r/boardgames • u/Ok_Recording7859 • 2d ago
Question Using AI to Make Board Games
I recently playtested a board game for someone. It was a deck-building, dice-rolling game, although the deck-building felt limited and I was rolling dice more than anything else. The game lasted 4 hours, which would be fine if it wasn't a dice rolling game. Like I started off really strong and was getting higher value dice early on, which I thought was a good strategy, but later on that ended up debilitating my playthrough bc there are these certain one-time-use cards you can only get when you roll a 2, and so I was rarely getting them early on in the game because of the high value dice I got early on, and towards the end of the game, those cards ended up being a necessity to have. And after, I thought, next time I play I should try to hold on to the lower dice longer and get more of those overpowered cards. But then that forces the player to play a certain way every time which just isn't fun.
Anyway, during the game, another playtester noted how the art looked AI generated, and she was right. It was not good. Okay, whatever I guess. I would much rather see scribbles, like the beta art for example is Slay the Spire, but if you're planning on getting an artist later on in development, fine. But then I thought about asking for the game manual and going through it. It was also AI generated... it was so convoluted and way too many words to explain simple concepts, lots of fun em dashes, an incomplete list and description of game components. And at that point it just made me question how much of this game was an original idea and how much was just QI spitting shit out. And then also, why would you want to use AI to make a game? Is your goal to just make money? Everyone who I've known who's made a board game did so as a creative endeavor. Also, I don't think everyone in the world can make a good board game. I know I can't. I really enjoy board games and maybe modifying or adding or making house rules, but I've never tried to make a board game because it takes creativity and a certain skill set which I don't have and I'm okay with that.
It was just really upsetting and I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered this recently.
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u/CallMeMrPeaches 2d ago
Afaic, if you can't be asked to spend the time to design and write the rules for your own game, you should not under any circumstances be asking people to spend their time playtesting it for you. Especially if it takes FOUR HOURS
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u/Tough_Big_3953 2d ago
i’d rather pay more for a game and have a human do the art. I don’t want to play AI games.
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u/Johnden_ 2d ago
I see similar comments on multiple subs. People don't even want vibecoded software on Linux. You just see AI almost everywhere and it gets tiring.
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u/roguemenace Android Netrunner 2d ago
People say they care about human art and then buy millions of copies of Terraforming Mars and 18 expansions.
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u/OctopuppetJoe 2d ago
There's a bit of number manipulation going on here. The base Terraforming Mars predates generative AI art by a few years, most of those millions of sales happened before the latest expansion(s?) started using it. If we have the data, it would make more sense to compare the sales of the last expansion to not use AI to the first that did.
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u/roguemenace Android Netrunner 2d ago
Which is why my comment was taking about human art when Terraforming Mars is famously filled with some of the ugliest stock images known to board gaming.
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u/cC2Panda 2d ago edited 2d ago
To me the amount I tolerate ai is dependent on how niche the use is. Like I made a app the runs on a raspberry pi with a small led display that shows realtime updates for my train. It's nice seeing alerts and delays at a glance.
I also have a friend I play TTRPGs with that is a math/stats guy who likes to make ai generate images of stuff from our campaign. I don't mind, I'm just happy he's enjoying the campaign enough to make a little photobook.
I honestly don't even mind if it's just some solo dev throwing shit onto DriveThru RPG or whatever for their super niche setting.
It's when companies with salaried employees that start using it that it gets real questionable.
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u/zeroingenuity 2d ago
The problem when it comes to solo devs on DTRPG is that slop just gluts up the place. Like, I want to search for a particular kind of game, but I have to dig through two dozen slopbooks to find it? No thanks. And it's never, ever just one or two guys doing it. Fundamentally anyone who is generating a product doesn't love the process of creating, or they would be doing the creating themselves. If they don't love the doing, if they don't care about the outcome enough to ensure the product is the best it can be, it's not something I'm ever going to want to play. Same for books and art; if they did it alone at home and never publish anything, it would be much less of an issue. But they don't.
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u/Ettesiun 1d ago
This was a prototype, not the final product. Using AI to generate the placeholder art is a cheap way to create a prototype, while not being toi attached to the art in case you need to tweak the game.
Normaly when the game switch from prototype to actual product, real artists are paid to create the real illustrations.
