Indie game developers can't compete with AI-generated content

“What game dev youtubers are actually good? Not looking for advice from people that have never finished a game, or any AI bullcrap. Also, nothing against this but unless it's super interesting I don't care much for the one off videos made to be YouTube videos (clickbait thumbnail, doing 'challenge' sort of stuff) I just want actual devlogs buy genuine people trying to make something they're proud of and talking about/showing their experience and journey. submitted by &#3”

“I've been loosely following the controversy around Roblox devs one-shotting a game where you punch through walls. Long story short: an indie dev made a viral X post showing their game where you punch through walls. Then other "devs" one-shotted that game and created Roblox clones overnight. Now everyone is copying the idea and there are dozens of clones of this game and people are rightfully upset about the way game dev appears to be going at the moment. Here's my silver lining”

“‘Venture group’ who makes shitty video games lol [re: How dependent on AI is the company you work for?]”

“And yea pixel art is made with ai cause Im solo dev and sucks in it,some people still can't get that ai its not alternative of devs,its an instrument for them for realising their ideas and helping them to realise their own project,the projects that they want,not some big greedy company submitted by /u/perfect1239 [link] [comments]”

“Battlefield has a multi-million-pound budget and they’re using AI-generated characters to promote their game. 😂 Meanwhile, here’s Jackie from HOLD. Not a single bit of AI used to create him. Just a scruffy bloke from Northumberland trying to survive the apocalypse. Budget: about £14 and a packet of crisps. 😂 submitted by /u/madgaz182 [link] [comments]”

“Survivorship bias.I was talking to someone about game development this morning. The scheduling to make a simple commercial indie game five years ago was roughly 20 hr market research, 10 hr gameplay prototyping, 10 hr art prototype, 20 hr vertical slice, 80 content & level development, 60 hr on polish. Plus some more on marketing.Now today with AI, what has changed?Those who follow a process may instead be spending 5 hrs on market research, 3 on prototyping, 30 on levels, and 100 hrs on polish.T”

“AI game creation is moving fast... Google Playground, Unity Spark, RUN, Roblox Build, Meta Pocket, and probably more coming. What I find interesting isn't just that prototypes can be generated faster. If creation keeps getting cheaper, I think the bottleneck shifts toward: knowing what to build taste testing with real players iteration distribution retention Generating a game isn't the same as making something people want to come back to. I'm increasingly leaning toward fast prototyp”

“For starters I'll be talking about making video games as an indie dev or as a hobby, because it's different when you use AI at work. AI bros can downvote this all they want, but here's a hard pill to swallow: when you vibe-code a video game, then you haven't really made it yourself. AI did it. You might have come up with the idea, but there's a massive difference between having an idea for a game and actually developing one. And if you're doing this as a hobby, then what&”

“I am currently working as solo dev & artist on a small cozy chicken farm game. I struggle with the fact that I think AI art looks better than my own art, so I tried a few different styles. Please help me decide in which direction I should go? Should I use AI art or stick to my own (which I prefer as it is more fun and less sloppy). 1 - AI art style 2 - own art, detailed style 3 - own art, Pixel style submitted by /u/Teal_Blue1704 [link] [comments]”

“I’m honestly a little terrified of the trend of using AI to instantly clone whatever game is popular. But at the same time, I don’t think a good idea alone is enough to make a game worth paying for. 🤔 Looking at my game in early development versus the final version, the core mechanics are pretty much the same, but the overall experience feels completely different. 👀 I spent so much time polishing everything: the world, camera work, sound effects, visual effects, animations, and so much more. I”

“Hey r/gamedev , my name is William. Let me try to do what's in the title up there ^. First off, why should you listen to me? Well, maybe you shouldn't listen to me. Feel free to scroll away at any time...I don't have the most insane creds in the industry or anything. But I'm not exactly new: I got hired in 2018 as an "Associate Gameplay Programmer", and before being laid off twice in the span of about 1 year, I was a "Senior Combat Engineer". So I've been”

“As an indie game developer, you can spend months thinking about a mechanic and nights actually getting it to work, and now someone can look at your game, describe what they see to an AI model, and get surprisingly close to the same idea. So what are you supposed to do? Make your mechanics harder to copy? Maybe that works for a while. Maybe it protects you until the next version of some shitty AI model comes out. But then what? What happens when the next even more capable version shows up? There”

“It's still a bit early rofl. AI in game dev really exploded in popularity only recently. And despite what people say, you can't one shot a good game. It still takes actual game design decisions outside of just coding and asset generation. Give it a year though we'll probably see some actual decent games made with AI... Aside from the big companies”

submitted by /u/Recent_Stranger6153 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Consistent-Candy6434 [link] [comments]

“Here are my own takeaways: Game design: Too much handholding *will* be met with backlash. Mina The Hollower is the recent golden standard that should be followed and adapted to Triple A. Monetization: I much prefer to buy a game once, then forget about paying any more. And no ads, please. Playtesting: Playtest with the actual people from your target audience, not yes-people. When asked why the characters talked too much, the excuse of GoW: Ragnarok's developer was that it never really came u”

“Hey! We're a small studio and fighting against the AI surge in game art o show that we are doing our art ourselves. Any support on this post is appreciated, and to be honest, the artist deserves it. Here are some actual sketches vs the in-game art. You guys got a first look at the art before release! We'd love to know, what's your honest opinion on AI made games and game art? Do you think they help or hinder the industry as a whole? submitted by /u/Black-Lab-Games [link]”

“How are creators meant to handle bad companies from turning them into AI or promoting products they have nothing to do with? submitted by /u/Singone4me [link] [comments]”

“A lot of it was shit before, the majority of games on steam even before AI were solo learning projects that were plain bad, but due to the alghorithm you barely ever saw them. Now the crap games superficially look decent and their flaws take a bit more time to run to and some of the designers are advertising them. So they tend to be more visible.”

