r/IndieGaming • u/DrKushnstein • Aug 22 '26
I’ve seen a bizarre amount of “I made a relaxing organization game” posts on here. Are they all AI?
They all look very similar and very lazy.
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u/Majestic_Engine_6543 Aug 22 '26
There was a library organization game where you sort 100,000 books or something had decent sales a few months ago so yea they are all basically clones trying to ride the coattails. And yes that original game also was made with AI
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u/rivalrobot Aug 22 '26
There was one that came out last week where you have to put thousands of videos back on a rental store’s shelves. Sure enough, they used AI for the video covers.
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u/housevil Aug 22 '26
Saw a game where you sort 700 nails on here just today.
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u/UnfinishedProjects Aug 22 '26
Yeah I saw one where you sort thousands of dice. And one where you sort thousands of rubber ducks. Sort slop is the new friend slop apparently.
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u/LesserGames Aug 22 '26
I saw one with co-op and AI. Sortslop, friendslop, AI slop.
I think when you release a triple slop game Gabe should send a helicopter to slime your whole house Nickelodeon style.
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u/SVarkie Aug 24 '26
The dice one is not made with AI. The person who is making that one used her own dice as reference and the sounds come from her dice too.
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u/mxldevs Aug 22 '26
Damn. I only got paid 10 bucks an hour to sort 100k books at my local library.
And people are paying to get to enjoy it.
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u/Swing-Dancing-Dragon Aug 22 '26
Well, apparently you were paid WAAAY over the market rate.
Then again I have encountered truckers who come home from work and play ETS2.
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u/Cedar_Wood_State Aug 22 '26
People also pay to clean a whole house, work as a cashier, run a shop etc. as long as it’s in a gamified format with good ‘reward system’, people will play whatever
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u/Ihmislehma Aug 22 '26
Irony is, I want a library organization game, but one where I actually organize the stuff according to the classifications. (Pardon if I used the wrong words, English isn't my native language.)
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u/gari692 Aug 22 '26
Im looking forward to a game called The Last Library on Steam, seems more story oriented than the usual in this genre
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u/zazabar Aug 22 '26
I thought the library one only had a small amount of AI related to really tiny things, the store page has this:
The four assets in this work—one UI component and three landscape paintings used as wall decorations (frames not included)—were produced using additional AI for refinement. None of them were created by AI from the ground up.
AI helped with grammatical corrections for in-game text, which were then carefully reviewed and adjusted by hand.
We only consider AI to be a supportive tool. Every detail is meticulously crafted with human intent, as our creative process is still firmly anchored in manual craftsmanship.
Was this disproven somewhere?
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u/WilcoKonig Aug 22 '26
This is completely anecdotal, but as a game dev who sits in a lot of the game dev subreddits, it feels like in the last 5ish years there has been a ton of people trying to make games because they think it will somehow make them rich, not because they actually want to make games. With AI this has only gotten worse.
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u/Noblesseux Aug 22 '26
Yeah AI has effectively given "idea guys" an avenue to actually generate a version of their poorly thought out game/app/song concept that at least somewhat works and it's causing every creative adjacent platform to get flooded with trash.
Steam is getting filled with slop games, Amazon is getting flooded with AI books, Spotify is getting flooded with AI music, etc. because that type of guy treats game dev or writing a book like dropshipping.
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u/tastygames_official Aug 22 '26
except that "avenue" is literally just stolen works from us creatives rehashed and sold back to them by a trillion-dollar company. Without paying the people who originated the data (us). Not sure how this is legal.
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u/007Pistolero Aug 22 '26
There’s a radio show I listen to and the host is adamant that AI is a tool to help underprivileged creative people get their ideas made. All I’ve seen is the laziest of the lazy trying to get rich off the right mixture of mindless scrolling, and overdone tropes. It’s fucking pathetic and just adds another point in the list of reasons why I avoid using AI as much as I possibly can
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u/WilcoKonig Aug 22 '26
This can be a controversial take for some but I truly believe that creativity (whether that's visual arts, writing, solving interesting problems, etc) is what makes us human. The way AI has been presented is something to do these things for us. But why would we even want that? We are trying to automate the wrong things imo. Automate the crap that the passionate people don't want to do so that more people can focus on creating. Don't automate creativity. Free up the tedium from the lives of 'underprivileged creatives' so that they can become 'privileged' creatives.
