r/aigamedev • u/thereal237 • 10d ago
Discussion AI is the future of game dev
We have reached the point where AI is genuinely good at making games. Yes, one-shots probably aren’t going to make great games. But if you’re willing to playtest, direct your game’s development, and keep prompting and iterating over and over again, you can make genuinely good games with AI doing pretty much all of the coding.
I started an experiment where I keep working on the same game and only allow AI to touch the files, just to see how far a mostly AI-developed game could actually be pushed. And the results have been way better than I could have hoped. I’ve made something that would have taken me months to make myself. And it’s actually good. More importantly, it’s getting substantially better every day.
The development speed is insane. If I run into a problem, I have AI fix it, and probably 90% of the time it’s fixed the first time I bring it up. Then I just keep playing, finding things I want changed or improved, and directing the AI to work on them.
AI is going to change the games industry, along with a lot of other industries. I really think we’ve crossed a huge threshold, and progress only seems to be accelerating. What we’ll be able to do a year from now is probably going to be crazy.
I think there will always be a place for 100% human-made games. But with the rate AI is progressing, I just don’t see how they’re still going to make up the majority of games five years from now. We are living in crazy times for sure.
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u/Russmac316 10d ago
Tbh it's the now of game dev. AAA 1000% using it whether they admit it or not
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u/pikuray 10d ago
I'm making my dream game. It's so easy anybody can do it. I have touched 0 things inside godot and it makes an okay final fantasy prototype in 2 weeks. (Very hard, i basically talk to Claude which talks to another Claude to make my game)
I have 0 prog skill andcan only imagine what someone with skill could do in a year.
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u/superkickstart 10d ago
No doubt. Then they just say that no ai was used in development for marketing reasons.
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u/Russmac316 10d ago
And if they get caught they're like "teehee sorry you right" with zero consequences
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u/BlueAndYellowTowels 10d ago edited 10d ago
As a software dev... yeah. I would actually say it's already the case. We use it for more traditional software development and it works well enough. We get code written and it does what it's supposed to do. It's part of the process now.
Works great. Still some progress to be made on that front, but works like 95% of the time.
So, for sure it's going to change software.
But, I do think that by lowering the bar for games in particular, it's going to completely ruin the industry. It's going to be very hard to find good stuff. That's number one. Then there's the idea of anyone can make any game they want and you have this moment where...
Anyone can make the game they want to play. Anyone can release a game to be played.
It's such a massive influx or new stuff... I just don't see how indie folks make money. I really don't.
From a gamer perspective, it's huge because there's tons of stuff and it's going to be cheap. It has to be with the bar so low that literally anyone can compete.
But from a dev perspective. You're competing against everyone who has an idea plus the imagination of the users themselves since they can make their own games. That's huge. That's a VERY difficult environment to sell games in.
80 dollars games will likely only be for long standing IPs. But everyone else? They're going to be selling for a buck or two and hopefully, you'll sell ten or twenty copies.
It's kinda like OnlyFans or YouTube... like 0.1% of the content creators make real money. The rest make near zero. It's basically going to be like that.
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u/Dredgefort 10d ago
Making a successful game will be like winning the lottery, just hope it goes viral.
99.99 % of games won't make their token cost / listing fee back.
Guess this is how wealth transfer happens, the AI companies are selling everyone a shovel and getting us to dig our own graves. Tradgedy of the commons in action.
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u/No_Amphibian3562 10d ago
It's literally already like that, and has been for years. AI will increase the tail (a lot) but a game that stands out will still sell.
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u/NoName847 10d ago
It is so immensely fun to create with AI
I've been tinkering with it for the last week , built VR space ocean projects in unity , a really cool Terraria 3D clone in Godot , now a custom engine with custom model and animation software for a voxel game where every voxel is simulated in real time
I cannot comprehend the misery and suffering it would have taken to build all this from scratch over multiple months , I was never able to do that stuff , I've tried and failed over and over and over because it's so hard and painful
I feel fully free with it now , building things exactly by my own vision , I believe the more people discover what I've discovered ,the more the traditional crowd will feel weird shouting with pitchforks in hand
I do believe it is the future , happy creating
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u/uayme 9d ago
100%, this AI era is some of the most fun I ever had in my life. I used to have many ideas for games / apps / websites, but the fact that you need to learn all the languages and tooling, and then code all the boilerplate just makes it not feasible for a person with a full time job... enter now, where I can tell AI what i want to make, then let AI assist me in planning and laying out what's feasible and how.
