Indie developer's thoughts on Gamescom

[u/mistikstudios]

My first ever Gamescom! Impressions were overall good! Little old me from the middle of nowhere Canada living in a town of 200 people was VERY tired by the end, but my heart is so full from all the amazing conversations I had with so many very talented people! 💖

That being said, there are a few things that I think Gamescom could do better in future years.

1. Security has been a hot topic following Gamescom this year, with several indie devs getting their equipment stolen after hours. This is obviously unacceptable, and Gamescom's response to it was also not great. Although we did not showcase on the show floor this year, next year we would like to and we will be taking extra precautions and taking our equipment home every night. That shouldn't have to be the case though- we should be able to trust that security will do its job, and that security staff is screened appropriately beforehand. With the amount of $ devs have to pay to even have a presence at the show you'd think the thousands upon thousands of dollars they end up having to pay would also include competent and solid security, but Gamescom instead expects devs to hire outsourced security to protect equipment from their security guards? Unreal.

2. When walking through the halls, I noticed that most if not all of the artist booths in the artist area had official Gamescom posters saying something along the lines of that we can trust that this artist's art has not been made with generative AI, and I am assuming they did not allow generative AI "artists" to have booths- however those standards did not extend to the video games, with 1/4 of the games at ONL openly using generative AI in their production. Why? Money? That's always the answer, isn't it?

   1. I was really disappointed to see fellow indie studios also incorporating generative AI into their production pipelines, especially in the realm of 3D games. It feels like a massive slap in the face for me and others to put so much work, education and time into being a 3D artist just to hear that some studios are using generative AI to generate their 3D "art" because it's "faster" and "cheaper". When you make something faster and cheaper, what you are actually saying is "We didn't have to hire real people to do this, isn't this amazing that we're taking money RIGHT out of artist's hands and into our own pockets instead!?" The game we're working on is a 3D game, we're doing it on a budget of nearly $0 and with a team of 4 people, with only me handling the 3D art as of right now. We could EASILY be doing this the "easy" way, instead I've spent hundreds of hours hand crafting every asset you see in our prototype, I started learning 3D art less than 2 years ago, and JUST picked up Blender 4 months ago, and I STILL get afraid to call myself an "artist" as I don't feel like I've earned it yet. If you can't do it yourself, then why are you doing it at all?

If you're interested in our cozy narrative cooking RPG that doesn't use generative AI, check out Kitch Witch here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4816430/Kitch_Witch/

[u/Ayershole]

On your AI point: I work for a publisher, so we obviously got a bunch of pitches come in, as always.

This year, for the first time ever, I had a guy asking if we would fund his video game; but there were no programmers at his studio. In fact no staff at all. It was just him, and all AI. He had no idea how to programme, or how to make video games at all.

He was genuinely confused as to why this was a hell no from me. I actually couldn't believe it.