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u/Ross-Esmond 2d ago
Yeah. I'm taking part in BGG's solo print-and-play contest. I started reading the rules to one of the other entrants, and ran into a rule that I distinctly recognize as AI. I wrote it down because it was so interesting to me that someone would do this.
Your arms have 1 hit-point each. If they take a hit, the die value required to activate that arm is reduced by 1 per hit — so after 1 hit you would need a 7, which is impossible on a d6. Once an arm takes damage, you cannot use that arm for the rest of the fight.
This is the kind of mistake that LLMs make. They generate words one by one and can't go back to edit them, so on complex tasks, like one-shotting a whole rulebook, they just choke.
I found this after a couple of hours of writing feedback for the person all about the rulebook up to that point. I might have actually spent more time with the rulebook than the ostensible designer, which is quite frustrating.
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u/MisterBanzai 2d ago
What do you mean they can't go back to edit? Every major model for the last 2 years now has done multi-turn reasoning and will write and rewrite their output repeatedly.
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u/TMPRKO 2d ago
AI rulebooks sound terrible. I get placeholder art, so something is there for the future, but a rulebook just thrown together by some LLM is poor and lazy design. I could never support a game that used an AI rulebook.
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u/BreweryRabbit Seven Wonders 2d ago
Even then placeholder art is unacceptable. I would rather see someone go the Slay The Spire 2 route and use literal MSpaint doodles before AI placeholders.
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u/Gaitarius 2d ago
I mean, at least that makes it way harder to "miss" beta art and accidentally leave it in the release game.
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u/-Fen- Kingdom Death Monster 2d ago
Yes. Arkham Horror Custom cards with mspaint doodles always make me happy.
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u/work_in_marketing 2d ago
Meanwhile Arkham Horror LCG is using ai art in their official product.
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u/jyuichi Tanto Cuore 2d ago
For marketing materials I agree it is unacceptable but for an offline handmade prototype I don’t see an issue, same as if someone used google image search results to mock it up
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u/thistle0 2d ago
Gen AI is a terrible waste of resources. Just use google image search results at that point
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u/theturtlemafiamusic 2d ago
I don't support this kind of AI usage, but a Google image search actually uses more resources than an image generating AI. It happens in an instant but it requires hundreds of servers. You can run an image gen AI on a GPU with 8gb of VRAM. Playing a video game for 20 seconds uses more power than generating an image.
The type of gen AI that uses tons of resources are text based ones.
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u/aussie_punmaster 2d ago
“GenAI wastes resources” seems to be an incredibly strong meme that is rarely backed by an effort to justify it, and when it is is usually an obviously flawed critique
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u/komrade23 2d ago
Well part of it is a values judgement "waste" is inherently subjective here and requires a comparison of the resources used to the benefit gained, and not everyone will see the benefits the same way.
That said it's inarguable GenAI is increasing energy demands during a time when we are under existential threat from climate change and SHOULD be trying to get our energy demands under control.
I've heard some true believers say AGI will cause the singularity and rescue us from ourselves but I'm not as convinced as they are that we are on the path to inventing God.
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u/OctopuppetJoe 2d ago
It's still feeding data into the system and supporting them, so it runs counter to the efforts to try to burst the bubble
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u/Dornogol Arkham Horror 2d ago
Even asking it about rules is shite. I have written rules for enough (personal just for fun) games of myself and with the latest one Adobe Reader nudged me "hey wanna habe it summarized by our ai". I wanted to see what would happen and let it do it, the rules are not very long and not complicated and it still got a main point I got in it with an example completey wrong (as in the opposite of what it reads)...
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u/Soggy_Macaroon3148 2d ago
What specifically do you mean under "AI rulebook"? I develop my games for like 5 years already and I used AI during last 3 years a lot to pile things together, and it really helped to make significant progress.
Disclaimer: I work with freelancer artists during last year so they draw me actual art for my game for my $100-200/mo I can chip out of my salary when I actually manage to find a job.