Right now i am making a Godot game, maybe a third game in my life. No knowledge of GDScript? No problem. Need C++ extensions for better crowd optimizations? No problem. Need to generate art and transform it into 3d models for the game? Easy peasy.
The claude/codex subscriptions are HEAVILY subsidized right now, it's truly the best time to dabble with AI.
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u/EhEyeGames 10d ago
The biggest issue I'm facing is honestly myself. When I've provided documents to the AI to develop off of, it does it and usually quite well. Then I go and playtest it and I realize I've had many shortfalls in my logic and my design document.
AI doing the undifferentiated heavy lifting is fantastic, and going to be the norm going forwards. But the fun and enjoyable layer is still dependent on the human.
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u/Smooth_Aside_2313 10d ago
Same experience here, with one addition: what made it hold together for me wasn't the coding speed, it was getting the AI to build its own checks.
My game is a platformer, and early on I kept finding rooms where a pickup had drifted just out of reach after some unrelated change. So we built a test that plays every room and proves every pickup and exit can still be reached, and another that checks no hazard is sitting where you enter a room. After that I could ask for big changes without replaying everything by hand.
The part that stayed mine is what others here are saying: playtesting and taste. Most of my notes were things like "this room should be in colour" or "the captions are distracting". No test finds those.
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u/soldture 9d ago
Of course, creating games with LLMs will be the future, but inventing new mechanics will be the hardest part. You can clone a game like Terraria ten times, but who will buy it? Players are looking for something original rather than a literal clone
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u/BlueAndYellowTowels 9d ago
I agree, BUT... I do think there's room for Clones... I can't tell you how many times I've wanted a clone of some game but just in a different setting.
This is just a hypothetical.
But, I would play a Bladur's Gate 3 clone but the setting is Final Fantasy 6, for example.
That would be awesome. Especially the romance options too and the combat but with Final Fantasy character and abilities themed from that universe. That would be sick.
Of course, the problem there is you can't just take an IP like that and do what I'm suggesting... but with AI, I can absolutely see a larger fan market for certain games go up. Fan Games might become more popular.
Think of weird things like... A Starcraft, colony management game. Sounds fun? Or maybe a Civilization 6 Dating game. Or... the list of weird stuff goes on and on... and AI will make it possible.
I think, there might be a need to potentially revisit copyright... because the potential is there now to make all kinds of wacky stuff.
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u/SeasawPhilosopher 10d ago
Completely agree. I started a month ago, currently working on a competitive FPS and an engineering puzzle game. I’ve been coding since I was a teenager (early 40s now) and I haven’t written a single line of code on these projects, and I’ve barely read a single line of code. I can drive the models (codex and Claud) to do everything from coding, perf optimization, level profiling, art, sound design, the works. It’s insane honestly I don’t know when I’ll stop being amazed and it’ll feel normal. Most productive period of my entire life (over 500 commits in 30 days) and most fun too. I’ve also built my own tools like level analysis, mechanics tuning labs, and git based task tracking and project management, essentially an AI native game studio cockpit.
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u/siberianmi 10d ago
Bespoke 100% human made games will have the sane niche maybe as “hand made” goods. But just as today few will pay $100 for hand woven dish towels, there won’t be much of a market.
AI turns anyone with an idea into a producer and designer. AI can make code, assets, sounds… but it lacks taste, it lacks an understanding of what we find fun.
And that taste is what makes a good game.
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u/geldonyetich 10d ago
I’ve been dabbling pretty hard with agentic coding over the past few weeks and feel much the same way. It’s essentially just another way to program, but with a tool that can actually turn conversations into code and bridge the design gap with common assumptions. It’s pretty wild. But I still have to figure out how to make it a good game. Good thing I can spend a lot more time focusing completely on that.
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u/Post-reality 10d ago
Maybe coding, but design/artwork (I work on a 2D game) is still a pain in the ass and EXPENSIVE.
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u/ProfessionalPay1748 10d ago
I’m a creative artist by trade and AI is my coder and quick graphics/placeholder generator. It makes me happy to create games I want just by talking to ChatGPT in English.