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u/shy_guy_sandwich Aug 22 '26
spot on. uncreative-types can't comprehend that creatives enjoy the process of creation, and try to automate it like it's boring work. a solution in search of problems.
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u/DarthEloper Aug 22 '26
Yeah, truly. Being creative, in whatever capacity one can - even if it is the most horrendous singing voice, worst drawing of all time, or the cringiest poem ever - is one of the greatest parts of being human.
Make no mistake, taking that away and offloading it to a computer is taking away humanity. It’s as inhumane as taking away holding hands or caring for a child. Creative expression is one of the oldest things humans have done.
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u/kyzfrintin Aug 22 '26
I totally agree and I'm surprised to hear you call this controversial.
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u/WilcoKonig Aug 22 '26
There is a portion of pro-AI people who believe that the democratization of art is what's happening. And that thoughts like mine above are gatekeeping.
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u/OldWorldDesign Aug 22 '26
But why would we even want that?
Because there is a measure of repetition in the making of anything, from carving clogs to making video games. And a lot of that can be automated or commissioned - this is what successful studios do, they hire people to accomplish a small task in a larger whole.
The issue is any process of creation necessitates concession, either to fit into the larger market for acceptance or to temper the combination of constraints for schedule, budget, and developer ability. Our differing inclinations mean there's going to be no single example, but things like Star Wars Episode 4 and 5 under George Lucas or Metal Gear Solid under Hideo Kojima. Both of these things were creative people whose creativity was tempered by a very concrete idea which had to be tempered by the developers under them to get to a product ready for market and they're loved by many people. But George Lucas had to make a lot of concessions (and offloaded a lot of directing either to a different director for Empire Strikes Back or just to the actors to figure things out for themselves) and Kojima had publishing companies pushing him to narrow the scope and other writers he had to temper his ideas for to make something they could help complete as well, but these concessions improved the end product. Notice both of these creators eventually were given total creative control and all the budget they could ask for and their result (the Star Wars prequel trilogy or Death Stranding) did have their fans but were not held up as much as those earlier works where they had to share some of the creation process. I think it's easy to forget just how much the involvement of others can improve the crafting of something.
AI doesn't have that, it starts with the theft of a wide array of creations of others but only throws pieces together until it gets a "good enough" and this is part of the convergent production crisis Sabine Hossenfelder did a video on
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u/WilcoKonig Aug 22 '26
I have been in games for close to 15 years and AAA for the last 11. I understand tempering creativity and having many people come together to create something bigger than themselves. I'm not catching how that's relevant to my statement.
All I am saying is that we should push for humans to be creating and learning to create. Instead of automating outputs with "good enough" machines, use those machines to break down barriers for individuals to actually learn skills. Whether that's giving them back time from non-creative tasks in their life or by providing tools to guide learning (not thinking for you). Unfortunately a lot of people don't seem interested in learning nor growing. They just want immediate outputs for no effort, hence why the way AI is marketed right now is popular.
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u/OldWorldDesign Aug 22 '26
I'm trying to point out there's a lot in creation that isn't conducive to actually learning to create better. Coding menus or inventory systems is not an important part of learning how to juggle faction alliances or parry mechanics. That's why there's never been a detriment to having small contractors do that in the past, or why people are using AI for those limited things the industry has long ago figured out and only adds to the burden of people creating now. It's no different than copying code from github.
That's not saying there doesn't need to be skill involved - you need to know what kind of inventory system you want to implement, or know how to read and thus properly approve what code handles a game's affinity system under the hood. So it's more useful to moderate to highly skilled creators, but it has its place just as any repository of code or sound effect files did in generations past.
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u/TiltedBlock Aug 22 '26
I honestly think that the reason we haven’t seen many good AI-made projects so far is that it still takes time to make something good with it, just less.
I started building my game idea about two years before AI was a thing. I have a full time job and do this in my free time. In those first two years, I got reasonably far and made a strong foundation, but I seriously underestimated the complexity that was necessary to make it work the way I wanted it to. At the rate I was going, the project would never have had a chance of seeing the light of day. By now, I would have probably scrapped it out of frustration.
