• Would you play a game made primarily with AI if the gameplay was genuinely fun? It’s hard to tell since I’ve never played such a game, but I probably wouldn’t because I’m interested in unique stories and experiences, not just pure fun gameplay. But unique experiences are also part of what make gameplay genuinely fun for me; great games can only keep me hooked for so long before I want something new and fresh.

• Do you think AI will eventually allow people to create full-quality games without traditional development skills? Not really, because GenAI can mostly only recreate things that have been done before and can’t apply creativity to a project, which I think is extremely important to a “full-quality” game; else, it’s just generic slop. You could argue that the prompter is where the creativity comes from, but I disagree as you have very little control over what the AI outputs, and you can’t add your own touch to it. There’s no emotion, no personality behind the splotches of color in an AI image; it’s just an amalgamation based on training data, an guess of what the prompter wants.

• Do you see AI as a useful tool for indie developers, or do you think it causes more problems than it solves? I think it may have some useful qualities for helping with programming, provided it plays a very small role in the programming and doesn’t just generate everything for you. I think perhaps a local LLM that can detect the causes of critical errors would be useful, and I wouldn’t condemn someone for using it. If you’re not extremely cautious about using it intelligently ethically, however, it’s just more trouble than it’s worth.

• What would an AI-assisted game need to do to earn your respect as a player or developer? Well, to start, I think it’s worth mentioning what aspects of an AI-assisted would make me lose respect: Using AI for anything creative: art, music, sounds, etc. Those are what I tend to care about most in a game, besides the gameplay; if I see you attempting to replace real human effort with an algorithm, I instantly lose all respect for you as a developer. I’m not even kidding when I’m saying this, I would much rather play a game with graphics made in MS Paint than with AI-generated graphics. I’ve played many games with horrendous graphics by most peoples’ tastes, but they had a unique charm and I really enjoyed the gameplay. But when I see a game use AI-generated assets, my first thought is, “this developer was too lazy to put the effort to make these assets, I doubt they put any effort into making a fun game either.” Now to answer your actual question, for an AI-assisted game to earn my respect I would need to see a commitment to fully expressing your creativity, without being hindered by AI. This means pure human artwork, with no “touch-ups,” “assistance,” or “grammar checking” done by AI. I need to see that the developers actually care about the story they’re telling, and are willing to go through the effort to tell it their way, even if it means picking up a pencil and drawing for the first time in years. If AI is used, I want to see it used in ways that make sense, particularly in programming: small-scale autocomplete, repeating a chunk of code with variations, error-finding, etc.

Sorry that this is long, I just kinda went on a tangent lol. If there’s one really important thing I can leave you with that can help you as a developer, it’s that most average people don’t like AI. AI covers aren’t appealing, and they don’t stand out from others because they’re just generic. They’re quite literally an approximation of the safest option, never daring to take a risk or experiment with something new, and therefore they’re uninteresting and never stand out from the crowd. Dare to be creative, try something exciting and new, and hone your own skills to do so. Use AI for chores so you can do art, don’t use AI for art so you can do chores.

sloppy sloppy sloppy 

I'm in the same boat as the OP. I recently started developing games due to the barrier for entry (mostly time in my case) being drastically reduced. I had a concept idea years ago but didn't have the time to bring it to life and it was so niche that no easy-to-use engines could make it work easily (e.g. Unity/Godot/etc.).

As such, I ClaudeCode'd my game from scratch in hundreds of sessions, added some human-made sound/music assets, and manually did all the testing. The main workflow was to discuss the game development process to be done in phases, then plan each phase with a high-level model (e.g. Fable), and then implement the phases in stages (sessions) using a mid-level model (Opus). The result can be very good if you do it properly by using software development practices (I'm a computational dev working in accelerator physics for my day job).

As for the negative-AI stigma, it's definitely there and you will definitely find those "slop slop slop" people that 100% refuse to even touch anything with AI in it. But my opinion is that AI can be used for good if it's done with proper oversight, ethical assets (e.g. buying real assets from real artists), and the game is maintained properly (not spaghetti-coded without a careful plan/vision). If you want an example of such a 100% AI-coded game that isn't generally flagged as "slop", see my game Echolumination.

As for using AI responsibly, I agree with the Programming Protogen's responses above. Use AI to bring a carefully thought-out idea to life, not to generate an idea from scratch as it will simply "copy/emulate" someone else's work or ideas. If you're going to use AI for asset building, make sure you make the prompt very detailed so that it isn't like anything seen elsewhere: e.g. if you ask for a "sprite asset of a tank" you'll likely get some generic slop that is trained on many others' work, but if you ask for "sprite asset of a tank in the shape of a brick house, with 8 purple meatball sphere wheels (4 on each side), with a 3-barrelled turret with the center turret being longer than the other 2, a port hole on top of the turret with 5 latches in the shape of a pentagon, ..." you will get something far more unique.

Honestly, I don't think using AI means someone puts less effort into their game. There's a big difference between generating something and calling it a day, and actually spending time testing, fixing things and trying to make the game good.

I get why people are frustrated with low-effort AI content, but I don't think every developer using AI should automatically be put in that category. Some people have had ideas for years but didn't have the time or skills to bring them to life before. I think giving those people a chance to create something is a good thing.