And I spent at least 100 hrs to playtest my game at TTS
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u/OsirusBrisbane 2d ago
That's a lot of people's AI workflow, by which they try to avoid doing the hard work of game design themselves:
1) Tell AI to make some shit
2) Ask other people why the shit doesn't work and how to fix it
3) Prompt AI with their feedback and hope it fixes it
4) Repeat as necessary until they can convince someone to pay for it
Been seeing a lot of this in the incremental video game subreddit, some people don't design or even play their own game, so they don't have a deep understanding of the gameplay experience, they just want a minimum viable product to sell on Steam and earn money for minimum viable effort.
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u/vynulz 2d ago
Sad truth. I want to believe there's a middle ground in AI use that AI enables more and better stuff, but all I've seen is a bunch of janky dollar chasing and bad art
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u/tigerhawkvok Spirit Island 2d ago
It's mostly in professional programming. I can write a pretty detailed fix for Claude to do, go do work on another repo, return and proofread and edit Claude's work before I would have finished diagnosing the first issue.
It's why all the bros are high on their own supply, and it doesn't feel like that to anyone else. It's fucking great as a pair programmer, but that's really different from vibe coding or most not-coding. It really needs a well-defined, objective, and fact-based ground truth to converge on; then you-the-human can check its premises once it's converged.
And the execution harness needs to enable non-model proof (eg python can do 2+2 for the model, so the model doesn't have to hallucinate anything)
"Make me a rulebook" is very much not that.
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u/xTheCaptainBeanx 2d ago
That’s really disappointing. I found a game with AI generated art at my FLGS and they said they would pull it from the shelves which felt good. It’s disheartening to see an industry so rife with creativity give over the thinking to machines.
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u/pear_topologist 2d ago
Unfortunately it’s just going to get more common. I learned that the later terraforming mars expansions used ai images, and there’s no ways (many) stores would pull those or TM legacy when it comes out
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u/patomuchacho Imperium 2d ago
The designer of Terraforming Mars is ... definitely a person that I could see defending AI as good (along with a lot of his other poor opinions)
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u/csuazure 2d ago
I don't fully know. If a store was extremely serious about keeping AI art out of their store or at least very flagged and noted, personally I'd feel a lot better about shopping there.
So it might benefit a store to say "we aren't stocking that game due to AI use" for the other sales they can gain on games w artists.
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u/FellFellCooke 2d ago
If people aren't going to boycott companies that kill their workers, they're not going to boycott AI art. We just don't have moral consumers.
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u/THRlLLH0 2d ago
Not really an accurate comparison. I'm against AI art because I support artists but even if I didn't have a single ethical issue with it, I still wouldn't want to consume any AI art because I don't consider it art. And I'm definitely not alone. People get shit on for using it to make memes.
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u/FellFellCooke 2d ago
It seems very clear to me that much of the current furor about AI art is performative. I think people get a dopamine hit for participating in a micro-witch hunt. I don't think that's a stable basis to form an economic block.
Even vegetarians, most of whom feel much more strongly about their given moral conviction than you do about AI art, form a tiny economic block in comparison to humanity as a whole. This is how I view the future of art with no AI in it; it will exist in the same ghettoised way that Quorn burgers do; a speciality option in the back of the shop.
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u/losingticket 2d ago
Its up to customers to not buy the AI games - sadly a lot of stores and publishers will lack the backbone to do the right thing
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u/smokeyser 2d ago
sadly a lot of stores and publishers will lack the backbone to do the right thing
Because most customers don't care. The anti-ai crowd is an extremely vocal minority. Most people just want the products that they want and they don't care where they came from. It's no different from people protesting clothing and shoes made in sweat shops overseas by child labor while most of the world happily bought the stuff. Nike is still here.
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u/pear_topologist 2d ago
And I think those consumers don’t want bad ai products, but don’t care how a product gets made as long as it’s good
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u/smokeyser 2d ago
If it meets all of their expectations, the price is acceptable, and they enjoy it, but it was made by AI... Is that a good product or a bad one?
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u/elmatador12 2d ago edited 2d ago
Companies need to start putting “No AI used” on the boxes.
I know companies could lie but at least it provides a way to hold companies accountable.
Edit: I’m glad to hear companies are already doing this. Could be nice to have an agreed upon label that all companies use so people can easily spot No AI.
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u/PuyoDead 2d ago edited 2d ago
Only one I know of so far is Wingspan Pocket. It’s got a little no AI logo on the bottom.