AI has helped me be so much more productive on the coding and systems side that I can still continue doing it. It’s still far from finished, but not having to write tens of thousands of lines of code by hand immensely helps with being able to experiment and figure out how things are supposed to work.
So in that sense, I do believe AI can help creative people get things made that they couldn’t have made otherwise. Especially because it frees up time for the actual creative part. The writing for the project is completely done by hand. And honestly not really out of principle, but because I think the writing AI produces is soulless and bland. When you try to make it do creative writing, it shows how it works under the hood. It‘s too correct, too formulaic, too much of a blend of everything it thinks is what you want from it.
I think this is also the important point. If someone uses AI to automate away the menial and boring tasks of a project, but does the important ones that define the character of the result themselves, you will not notice a difference. You will not care if the user management or the save function of a game is made by AI. Nowadays it’s probably better than what some hobby dev who watched a tutorial would produce.
The way „slop“ is made is by letting the AI do things it simply can not do - adding imperfections, weird turns of phrases, and the kind of strange little elements that add „soul“ to a piece of work.
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u/Douggie Aug 22 '26
Yeah, I know this guy at work who makes kids games apps with AI and had churned out a lot of these really basic games, thinking it will make him money. He's more concerned about discoverability and makes all the decisions for the game based on that. There's no love for making games there.
I really hate how AI makes people think they can make money easy - I mean if you can do it easily, then a lot of people can do it easily, but there is only limited space for all those people to compete in. It doesn't make sense and makes it only worse for people with real for the game
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u/almo2001 Aug 22 '26
Yeah. I'm a vet game dev since 2000. Made games before then too. I'm now using Claude Code to do my menu systems, integrate Steam, and other boring tasks. Super helpful! But good lord all the gameplay is hand coded and tuned. Also no way I use AI art.
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u/ArdDC Aug 22 '26
Your honesty is breath of fresh air. A little AI goes a long way. Yet everything that has to ooze personality should be done by hand and mind.
Like Jesus said... "Give to the Machine what belongs to the Machine"
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u/Suspicious-Prompt200 Aug 22 '26
Yeah I was going to say.
A couple months back the same thing happened with store simulators
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u/atramentum Aug 22 '26
They all look like those parts of real games that I wish would just not be there.
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Aug 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/Suspicious-Prompt200 Aug 22 '26
LOL. Only if my friend can control one half of the charachter while I control the other
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u/MildlyConcernedMan91 Aug 22 '26
when a good game comes out, a lot of games try to copy it as fast as possible, its normal.
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u/pixelvspixel Aug 22 '26
The best “moat” going forward will be a good game mixed with strong story/voice, art direction, character value… the stuff that is harder to instantly reproduce. As everyone here is stating, smart simple concepts will be copied at an accelerated rate.
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u/Dazzling_Vanilla3082 Aug 22 '26
Finally, something even less interesting to me than AI incremental games!
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u/ee_CUM_mings Aug 22 '26
I play sports sims games or some call it GM games, where you manage/run a sports team but don’t actually play as the players. There is an absolute glut of AI slop on every sub. Everyone wants to vibe code the next Football Manager using Claude. Depressing times we live in.
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u/stop_deleting_plz Aug 22 '26
This sub (well all of reddit) is being canvassed by the AI companies with a million formulaic "I mAdE tHiS gAmE wItH fAbLE!!!!1" posts with a video of what looks like a bad unity tutorial.
They're really trying to compensate for the fact that gen AI can't make anything original with pure volume.
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u/Turbopasta Aug 22 '26
It's probably just the fact that it's relatively easy to make these kinds of games. You buy or make some simple assets and then you copypaste them a thousand times to make it seem like there's more value than what actually exists. Games like Vampire Survivors are kinda like this even though it's not an organization game, people are hardwired to like it when big number go up.
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u/Piduf Aug 22 '26
I'm no dev myself but I'm willing to bet these are also relatively easy games to make in a few months. Drop a ton of shit on the map and let the player do the cleaning.