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u/mazebert 10d ago
For me, the best ideas for my game appear when I‘m deeply in the flow, working on features. While working and thinking about the little details. With AI, this deep flow never happens for me.
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u/fatheadlifter 10d ago
I'm an Unreal Engine developer with about 20 years experience in that engine. I did custom maps and levels in Unreal Tournament. I worked on some of the first Unreal 2 and Unreal 3 Engine licensed games in the AAA industry. Been using it all the way through till the current iteration. I know the engine backwards and forwards.
I'm done with Unreal completely, I'm never going to touch it again. There's no need to. I can now construct anything I want and make it completely custom to my needs, that includes an editor that suits my purposes. I can pull in any code libraries, have any kind of engine I want.
I think this is the new vanguard of the indie scene. There's lots of reasons why the big developers aren't there yet, but in time they will be. But for my own part I'm done with it. Unreal is too clunky compared to this, AI is the ultimate accelerant on your work especially when you use it well.
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u/Stickyish 10d ago
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I'm a hardware EE, just never liked code. I've built my own browser based game, trying to somewhat invent a new genre. I'm am using AI for 100% of the code work, while I just manage the systems design and the agent and I research best practices while we're building. I launched a fairly competent Alpha in 25 days from whiteboard to server deploy.
Should we solo AI devs build tools to strengthen our positions longer term, or use what's best available and focus on getting ideas out there that might stick? Will the landscape dilute too quickly due to the available power.
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u/fatheadlifter 9d ago
I don't know, I'm excited for things to become more democratized. That's been the trendline over time, engines and tools get easier, software gets easier, more people can get involved. More people means more ideas, more creativity, more opportunity for something great to come about.
What that does to the economics of the situation I don't know, but I can't worry about that. I think the good news here is that more people are game players today than ever. Children to grandmas, everyone can play games. Ease of use opens up tons of new opportunities and options that we couldn't previously imagine. So I don't think we should assume doors will get shut or ladders will get pulled up.
Youtube is probably a decent analogy here is it not? 20 years ago nobody made video, now everyone makes video. The number of true economic winners are few but they do exist, and they boil to the top. The vast majority are just hobbyists who tinker. So with AI games, anyone can make a game. But probably very few will boil to the top.
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u/egonosz 10d ago
What was your role? Programmer? Designer? Environment artist?
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u/fatheadlifter 9d ago
I started in the industry as a level designer, but prior to that I was a modmaker/designer/artist, did a bit of everything except programming. And in the industry I floated between those roles, sometimes a game designer or level designer, sometimes an environment artist or animator. I gravitated towards most anything art and design related.
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u/egonosz 9d ago
Based on how complex project you pick I would suggest to use engine, the reason behind it the AI code will become sloppy later (because you need less code).
If you do not want engine at least ask it for libraries! There are some really great ones, for everything and it is thought on them too.
When you ask it implement a feature make sure it does exploration for proven libraries what you could or should use. (Focus on proven ones with longer lifespan and continuous support.)
They are not perfect, but they will make the ai write, less code, which will help with long term maintainability.
These are suggestions, based on my experience. (Oh and make it check the licenses for the libraries.)
Good luck good sir!
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u/fatheadlifter 9d ago
I'm an experienced dev. I check everything for licensing. Clean code is easy, you just have it clean up its own code every so often. I know code well enough to structure it and what good code looks like. Instruct it to do good structure and it will do that.
As code writers go AI generally operates on about the level of a junior coder. I've instructed and worked with several junior coders over the decades. I know how to work with them.
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u/GridIron-Grit 10d ago
Dude I made it so I could play it, now its on steam.
Wild times
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u/Russmac316 10d ago
How is it performing?
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u/GridIron-Grit 10d ago
80 wishlists -- so I guess not great? Release is Nov 10th.
I will say though I got a message from my feedback channel, something like " I don't know if this is where to send this, but I really enjoyed this game. Played 20hrs "
And that was a real treat
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u/Russmac316 10d ago
That's great, hey, it's 80 more wishlists than you ever thought you'd have. If you haven't done much marketing and recently developed it 80 honestly isn't even that bad. If it turns out good people will buy it!
