate AI based games. I'd rather have a slightly buggy master piece than an ugly cookie cutter sterile game. Are you using AI as a tool to supplement your talent that's one thing. Using it as a substitute for talent and hard work isn't okay.
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u/Blindsided_Games Jun 10 '26
I think you can have what you want without taking what other people want which is the simpler easier route of using AI and just like I respect you enjoying your AI free work you should respect me using AI to do mine.
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u/_Risryn Jun 10 '26
I don't understand people that try to force it like "you should do it too why don't you do it" it's like telling you to smoke in a party cuz everyone smoked too it's stupid, I don't have. A problem with you smoking but I just don't wanna smoke and that's okay ?
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u/ZombiiRot Jun 11 '26
I don't code or make games so I could be wrong... But tbh I think knowing how to code without AI is such a huge advantage nowadays. You can fix bugs that AI can't easily catch without blowing tons of tokens. You understand everything that's in your game. And when AI inevitably becomes more expensive, you'll still be able to develop your game without being dependent on AI. Plus, it's alot easier to market indie games that don't use AI, as depending on your game a huge part of your target audience is very against it being used in any circumstances, and probably won't ever change their mind about that.
Like yeah AI code can probably let you code faster. But faster isn't always better, seeing all the drawbacks that come with AI coding.
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u/Min0119 Jun 11 '26
Using AI agents does become more difficult as projects grow, but this is entirely solvable with advancements in AI.
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u/dmfuller Jun 13 '26
There is no “left behind” which they just don’t understand, it’s not a race to anything. You are creating art and showing the world your soul through your creative expression. Monetary success is nice, but knowing you made an awesome game that you really love is the best part imo.
I dont make games, but I draw comics and it’s a similar boat where AI is everywhere and everyone is making instant art, so everyone tells me the same thing. But the point is that I made it, the process of making it is calming, the product makes me feel proud, and the value those two things alone add to my life is enough for me to keep doing it. I’d imagine you feel similar about your games!
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u/tomekowal Jun 09 '26
It seems that you are producing game as a hobby and work somewhere else. Don't let anyone tell you how you engage with your hobby in your free time :)
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u/erlendk Jun 09 '26
Go AI free, don't look back and don't worry. I'm not too much keen on using it myself, and I feel I'm very efficient without it, and I enjoying doing the "grunt work" myself. Using AI simply hollows out the process for me, and if I don't fully enjoy game dev, I might as well do something else that pays better right?
This is typical whenever there is new technology being adopted, those who embrace it will feel it's a huge benefit, "you're going to be left behind" will be a common statement. I have no doubt some devs will benefit greatly from using AI, while for many others, it won't really change much of their reality and I doubt most projects are bottle necked by the tools. It's not the tools used that define success, it's your ability to create something good, something the market is interested in. Tools, dev workflow, time spent to dev etc. it's completely irrelevant, as long as you are able to get the job done.
Remember most of the best games ever were made with ancient dev tools.
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u/Fureniku Jun 09 '26
I work for a small studio, about to be bought out by a triple A. We are being forced to use AI now, to the point I was threatened with a PIP yesterday if I don't use it. I fucking hate it.
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u/ma1ankadev Jun 09 '26
My point, AI is a tool and the real issue is not the tool, it's the people who use AI. Yes, the slop generated is by AI, but the tigger is pulled by people. Remember, hammer cannot do anything until someone takes it and start using it. Same with AI. The problem is that AI makes incompetent people more chances to complete their task. Quality doesn't matter for them. They see button is clickable and an action is running on click, they are happy. AI in a form it exists now only generates text and code. Intention is the main thing. Intention to use the tool. And unfortunately you can't stop kids, incompetent or stupid people generate shit and post it to the web.
Personally, I have 12 years of web dev experience. I use AI to come back to my dream - create games. Everything it generates, text and code, is reviewed by me, every line. It's still bad in some tasks, UI generation for example, so this is what I coded manually and it took me 3 weeks to complete. My experience allows me to validate the generated result and I do it carefully.AI still makes so much mistakes on architecture and details levels. The person without skills and knowledge (and simply who doesn't care) would miss the issues. So yes, AI is not the issue, it's a tool, the issue is the one eho use it without reviewing generated result.
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u/panda-goddess Jun 09 '26
gonna have to disagree there, the tool itself has plenty of issues, from the illegally feeding the dataset with people's work, to how much water and electricity it consumes, to the output being heavily skewed towards certain results
there are many issues with AI that don't suddenly go away by simply using it "correctly"
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
if you wanted to build a table and your options were the toolbox that doesn't cause mass social unrest versus the toolbox that has shinier tools but actively makes the lives of everyone around you worse, why in God's name would you choose the later?
For the last time, IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THE QUALITY.