“I will never be a videogame programmer, designer, nothing. It is an enormous undertaking. To learn as a hobby or otherwise. Seems like anytime someone pumps out a fun creation using ChatGPT + Unity / Unreal, it results in an onslaught of "What is this garbage slop?". I made this little game where you can bike around a suburban town during the fall. No interest in actual game design, simply amazed that what's in your head could come to life. submitted by /u/No_Departure7”

“I know AI is heavily hated in gamedev right now—but is it really that bad if it lets you prototype in seconds instead of hours? A flat image isn't a game asset. Pixploder automatically splits flat 2D art into isolated sprite layers ready to drop into Unity, Godot, or Unreal. https://pixploder.com Honest question for solo devs: Is using AI purely for workflow and fast asset prep a dealbreaker for you, or is saving time on grunt work worth it? submitted by /u/larex39 [link] [”

“That's not a relevant analogy. Again, this isnt scalable. It's a cool idea and I hope they continue with it.”

“Of course, definetly agree. Also it needs to find an audience. Since there is no category "Game Development" and it is just "Gaming" you are competing with very saturated market with niche category. But I know it will find the right audience one day and I will keep going even if its just me making memories.”

“I’ve read a lot of posts saying either that nothing has changed or that Meta is completely dead. Neither options has been very helpful for the accounts I manage. I’m not sure whether Andromeda is the main reason, but our creatives seem to lose momentum faster than before. A decent ad used to perform well for three or four weeks. On several accounts spending around $150-300 per day, we now start seeing a clear decline after about 10-12 days. This is only based on our own accounts, so the situatio”

“Mostly just want to complain to be honest lol. I have been working on my game for awhile and have next to little experience in art, let alone 3D or even just drawing, so I have been mostly kicking the can down the line for a while now. I finally wanted to get some concept art done of a few characters and some of the monsters (its a creature collector type game) and get a logo together but many is finding an artist a hassle. Ive spent hours on Fiverr looking and so many of them use Ai, and its so”

“Hey everyone! Lately I’ve been thinking about getting into game dev, mostly because I like storytelling and have a few game ideas I’d love to bring to life. Whether they’re actually good ideas is another question lol. The thing is, I know almost nothing about game development beyond the absolute basics. Im pretty oblivious when it comes to engines, workflows/frameworks, the ecosystem, what actually goes into designing and finishing a game… pretty much all new territory for me. I’m not starting f”

“With AI flooding market now. Only real chance to make your game standout is spend ton of money to ads or have unique good art direction. Or have addictive gameplay, pray and hope some famous streamer pick it up and become famous, which I think much less reliable than above two. Same time, if you decided to join the dark side Programmer use AI art will get much more hate than Artist use AI code. The argument art without code is just png in folder not hold true anymore. AI too advance right now, a”

“It was always hard to nearly impossible make money as an indie game developer, especially when doing it solo. However, fast evolving AI is making everything even worse. While you can build a game incredibly fast now and without the need of a large team, so can everybody else - with a fraction of required time, knowledge, skill and talent. This will only increase the amount of released games per year and will clog an already saturated market even more. And where will be the competitive defensibil”

“The issue is , some people genuinely want to innovate on an idea , but others want to copy simply to make a quick buck . Currently no system punishes soulless copies . Steam is not exactly incentivised to ban them outright because lets be real , they are making a lot of money from them ( submission fee + poor sucker who buys the slop ) . But what I think steam does understand is that gamers want high quality games in their recommendation and, AI slop farms are not exactly what I would call innov”

“We're a tiny indie team making a game called Appa and our art guys have a background in fine arts hence they can push beyond what looks like regular video game art with their broad perspective. With my whole chest, I believe ai can't ever replace what humans make for humans. Besides, it only scraps amd trains on pre existing art made by humans. Very pleased with how our game is looking rn. We're almost at 10k wishlists. Human made art will always hold its value. submitted by &#”

“Hello, Void Diver team is back 👾 One of the best parts of being a game dev is having infinite free will. And that means creating a takoyaki mini boss. Does the game have a food themed area? No. Did the game need it? Probably not. Did we have the power to do it? Hell yeah. So... we gave it the story that a spider mech accidentally got fused with a street takoyaki food truck to make it work 😋 submitted by /u/cheesebbang [link] [comments]”

“Being in game design for a few years now, and almost a decade experience as a product manager I've always have heard from those more senior than me that there's no new idea under the sun and the execution matters a lot more. But now every time a new idea pops up, there's the game and 1000 different copycats coming. I feel like game design is turning like content farming where the Instagram influencers are copying eachother making the same crappy content using AI. Should unique ideas”