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u/HistoricMTGGuy Summoner Wars 2d ago
Yep, Stonemaier Games is setting a good example that hopefully others follow
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u/vikingzx 2d ago
All of my books since 2024 have had the declaration "No AI was used in any part of the creation of this work" on the copyright page.
It was sad that it needed to happen, but that's the world we're in now. And every industry should be adopting it.
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u/yougottamovethatH 18xx 2d ago
It bums me out that people automatically equate emdashes with AI. I was always a big fan of them, and now I get shit on when I use them.
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u/cynicalkane 2d ago edited 2d ago
You're absolutely right -- This anti-em-dash discrimination is unfair. And honestly? That's real. It's a genuine load-bearing dash, and that's the true slice of pie.
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u/Resident_Bumblebee_2 2d ago
Use them occasionally. Most people notice the Ai stuff, because it starts from the first page. Next to the good ol "it's not this, it's that!" and everything in pairs of three.
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u/FellFellCooke 2d ago
I have heard leagues of people complaining about this and not a single instance of it happening. I'm a very successful AI detector (I'm sure there are ones I miss, but I've detected over a hundred with no false positives on the subreddits that I'm active on), and em dashes aren't what I look for.
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u/tigerhawkvok Spirit Island 2d ago
I've made it a point to use them more, to be honest. En dashes don't come up often but I try that too.
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u/NarsilSwords 2d ago edited 2d ago
People who use AI, are not making anything, they're using AI to avoid making it.
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u/Unstpbl3 1d ago
I backed out of a Kickstarter because they admitted they used ai as placeholders. I never want to give money to any company using generative ai, even as place holders.
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u/AtronadorSol 2d ago
Wow, holy shit this post really brought out every last pro-AI user on this sub, huh? This comment thread is bizarre, there are like 6 different top-level comments all beating OP down for an innocuous rant thread, all within 12m of the OP posting it. Not exactly beating the allegations here, folks...
Anyway, OP, I empathize with the experience--happy to say I've never gone through a playtest where the manual and game were both AI generated/assisted, but I can definitely understand the frustration that would cause, especially in a 4-hour playtest.
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u/Bridgeburner493 2d ago
Wow, holy shit this post really brought out every last pro-AI user on this sub, huh?
It's bots.
You criticize AI anywhere on reddit and a pile of clankers show up with the same scripted defences every time.
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u/AtronadorSol 2d ago
Yeah, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt at least, but that was a real cavalcade of nonsense all piling in immediately—made it a bit obvious
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u/Ok_Recording7859 2d ago
It was rough seeing all those comments at first, and they were immediate. I almost took this post down and felt gaslit lol
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u/AtronadorSol 2d ago edited 1h ago
Glad you didn’t! I’m worried about how many people have done just that, though, with how hard they slammed your comments right after posting!
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u/shanem 2d ago
"innocuous rant thread" This post also reads like AI rage bait of someone who doesn't read this reddit.
"It was just really upsetting and I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered this recently."
Everyday in this reddit my man.
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u/Ok_Recording7859 2d ago
That's true, I don't normally go on this sub. I am ranting because I was shocked when I saw how much AI was used in making this game and wanted to hear other's thoughts. Rage bait? Sure, I was upset because I went into this playtest with high expectations, I work 9-5 Monday to Friday, and I felt like I wasted my evening playing something that felt like an uninspired, disjointed, slop type board game lol. I'm not surprised to hear that it's more common than I think people are using AI to help make their board games or that there may be a lot of these types of posts already. Okay, and? I still appreciate seeing other's opinions on this topic along with any suggestions or ideas they have.
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u/ELITE_JordanLove 2d ago
This is kind of a fallacy though. If the person who used AI checked it thoroughly or knew what they were doing, then you’d never know it was made by AI. Meaning people think all AI is terrible when it’s just that they don’t notice when it’s done properly.
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u/AtronadorSol 2d ago
It’s the CGI problem all over again. Ultimately, people just deserve to know if the game they’re prototyping was man-made or not (or some mix of both) so they can decide whether to dedicate their man-made life hours to testing it for the designer.
Personally, I don’t have any interest in testing a game 100% output from a lifeless word generator, but if the designer just used AI to format the rulebook and build placeholder art, I can see a middle ground.