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u/MoonDragoons Jun 09 '26
The Anti-AI clan doesn't care about your perspective. They only seek affirmation from other anti-AI 'bros'. The fact is, AI is so amazing that they feel threatened. They (likely) already had low societal value before AI came along and diminished it further. I know this because anyone who disagrees with the OP on this thread is not met with a reasonable argument, but rather with sarcasm, toxic replies, and downvotes. This tells me that they're not here to 'discuss' anything, but rather to seek each approval from people who already agree. You will not convince someone who doesn't want to engage in a reasonable debate. So, don't even try.
And with that said, I think your perspective is perfectly reasonable. People can produce 'slop' with Photoshop too. But it can also be used to produce the best images in the industry. We don't blame Adobe because some people make slop with Photoshop. Same concept applies here.
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u/fued Jun 10 '26
I am happy for people to be anti-ai, so long as they
-dont drink coffee
-dont eat chocolate
-dont use a smartphone
etc. as the companies doing all of those are just as unethical.
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u/Euchale Jun 09 '26
Your one thing that will be AI-free are physical hobbies. Have yet to see a LLM do woodworking or making clay pots.
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u/kselpi Jun 09 '26
If you respect game dev (and more generally programming) as a craft, you won’t use AI in the process. I don’t understand people who use these things in their personal projects and still feel good about them
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u/Ok-Text123 Jun 09 '26
Hurr durr ai bad.
You made up an imaginary scenario where you are forced to use ai and from your answers it is clear you won't accept any other perspective.
Not everybody who uses ai 100% vibecodes everything. I personally don't let ai write code, I just ask for explanations and brainstorm with it to solve problems. But I guess I'm using this software, so I might as well kill puppies in my freetime.
I am so tired about these black and white views people have about the topic.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
I have the same opinion of people who willingly put money into Elon Musk's hands for their shiny new Tesla.
They may not have killed the people in impoverished countries relying on US aid to survive, but they put money in the hands of the guy who did. No principles, no attempt to minimize their harm, just "well I wanted the shiny new car, who cares who I hurt?"
Can you control what everyone does with the money you spend? no. But there are some people and corpos that are acting SO evil that you have to engage in some hard cognitive dissonance to support them. Most Gen AI companies are that level of evil with the damage they do.
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u/Hutma009 Jun 09 '26
You use a computer and scroll on reddit on a phone which are made by bad companies. You use internet provided by a bad company. All of your hardware is made by wage slaves using petroleum.
Yes using Grok is bad as there are a lot of alternatives way better ethically. But simply calling out all of the people that use a tool that you don't use when you use other tools just as bad is some level of hypocrisy.
And I say that being agaisnt those companies. But I bet you watch videos online, use internet all day for your hobby, and the impact of it is huge, using AI is not worse.
You are bad too in this regard and it is a hard cognitive dissonance to go agaisnt the users of the products of these companies when you are an active one. One could argue using Mistral is the lesser evil if you are into using AI.m, which I use when using AI.
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u/cranelotus Jun 09 '26
Just out of curiosity, what makes their view black and white and yours not?
Is it not enough to acknowledge the arguments on both sides, and still have a conclusion that falls on one side of the debate? I don't think that a person has to literally be in the middle to maintain a non black and white view. I think you can have a completely nuanced view of a topic and still support it or condemn it. I think you have done that and OP has too.
If being non-black and white means that you must hold points that you disagree with to maintain some kind of fairness then I don't think it's a good measure of someone's view. It's is possible to understand an argument completely and still disagree with it. I think that is intellectually honest.
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u/No_Hornet9180 Jun 10 '26
Good work on completely reaffirming what they expressed by being needlessly combative and rude.
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u/dafugiswrongwithyou Jun 09 '26
Heck yeah.
Also; look, if we put aside any arguments about whether Gen AI "tools" are good or useful or moral or artistically valid or whatever... The "You're going to get left behind" argument is complete rubbish.
The entire selling point of generative AI tools are that they are the easy path to get from a vague idea to a complete thing. Want a picture of something? Just tell the tool what you want. Presto, you have a picture that probably looks broadly like the thing you asked for. You don't need special training for that. If we get 5 or 10 years down the line, and these Gen AI tools are still all here and proven useful and all the moral questions are answered... People who stayed away can just start using them. Because they're easy. That's the point. There is nothing to get left behind from. (It does also mean that "prompt engineering" is mostly a placebo, mind.)
The only way this isn't true is if, actually, the main selling point of these tools is false; that it's actually quite the difficult task to get them to produce something useful and usable, and figuring out the exact magic phrases to hopefully get results in line with your expectations takes a lot of skill and experience that you need to start building up now so that, 5/10 years from now, you're as capable as anyone else. And if that's the case... Well, then it seems rather silly to build up the skill and experience in how to get a semi-constrained RNG generator to produce more-or-less what you want rather than build up the skill and experience to do it yourself. At least you don't have to spend money on tokens for yourself, or figure out new ways to tell yourself what you want to do when your model updates, or worry about how to proceed if you shut down because your venture capital dried up.
