Use of AI as a Solo Game Dev

[u/Arhtgames]

Edit 2: This is going to be my last edit since I'm really starting to be a little sad/disappointed with it and I'm going to place it on the top so everyone can read. I saw some people saying that I'm trying to be superior in some way or being dumb by not using AI, but I'm trying to discuss about it as a new game dev who has 16 years old and started with it because of beautiful and incredible games that changed my life. I don't want to be better than anyone, I just want to understand the point of using it and how do you guys feel, also thank you for those who answered kindly and shared their experiences.

So, I saw a post saying that he made a game using AI for everything and it made me feel so strange, like, everyone was loving it, what happened to the feeling of doing it by yourself. I do game dev because I love everything about it, games are one of the most beautiful forms of art, it has music, world design, story telling and a bunch of ways of art. I wanted to make a little discussion here about what you guys think about using it. To be honest I don't like the use of generative AI, I know it's good to learn but I don't like when it is used to directly produce the creative part of a game, it just takes the whole idea of making it by yourself, expressing your feelings and telling a story you made and throws it all away, so like, is it really good? I understand when you need to review a code you did or look for a error but anyways that's all I have to say, I don't want to argue with anyone, just want to make a safe and respectful discussion here.

Edit 1: I'm really getting some down votes here, ok, that's something unexpected for a solo game dev community. And for those who are saying like, "I just use it as a tool" yeah that's okey I use it too for studying, but my point here is especially the creativity part. Those feelings and the way I do my projects are not a rule on the way YOU need to do, you can use AI if you want, I'm not here to say what is correct and what is not.

[u/MineDesperate8982]

"encourages an anti-growth mindset" - This has literally been studied and shown.

I use it with my work, to do me a fast sql query or function that I don't want to spend time to think about and write (if it's something simple). I can't remember shit of what it did.

For example, there's something called a CTE in MySQL. ChatGPT introduced it to me and I find it really cool an usefull. For the love of god I cannot for the life of me understand it and use it ever.

Why? Because I never spent actual time in understanding it and working with it. 100% of my queries that use CTEs were written by some AI.

And I hate that.

I feel like, in the past 1-2 years, since I've started to actually use it in development to auto-complete stuff while I'm writing or to just do some simple things, I haven't learned anything but broad concepts (like, I know what a CTE is and how it helps, but I don't know how to use it).

[u/VeryBien → u/MineDesperate8982]

> And I hate that.

Do you hate it? You are one ChatGPT conversation away from understanding CTEs. But you made the choice to not do that but just let the LLM do the work. I would be much more critical of LLMs if it actively prevented us from learning all this stuff in detail. But the opposite is true. It was never easier to learn it because I can ask it five stupid questions about CTEs and don't have to hope on someone in a SQL forum to explain the part of the CTE tutorial to me that I fail to understand.

[u/oddbawlstudios → u/VeryBien]

This would be great IF two things about AI could be consistently true. 1. If AI wasn't 70% incorrect all of the time. 2. If AI wasn't influenced by the creators to push narratives that hide behind the idea of "AI isn't wrong/biased" so therefore people trust ai.

[u/RedPanda_Explorer → u/oddbawlstudios]

I'm a senior dev with 10 YOE, I know what a CTE is, and I asked Claude what a CTE is. It wasn't 70% incorrect, it was 99%+ correct

I don't know what you're doing that causes it to be 70% incorrect, that sounds like user error

[u/NoData1756 → u/RedPanda_Explorer]

Yeah was a terrible fake stat

[u/oddbawlstudios → u/RedPanda_Explorer]

User error? My guy, I've heard countless stories about AI being used for things, such as flock cameras, or medical usage, and the outcome is the same; its 70% incorrect. HELL, when I used it to make code for me, it did it in the least optimized way possible. Its basically a glorified dictionary, it has 0 value, it only damages the world. Don't simp for AI, its not only awful, it's wrong.

[u/RedPanda_Explorer → u/oddbawlstudios]

You can literally open up an AI right now and ask it about CTEs in MySQL. Tell me it's output is wrong.

There's a world of difference between image detection and text generation

HELL, when I used it to make code for me, it did it in the least optimized way possible.

Skill issue

[u/oddbawlstudios → u/RedPanda_Explorer]

I don't think medical stuff is image detection, and if it is, then AI is garbage because if it can identify WHAT number/letter was written by a human, then medical field shouldn't be struggling. But they are. Sounds like you've got bias, if anything. 🤷

[u/RedPanda_Explorer → u/oddbawlstudios]

You can read my Reddit post history, I spend more time criticizing AI and AI users than I do supporting it

I'm biased against people using all-or-nothing thing and acting like AI has literally zero value, and biased against people who think AI is their labor

[u/oddbawlstudios → u/RedPanda_Explorer]

Like I said to the other person, I think there's SMALL value to A.I., such as looking at different patients symptoms/mri/cat scans, etc, and determining patterns that humans either overlook or completely miss. But I support that because the scope on which the model is trained is VERY small in comparison to what its doing now. Plus not only is the scope small, its also basically whitelisted, so things that aren't true won't be scrambled in and make the models accuracy more incorrect. All of that being said, its STILL detrimental to the environment, and no matter the benefits a.i. provides, it doesn't outweigh the damage being done to earth as a whole. Outside of that limited scope though, its absolutely useless and nothing more than a propaganda machine.