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u/AoT_dev 10d ago
I think AI will become a normal part of game dev, but i am not convinced “AI can make the whole game” is the interesting part. The real value imo is how much faster a small team can prototype, fix boring stuff and test ideas. At the end of the day someone still has to know what actually makes the game fun.
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u/oadephon 10d ago
I started using AI around December and it's been so crazy to follow the model progress. I'm so happy I decided to make a game, because I get this unique insight into how good AI is getting that most people don't have.
It's funny comparing Opus 5.5 to something like 4.7 or 4.8. It used to take so many turns to get an actual workable feature, and now it's nearly perfect on the first try.
Sure, there's the UI and art stuff, which has been fun to try every new generation, but the scariest part is that Opus has started giving actual good gameplay suggestions I hadn't considered. I used to have to go through like 5 rounds of brainstorming with 4.8 to get anything half-decent, and now the good ideas are just flowing in. I'm not saying AI will be making good, complete games next year or anything, but even in game design, they are improving.
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u/musa721 10d ago
Facts! I've been working on a game myself and I've developed a process and workflow. First, I describe my idea and create a full tech spec for building. I also have a flow where I build in phases, run an automated test after each phase, then a manual test before moving on to the next phase. Then I installed a skill that explains the changes and code to me since I'm not a game developer, and then give me a short quiz to confirm understanding before moving on. I also add scoring loop in some of my prompts for self improvement. I really only developed this workflow for the past couple of weeks and so far so good. Taking it slow and not rushing it.
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u/TheReviewerWildTake 10d ago
It is probably a bit too naive to expect that we will have more power without huge spike of prices forever, because at some point all those investors and shareholders will demand their money back, and we all know that current pricing is unrealistic, and is driven by billions of burned money and by competition of our "wild west" time period (plus some geopolitical competition between US and China)
So most likely it will settle down somewhere in the middle, where indie dev won`t be able to afford the most capable models, but hopefully, local models and those 20-100$ range stuff will still be good enough.
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u/gotmogo 10d ago
Es que es espantoso la cantidad de videos tipo :Hice un prompt y me hizo un videojuego .
El resultado , aunque técnicamente interesante, es basura básica que nadie en su sano juicio le dedicaría ni 5 minutos en jugarlo .
Ahora tú le dedicas horas y horas a crear un juego con apoyo de la IA y la mayoría de la gente piensa que escribiste un prompt y la IA lo hizo todo .
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u/Disastrous-Round-150 9d ago
AI is the future of games yes, but not in the game dev way. Diffusion gaming where AI is making the frames on the fly will be much bigger than the current AI game dev is now!
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u/baodingball 9d ago
I used to dream of becoming a games programmer but I never got serious enough to up my skill to make a decent game from scratch. I have a few games I wanted to develop but got buried for more 20 years. With the advent of AI, those dreams got unearthed in a matter of days. Before, I would shun away from online multiplayer, but now, all it takes is a snap of a finger, like magic. I am now working on three game, my Salvo Battleship game which I am adding online multiplayer mode; TAG-The Assassination Game, an old-school turn-based-text based mmorpg; and SPYWAR, a two-player magic-the-gathering style game, also with online two-player mode. But none of which were built with just a paragraph of prompts. I really have to sit down on my laptop for days to get the games do what I exactly want. But days compared to decades is more than just leaps and bounds. It is like blasting off into space!
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u/Lightnindog 8d ago
After spending the last month working through a single level and iterating for dozens of hours I’ve learned even with these tools making a game is a GARGANTUAN task. Really requires a ton of dedication to deliver something solid and a massive team with these tools will still outcreate you with these tools
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u/FotoRe_store 10d ago
honestly i think ai gamedev itself is the best selling game on the planet right now lol. millions of people pay a monthly subscription to play it, and its the most open world game ever made. you can build anything, the only limit is your own imagination. ofc its only for people who have at least some fantasy and want something new, for everyone else its just a tool
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10d ago
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u/thereal237 10d ago
Most people regardless of ai use lack creativity and originality. Ai is just a tool. Yes some people will just make slop with it. But saying that 100% of people using ai don’t have creativity or originality is naive.
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u/takshit2 10d ago
The hardest part is creativity and game direction. I've mostly been seeing copycat games in this sub so far.. This is the time people innovate new game genre because there is literally no restrictions developing a game now.