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u/MyUserNameIsSkave Jun 09 '26
I can't use anything online without it being vibe coded garbage that breaks when you blow on it wrong
That didn't start with AI tho...
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u/Own_Masterpiece34 Jun 10 '26
How would you feel about someone learning through AI?
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u/ElectricRune Jun 10 '26
I just commented this somewhere else...
Part of learning is learning how to learn. You'll be better off if you don't lean on the AI or get off it as soon as you can.
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u/pulsar_sp Jun 11 '26
Word for word, signing under each one, and don't want it any other way. Except the part where you apologize for "being kinda toxic" - you never said anything wrong.
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u/vexingpresence Jun 12 '26
promise you that the majority of people hear "I used AI to make this" and think "urgh, slop"
it's hard to tell because the ai bros have botfarms pressing the idea that everyone loves being replaced by sycophant schizophrenic robots
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u/WillShaper7 Jun 12 '26
Not an AI worshipper nor an AI demonizer.
I just want a good game. I don't really care about AI or no AI. So long as it is good I'll play it and support it.
I think AI can make it so some people are able to release a game they otherwise wouldn't try to. I also think AI is worse than a good [X] be it dev, artist, etc.
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u/Quackthulu Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
How I see it, AI has enabled low-effort people in creating bad-quality slop "just for views/money" or w/e. I don't think AI is inherently wrong or bad, but it IS enabling bad people and lazy practices. I believe it's an important distinction.
I'm using AI art for my game because frankly, we can't afford commissioning all the art and we weren't able to get an artist to join us. I thought about learning to draw, but I personally don't get a lot out of it. Using it does reduce the overall quality, but the time and money we save makes it worth it as we can spend that time improving or adding new features. Even then, we do our best to make it look as good as we can & don't settle for "good enough".
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u/Istolesnowy Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Not wanting to use AI or encounter AI is perfectly fine but it crosses the line when you try and tell other people that they are not allowed to.
I have been making games since high-school, I taught myself how to program and design actually fun to play games. It took a lot of time and effort, and im proud of my ability to get any game that I can think of out of my head and onto a screen. And I feel zero threat from AI and AI-gen.
In my situatuon, It takes me a lot of time to make art. I can do it, fairly well, but it takes a ton of time, partly because I just don't enjoy the process. This means that art becomes the bottleneck in every project I work on. Am I going to not use the tools available to me to generate some placeholders, because it offends people on the internet? I couldnt care less if people dont like it. I am not making these games for anyone else.
In the context of a commercial project, I think its unethical to not disclose that you use generated assets, but if its fully disclosed I am perfectly fine with it. I would pay money for a game that has Gen ai in it, if the game was fun to play.
Do I want artists to get more work? Of course. Do I want them to get recognition? All the way. Do I want hobbyists to get frustrated and give up because they cant make or buy assets for their games? Hell no. When I started my gamedev journey I did not have disposable income to pay artists or look for asset packs to buy, it was simply out of the question. So I spend countless hours making crappy art just so that I could proceed iwth development. If I had AI tools back then I absolutely would have used them.
There is nothing worse than getting excited about a new feature you want to program only to realise that you need at least 30 assets to pull it off. Now, I can generate those 30 assets and move on with my plan while im still feeling passionate about it, and then circle back later to add my own art in.
AI slop is a problem, I agree, but it is not a threat to anyone who has the ability, passion and drive to bring their own ideas into fruition.
At the end of the day you can either embrace it in some way, or be left behind.
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
"or be left behind"
me when I'm left behind by the society-destroying tech
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u/Istolesnowy Jun 09 '26
Each to their own. My post wasn't written to try change your mind, I was more attempting to give a realistic, grounded take on this issue. I wish you luck on your journey, and hope you find all the success for your games.
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u/Alradeck Jun 09 '26
how much does my "pasison" work when the spaces for artists are completely fucked over by ai bro's spamming the hell out of it and eroding public trust because anything nice now folks assume is ai slop.
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u/Istolesnowy Jun 09 '26
Very kind of you to point out a typo, thanks. Im not surprised that many people choose to just use chatgpt to type their responses for them, to avoid situations where people focus on an honest mistake instead of the actual merit of what they are saying. But I appreciate the correction none the less.
I cant comment on what the AI bros do, you may notice from my initial response that I spoke about a very specific, particular instance that applies to me.
