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Question for devs here — would an AI game jam be interesting?

A topic by Sanji created Mar 12, 2026 Views: 464 Replies: 9
Viewing posts 1 to 6

Hey everyone,

We’ve been experimenting with a small AI game creation tool we built called Plutus, and it got us thinking about something that might be fun for the community.

We’re considering hosting a small experimental game jam where people try generating and tweaking playable games using AI.

One feature that has been surprisingly fun to experiment with is a story mode, which might be interesting for people who enjoy narrative ideas, anime-inspired concepts, or simple simulator-style games.

Before setting anything up, we wanted to ask developers here first:

• Would something like this be interesting to participate in?
• What kind of game jam formats usually work best for you?
• Are there themes you enjoy or find overused?

If there’s interest we’ll organize the jam properly and post it in the jams section.
Curious to hear what people here think.

Also - what’s the weirdest game jam theme you’ve seen, lol (just curious)?

Very much not my type of jam, but I’m mildly curious if you know about that this appears to be similar to other game jams over the past few years.

Don't give AI output. Give AI input.

Jams like this are pointless without pondering technological stack and methodology used to get the result.

(the GOOD result)

Just a general Q re: AI.  Why is there so much hatred for games generated/assisted with AI?

I understand if there may be shit games made with AI.  But there are shit games without using AI over the years too.
Is it the amount of so called 'AI slop' released?

There are shit games made without AI, and there are good games made without AI.

I have not yet seen a single game made *with* major AI contributions that was unironically good (i have seen some that were fun to point and laugh at), and the ones that got away with some minor AI stuff would have been better without that stuff.

Besides, use of AI in professional spaces devalues human labour and human creativity while making profit off the stolen work of actual artists.

Either of these reasons are good enough for me to hate on AI "art" and AI games.

Environmental concerns. Examples: • https://wisconsinwatch.org/2026/03/wisconsin-data-center-water-olympic-swimming-pools-microsoft-mount-pleasant-racine/ • https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/ai-data-center-emissions-environment-b2887454.html • https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/04/pfas-pollution-data-centers-ai • https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/ai-data-centers-energy-demands/686064/ (if you have a public library, it might have a subscription you can use)

Economic concerns (& anger) — https://www.npr.org/2025/11/23/nx-s1-5615410/ai-bubble-nvidia-openai-revenue-bust-data-centers — https://fortune.com/2026/03/19/ai-memory-chip-shortage-hbm-economy/

Job frustrations (mass layoffs, management forcing slopware on employees, corrupted data, hardware failures from the AI acting as malware, growing communication gaps). Political alarm (the AI industry is bolstering the rise in fascism by interfering in democratic processes and civil rights). Ethics. Fatigue with the slop. Personal costs to deal with DDoS attacks and accidental code that affects hardware. Distrust and anger from unauthorized scraping for training datasets.

This didn’t format correctly when posting. But I guess if someone tolerates what comes out of AI, then should be acceptable. At least it doesn’t share stolen words or pictures of people’s kids.

There are many, many threads where this topic is discussed. Maybe read and post there about ai dislike. Or ask an AI. That was not meant ironically. They are good at summarizing such things.

My take on this is, that there is not really that much hate, but we are talking art here and using ai is not a quality feature to advertise. It does not enhance a game if you use ai assets. To the contrary. It is tolerated, just like players would tolerate stock assets. Read here for some interesting diagrams. The specific usage of ai chart in particular. https://quanticfoundry.com/2025/12/18/gen-ai/ In that survey 83% had a very negative reaction to ai artwork.

And with things that are generally disliked for various reasons, there will be extremes. That means people that are very vocal about their dislike and cite all sorts of reasons, like environmental or ethical reasons.

But as I said, we are talking art here. It is sufficient to point out that we are here for human artwork and not robot artwork. And yes, the sheer amount of ai slop is contributing to the dislike. 

(+1)

There are several "ai" jams. Just browse the jam list. There are 3 right now visible and they all do promise prices. Of course they are some kind of advertisement event for some tool or site or whatever. Just like your pitch.

And judging by the submission lists, yes, obviously, people do join such jams.

Thanks for all your feedbacks guys, we will be hosting a game jam soon. Keep an eye. ;)