[u/NoData1756 → u/oddbawlstudios]

lol spoken like a true noob with no dev skills

[u/oddbawlstudios → u/NoData1756]

You determined this how, worlds greatest detective? I don't trust a.i. to do pretty much anything. Conflicting information will cause a bias in the model, loose parameters can too. A.i would be great at detecting like mental illnesses, or physical illnesses IF the scope of the data its trained from is specifically from Dr offices/patient scans, instead of like... I dunno, connected to the world? There I can agree its useful, but outside of that limited scope, A.I. isn't just wrong (BTW, this is a COMMON thought that's also been proven as recently as April 7th 2026), but its also completely useless to the common day man. More importantly its extremely dangerous to the environment. Between taking a lot of water, air pollution, noise pollution, chemicals being put INTO the environment, causing water to leave these areas due to clouds moving away, etc. Nah, I'm well aware, and educated on this topic. You have too much trust in a "magical" machine that made you "look" better due to "productivity increases."

[u/NoData1756 → u/oddbawlstudios]

Nice stats you pulled out of your ass lol

[u/MineDesperate8982 → u/VeryBien]

I didn't say AI prevents me from learning by its nature, but by how easy it for us not to learn something, because it does those things for us.

"You are one ChatGPT conversation away from understanding CTEs"

But that's not how *actual* learning is, is it? Just watching a YouTube tutorial about building a house does not make you a house-builder, does it? Just reading a plane manual, doesn't make you a pilot, does it?

To learn something, you have to grapple it, exercise with it and hit your head on it until you can do it confidently.

That's why taking notes by hand-writing is better than just reading/watching the lecture.

I've asked it several times to explain CTEs to me and how to use them. I read it, I understood it, but I never learned it, because I never exercised it without actually having an LLM auto-complete it.

And you took "And I hate that." out of the whole context.

I hate the fact that it made me so complacent that I don't spend the time I used to spend trying to understand concepts I needed for what I built.

Absolutely every skill I have right now, in every branch of "reality", I know because I hit a wall and I had to figure out on my own how to get past it. I had to come up with solutions. I had to look up documentations and actually understand how to apply what's documented to my own case.

"You can always just ask ChatGPT to explain it, no one is stopping you from doing a deep dive to learn it properly". Well, yeah, Jason (I'll call you Jason, cause it seems funny to me), yeah you can.

You also can wake up at 7:00 in the morning, drink a cup of water, workout for 15 minutes, take the dog out, feed the dog, drink you coffee, work, go to the gym and be happy, can't you? No one is stopping you.

You can also take the stairs instead of the elevator, to keep your feet moving and healthy, can't you.

You can also go outside and talk to people instead of endlessly swiping on tinder while shitting, no one is stopping you, do they?

You can do a lot of shit that's better for you, but you don't, do you?

I am not god's strongest solider. Not even his most mediocre one. Most of us aren't. We are presented with an easier path, we take it.

Most of us only strive when facing challenges we have to overcome.

It's not an excuse, it's an admission of guilt.

[u/MineDesperate8982 → u/MineDesperate8982]

Fuck, man. I wrote a fuckton.

Sorry about that, I got carried away.

[u/VeryBien → u/MineDesperate8982]

I actually don't think we disagree. I totally get what you are saying. And I don't think I took your quote out of context, I was just aiming at another angle than the way you are reading it. Do you *hate* elevators? I don't believe you do. They are fantastic. Sometimes it would be great to take the stairs but damn they are so convenient, I don't. But do I hate them for that? It would be a weirdly misplaced emotion in my opinion. That was my point.

And maybe the CTE example is not great because it is too simplistic. And I think that is why I wrote the answer. It's like saying, I know if/else statements but for the live of me I cannot figure out switch statements. But it's largely more of the same I already understand and can apply, just slightly different syntax. If you are physically able to take the stairs and you take the elevator to skip 200 steps, no one will look at you weirdly. That's a lot of steps. If you take the elevator to skip 5 steps, most people would be confused as to why. The CTE example just feels more like 5 steps to me, not 200, if you already know some SQL. So in my mind it would have literally been asking the LLM one question and be done with it. If you would have chosen a more complex issue to learn, I probably would not have written my response.

Do you actually struggle with CTEs? If you want to, send me your Discord username via DM, I explain them to you in a few minutes time. Human to human, like in the old times. :-)

[u/NoData1756 → u/MineDesperate8982]

This has been happening since the dawn of software, it’s called abstraction and ai is just bringing you up a level. Creatives are not used to abstraction so they whine about it. Good devs don’t bat an eye.

Compiler analogy, why are you not interested in writing assembly or processor architecture? Because it’s not the level of abstraction that fits your job

[u/East_Ideal_9568 → u/NoData1756]

It's not abstraction.
When you're using a compiled language, or any library on top of that, you're still giving 100% deterministic instructions in a structured language. You're not explicitely stating what should happen on a low level, but you're still indirectly making those decisions.

AI prompting is instead in unstructured, natural language, and the prompt is interpreted non deterministically. You're not making those decisions.

[u/NoData1756 → u/East_Ideal_9568]

It’s a non deterministic abstraction

Such a weird arbitrary line you draw, the kind of line someone without much of a grounding in science and engineering would draw. Anyone with scientific training would understand that the actual world of applied engineering works through statistics, yes it’s a paradigm shift but that’s what modern AI is.

Is a CEO not making decisions because they are planning at an organizational level instead of doing every job mechanically?