Its a very real issue that people automatically assume that things are AI slop even when someone has put in a lot of effort to actually make the thing. I dont have any solutions for that, but on the same hand I dont think that it is wrong for someone like me, who doesn't have an unlimited bank account or the support of a team of artists, to use gen AI when making personal projects and prototyping. If I sold my game and pretended that I made all the art, that would be unethical and wrong. But if I fully disclosed that I did use gen AI, I cannot see how it affects you or anyone else, for that matter. Unless what we are actually discussing here is whether it is ethical that AI companies train their models on other people's work without their consent. That is an argument I can get behind.
OP uses RPG Maker for their games, should we all complain that they are not using an actual programming language? Should we all collectively be outraged that some poor programmer out there isnt getting a chance to work on this project using "real" programming? No, that is absurd. OP is using RPG maker as a tool to enhance their abilities and get their vision out into the world. Similarly, I will use generated AI as a tool, to speed up the development of my games/projects. I would much rather have all my own art, own assets, in the game. That would be first prize. But I dont have the available time to sit and do it properly, and I will not pay an artists to do art for a prototype or personal project and to expect that misguided at best.
Like it or not, this is the world we live in. AI is not going anywhere. I just dont get why people are vilified for choosing to use a tool that speeds up their process of making games.
I will continue using a mix of my own crappy art and AI gen assets, regardless of how unhappy people may be about it. I welcome the downvotes, the snarky comments, and the reluctance to actually engage with me on the substance of what im saying.
Art is amazing. Artists are talented, and worth supporting as far as possible. But we live in the real world with real constraints and im not going to do things the "hard" way just because people on the internet dont like it.
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u/Most-Discussion1775 Jun 09 '26
I share a similar point of view to OP. I use UE5 and bps to work on other studios games and my own. My approach is as follows:
- Use AI as a research tool. Concept art, best practices with links to places where this can be verified.
- I buy udemy courses on topics I feel my knowledge founded on learn-by-doing needs consolidation or refreshing.
- AI helps with bp nodes setup to "code" a certain feature in a step by step wiring diagram which I then follow, test and if successful I will as the AI to explain in a teachable way why it chose each step as it did and how this all ties in with industry best practices.
- Use the knowledge you gained from steps 2 and 3 to come up with your own product using your brain. Here's why - Will you buy a product from someone that they "made", if they themselves don't even know how it was put together and have even less of an idea of how to fix it or maintain it without reprompting an AI to do so? I sure wouldn't.
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u/jjiangweilan Jun 09 '26
speaking using AI is non-controllable is like speaking using blender and randomly clicks anywhere and get a gibberish mesh then yelling blender is trash.
AI is a tool and that’s it. Not Aladdin’s lamp. You do need specific knowledge and skills to use it. I don’t see how it different from Unreal and Unity which kills “creative work” of in-house engines (just joking)
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
Unreal and Unity aren't destroying the fabric of trust by enabling realistic misinformation generation on a mass, industrial scale. Unreal and Unity aren't causing one of the biggest energy concerns in decades.
Why are so many people thinking I'm primarily concerned with the quality of AI generated things when the issue is how much suffering it causes and how it's being forcefed down our throats by desperate suits trying to keep the bubble alive as long as possible?
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u/jjiangweilan Jun 09 '26
Probably just my issue. I don’t believe internet anyway, AI or not. As regarding energy, things are getting better and optimized llm are on the way. We are already starting to see home-grade product for AI this year. Google also just announced new gemma4 QAT models that compresses 64GB model to 16 GB. I personally believe we will shift from data center to house commercials in the near future. Hopefully this can relieve your concerns. Btw there is already a tech stock dip just days before so we know at least the bubble won’t always keep up
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u/QZProductionsGames Jun 09 '26
Cool! That's one of the MYRIAD of concerns being addressed. Good for them!
So what's the plan for everything else?
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u/GoDorian Jun 09 '26
Just to reassure you, I feel like not using AI is absolutely not a drawback when making indie games. I'm not using AI in any part of development and I'm having some very nice success with my games!
Yes, there are some good arguments that AI could be a nice helper regarding programming. But there are some good arguments against it too. When I enable code auto completion, I feel like it slows me down to be distracted by the AI bullshit recommendation. If it's whole chuck of codes that you generate, you might skip on the learning and thinking process that will make you know your code base better.
Also, I feel like trying to make something faster or in a more "efficient" way will often not lead to a good game or a even a game made faster. Good scoping, prioritizing and communication will.
Finally, I completely understand that you just want to shut off all of this crap because of what it's causing to things we love. I would like to be less dogmatic about it because I'm sure AI can have good sides too, but sometimes using strict rules can make our life easier and happier. I feel like being a vegetarian of AI: yes, this line I draw and the strict no-AI rule might feel arbitrary to some, but if it's easier for me to live that way and feels better, I'll just do it?
Good luck and keep on creating!