You don't have to like every AI-assisted game, of course, but I think the work behind each project deserves to be judged individually.

First, i'd like to do a bit of 'spam' by sharing a post i did some time ago compilating several local AI tools and conclusions/opinions, in case anybody want to check things out chatGPT or Gemini.  Sharing some AI tools for artists and learners.

Yes, i'd play and even i do play games that has AI in them. As long as the game is attractive, interesting and well polished I don't care. I also use AI in game dev to speed things up, bug-fixing, research and more. It's helpful specially if you are a solo-dev and know what you wanna do and how to do it without AI.

'Do you think AI will eventually allow people to create full-quality games without traditional development skills?'

At first I always believed in no, that you may need at least the technical language to ask for thigs, now. I'm not sure, It looks like that as long as you are clear enough it can produce good and even useful results. So IT may be a possibility in the nearby future. Still, I recommend not stop learning trad-skills (at least at base level) because there may be things that are more easily or quick to fix 'by hand' instead than asking the AI to do it again. 

Do you see AI as a useful tool for indie developers, or do you think it causes more problems than it solves?

That depends, if you already know how to code, draw, etc. I think is a really powerful tool that increase the user's capabilities, saving time, money and headaches in the process. But If you want to use it as a replacement of knowledge, skills or people, I think it may be a factory of problems, specially if the project becomes more and more complex.

What would an AI-assisted game need to do to earn your respect as a player or developer?

The same as any game. Have few bugs or bugs free preferably, being entertaining and interesting.

:-)

Would you play a game made primarily with AI if the gameplay was genuinely fun?

I have a question, though - how would I, as a player, know your game-play was genuinely fun at all, from the get-go, if I cannot distinguish it from all the other AI-generated or assisted games out there, while I'm browsing through the site?

Tens to hundreds of new AI-assisted and generated games are pumped out everyday because they're easy to make. In the sea of visually-striking, perfect-looking games that look just as good as yours in their thumbnail banners, how would you be able to hook someone into trying your game out, when you're competing against all the other games that look and sound almost exactly like yours?

If, out of 1000 games, I only had time to play 2 today, why should I, as the player, choose to click on yours and not someone else's who is also using AI? Even if you had worked hard to prompt and change your character designs to evolve them, the other AI-generated and AI-assisted games also have beautiful character and background designs by default, and have also worked hard on their prompts, sound and image curation.

If I browse again the next day, another twenty to thirty new AI-generated/assisted games would have appeared. Would I still remember to try your game again?

Before you say, "it's because I care enough to describe it as genuinely fun", realize that these people are also using AI to generate glowing descriptions of their games. Everyone will say their game is fun. Who are you to imply that their games are not as fun as yours, just because theirs is generated by AI while yours is only assisted by it?

Honestly, I think it's easier to ask questions like, "would you play an AI game if it were genuinely fun?" or, "why do people hate AI games?" than face the reality that there's actual competition out there, and that you need to work hard and think out of the box to stand out, especially in the sea of other AI games. Nobody wants to accept that just because their game isn't AI-generated but rather ~✨assisted✨~ doesn't make it special. It still looks like any other game with AI-generated assets, and quite frankly, nobody owes it to anyone to try something out just because they've worked a little harder on it. It's like being a pixel farm game in a sea of 2000 other pixel farm games. Even if you've built it from scratch, it's still a pixel farm game, along with 2000 other pixel farm games. There are 2000 other games to click on and play.

That said, if you're just making your games to have fun and make all your personal little fantasies come true, that's great! You should be your own biggest fan, and should love and enjoy what you've made, even if it's AI-assisted or generated.

But if you're looking for actual players for your games, you goals will shift and it'll become an entirely different kettle of fish where expectations stand. You'll need to understand what players actually see while they're browsing for new things to try out, and put yourself in their shoes when deciding on what to hover over for more details before clicking on a selected game. You must first understand human needs, desires and expectations, and then turn that understanding into a hook to draw them in.

AI cannot help you do that - at least not yet, anyway. One day it might be able to, but until then, you'll need to figure out how to do so on your own, or get some input from a people-person.

What would an AI-assisted game need to do to earn your respect as a player or developer?

As a developer, I respect other developers' choices in tools they use. I don't have an issue with devs choosing to generate their games with AI. A lot of them are just kids trying out this new shiny thing anyway. Gotta give them room to explore.

As a player....... this one's tricky. While I do respect a dev's choice in tools, I would not actually play a game with AI-assisted or generated graphics either, mostly because while they look polished and beautiful, there are just too many of them that look the same. My eyes would want to "rest" from all that elaborate AI artwork I see everyday, which is generally why I tend to pick games that have hand-drawn character art used as assets. They stand out as cute and kooky, which is what I'd joined Itch Io for in the first place.

I don't even play games with 3D graphics, actually, unless it's an AAA one from a large, established company. I'm just that niche that likes hand-drawn VNs, as I had grown up with Lord of the Rings and game-books when I was a young girl, and played Japanese visual novels as a nerdy teenager. This has a lot less to do with respect than it does with personal taste, though.

I feel developers need to take it less personally when someone chooses not to play their games due to having different preferences, be it moral or not. Someone not playing your games is not an attack - they're just not your target market. It's very different from people going out of the way to say bad things to your face, so I find.