First of all, thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response! 😄 I appreciate hearing a different perspective, even if we don't agree on everything.
1. About AI games having good stories
I actually think it's possible to create an AI-assisted game with a good story.
But I believe it starts with the person making the game. You need to have an idea in your head, a world you want to create, and a story you want to tell.
Then you slowly build the game around those ideas.
For example, my latest game has a fairly simple story right now, with small story segments throughout the gameplay. But that story is something I created, and I'm already working on expanding it into something bigger.
I don't think using AI automatically means a game can't have an interesting or unique story. It depends on what the creator wants to make.
2. About AI creativity and having control over the results
This is where I disagree with you a little.
When I started making my games, AI generated a lot of the visual designs. I tried changing things several times, and sometimes it worked better than others.
But as I continued experimenting, I discovered that I could provide my own character models and show them from different angles. That opens up a lot more possibilities.
For example, imagine creating your own character, designing your own buildings, or deciding exactly how your world should look. You could then give those designs to AI and have it help build the game around them.
I think that's where the future could become really interesting. You create the ideas, characters, and world, while AI helps turn everything into an actual game.
And it's not like you can just type "make me a shooting game" and two hours later have GTA 28 ready to play. 😂
It still takes time, experimentation, testing, and a lot of changes. It's just a different way of developing games.
3. About AI being useful for indie developers
I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying here.
AI is very useful for finding errors and fixing problems, at least from my experience.
I've encountered bugs while developing my games, but fortunately, I haven't experienced many really serious ones. AI has generally been pretty good at finding the problems and helping me fix them.
But that doesn't mean I can just trust everything it creates. I still need to play the game, test the mechanics, check the difficulty, and make sure everything works properly.
That's part of the work, and I think it's something people sometimes underestimate when talking about AI game development.
4. About respecting games that use AI
I understand your point about wanting to see human effort and creativity in games.
But I think we might have different definitions of what that means.
For example, I once played a game that cost around €20, where approximately 30% of the content involved AI. The developers used AI for some translations because they were from another country, and they also used AI for a few images.
But they had clearly spent time developing the game, fixing problems, and improving the experience.
I've also seen artists use AI to help adjust lighting, faces, and other small details. Those are things that might otherwise take hours of additional work.
I'm not saying that using AI automatically makes something good, or that every use of AI should be defended.
What matters to me is whether the developer actually cares about the game.
I want to see effort. I want to see creativity. And most importantly, I want to feel that someone put love into making the game.
But we also need to remember that not every indie developer has €20,000–€50,000 available to create their dream game.
For someone with ideas but without that kind of money or the necessary technical skills, AI can be an incredibly useful tool.
And I think there's something exciting about giving more people the opportunity to create games that otherwise might never exist.
At the end of the day, I don't think AI should replace creativity. I think it should help people express their creativity in ways that weren't possible for them before.
I completely respect that you prefer games with entirely human-made artwork. That's a valid preference.
I just don't think using AI automatically means that a developer is lazy or doesn't care about their game. 🙂