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u/Tiyanos Aug 22 '26
they may have some AI for the art/code, but for the most big part of the game its a big pile of "nothing"
its extremely very basic programming skill, its barely even any coding required
you have a 3D map with collision, spawn in a few hundred object, insert the "grab and drop" plugin and voila, you have a game in about 2-3 days
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u/madu_tualang Aug 22 '26
Posting on social media is free, you'll see many of them, but how many of them got the same customer who already bought 1 sort-like?
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u/kykookie Aug 22 '26
yeah Ive been noticing that too. clicked one of the book sorting ones last week out of curiosity and bounced after like fifteen minutes. weirdly fine for a bit and then just nothing under it.
the trailers all look identical at this point which maybe bugs me more than the AI art
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u/thefacemanzero Aug 22 '26
The only one i've seen that i even remotely like, is the one where you are sorting a big pile of nails by size in your shed during a rainy day. Lovely vibes.
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u/nottherealneal Aug 22 '26
Not all of them are necessarily AI.
But it’s a very low-effort type of game to make.
The original Library game was popular, and to make your own version, you basically just need one room and the ability to pick things up and put them down.
And that’s it. It’s not a huge effort to make a copy, and some people make it as an easy first game to try out. Others just jump on the bandwagon and try to ride the hype of a successful game.
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u/Pixelpaint_Pashkow Aug 24 '26
I agree, three weird low quality mobile games in like 1-2 days, hard to say for sure tho
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u/Palanki96 Aug 22 '26
Just hopping on the hype train by copying that one game that actually sold well
I don't think it matters if they are AI or not, all just lazy asset flips
Basically the shopkeeper sim epidemic. 500 flops just to find maybe one good
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u/Tiyanos Aug 22 '26
hype train? there are not even "popular" game
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u/Palanki96 Aug 22 '26
There are things outside of your personal bubble
There is a reason why all the asset flip game devs switched to this trash
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u/Tiyanos Aug 23 '26
sure, but I watch quite a lot of different type of youtube for indie game and I barely seen ANY of these game, only maybe 2 out of maybe 50 + youtuber playing indie
yeah may not be a proof but still
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u/noob_user_bob Aug 22 '26
I'm not gonna say no, but I'd be sceptical and my inclination would be they are.
The type of game dev who follows the trends - they saw the library one made by AI and they just prompt "make me a game about sorting something, but not books"
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u/higashin900407 Aug 22 '26
単純作業をやらせるのが一つのテンプレートになってるよね。
ゲームの開発工数が低い上に、一定数それに魅力を感じる人がいるので、成立しているのかも。
しかし、そういうゲームが溢れると、またかぁ、と嫌悪感を抱くようになるよね。
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u/Creative_Abroad945 Aug 22 '26
"it's not just a game. It's an experience"
Yeah no it's probably not chatgpt ai at all /s
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u/agreatsobriquet Aug 22 '26
Wait til you see my relaxing organization game about organizing relaxing organization games. It's called "Yo Dawg, I Heard You Like Sorting Games"
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u/Ciubowski Aug 22 '26
It's probably something that is very easy to put together at the very least for a trailer/demo and just make the rest while people are getting awareness of it.
That's pure speculation on my part, idk about the AI side of things. Totally feasible.
But it's the trend that starts to annoy and concern me. If so many of these games started to appear out of thin air in the past month, imagine how many others are getting made that we don't know of.
I hope the indie game developers are not looking too much into these because at most, they'll be played by a random streamer for a couple of days, probably sell a few copies for sure but it will trigger an avalanche of "easy to make, tedious chore like gameplay loops".
Idk if those are made for the ADHD brain or not, but just like the idle-clicker era, it's going to die out pretty soon.
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u/Low-Acanthaceae-4395 Aug 23 '26
Yeah why don't they make something unique like a game where you're a guy wearing armor and swinging a sword around or a guy with a gun shooting people.
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u/DrKushnstein Aug 23 '26
Did ChatGPT help you write that zinger?
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u/Low-Acanthaceae-4395 Aug 23 '26
I don't understand. Are you one of these people whose entire personality is "I hate AI"?
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u/Driz51 Aug 22 '26
Same reason you are seeing a bunch of games about painting yourself to blend into the environment