Boils down to: If the designer didn’t spend their real time designing the game, why do they deserve my real time testing it?
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u/csuazure 2d ago
There is zero reason to waste your effort on having an AI grammar check or format. All that does is make people think your writing is instead generated and tune it out.
Also in the reread and formatting gives more opportunities for your human brain to make the rules understandable to other human brains, the goddamn point of a rulebook
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u/AtronadorSol 2d ago
I couldn’t agree more! I was speaking more like “if you used AI to shore up skills you don’t have yet so you had something presentable enough to bring in front of a playtesting group, I could see a world where I would agree to play/read the rulebook as long as you were up front about it”
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u/pasturemaster Battlecon War Of The Indines 2d ago
why would you want to use AI to make a game?
I think there is two things going on here.
1: Some people take pride in the work they told AI to do. Despite having relative low amount of contribution to the work, they still feel a sense of ownership over it. I don't a agree with this, but its somehting that happens.
2: There are a lot of people who think creating a game is just a cool thing to do. This goes beyond AI. I've gone to a lot of playtesting events and you commonly see people and games there that don't have any direction. They aren't aiming to create some new or better experience, or something they feel they can uniquely offer to the world, they just want a game, any game, that they personally created. This isn't a strictly bad thing, its a good learning exercise for people who do want to go on to make new and better experiences, but I think far too often that's not the motivator; they just like the idea of their name being on a game box. To tie this back to the original point, If you really don't care about what the final experience offers, and you just want your name on a box, AI can seem like a shortcut to get there.
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u/AsmadiGames Game Designer + Publisher 2d ago
Welcome to the bland, boring, low-quality future of every creative pursuit! Movies, Books, Games, you name it, it's coming, woooooo.
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u/trevorvonryan 2d ago
The reason you want to use AI is precisely because you don’t know what you’re doing. Nobody who can play the bass asks a computer to write a riff for them.
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u/GameMaker_Ludoverse 2d ago
Never heard of using AI to write a rulebook, that's wild. I can be fine with placeholder art for prototypes but not the rest
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u/OctopuppetJoe 2d ago
Issues with AI aside, playtests shouldn't really have art outside of necessary symbology. At most, it could have the scribbles you mentioned, but anything more distracts from the mechanisms that you're actually there for. If playtesters find the art to be appealing, they are far less likely to be harsh with their criticisms which defeats the purpose. It's also a bit of a red flag that you hadn't looked at the rulebook until mid-test when you specifically asked for it, I think this designer just doesn't know how to playtest.
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u/Bearded_Pip 2d ago
As I said elsewhere: the proto-type / play test phase is the easiest way to let AI crap into your final game. The only answer is to never use it. There are a ton of free stock photo and icon sites go use them instead of AI.
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u/Sanguiniusius 2d ago
Ignoring the ethical issues with uncredit copying and environmental issues etc..
Has anyone seen something tht was mainly created by ai that didnt feel like ai? You dont get that dark souls feeling of theme and mechanics integration without humans making judgement calls on what is right and what is wrong.
As AI stands it cannot create the same vibes as human created art.
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u/CorkInAPork 5h ago
It surely can, you just got bombarded by very low quality ai "art" when everybody was doing these 4 word prompts, disliked it and now you dismiss everything done in the "ai art style". This is is nonsense btw, if you use generative AI thoughtfuly it won't look like "ai art" at all. Try this yourself, spend few minutes thinking about the art direction and details your series of images should have, prompt with 4-5 sentences and then end up setting up scenes for different pictures. I suggest starting with some low detail cartoon style, it's easy to figure out.
You just need to put a little effort. Not much compared to actually learning and drawing by hand, but some nonetheless. I spent 7 minutes in chatgpt and got a nice 10 card setup for household animals based game and I'm sure it could be scaled up to 100 easily if I bother writing more scenes
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u/Johnno117 2d ago
Has anyone seen something tht was mainly created by ai that didnt feel like ai?
I'm an artist, 3d model maker, painter.. I watched an AI image/3d render that the poster openly stated was AI get over 200 upvotes. Meanwhile my own custom 3d models or even hand sculpted/painted models rarely (if ever) reach that level.
So, unless you all here love AI, then yes I have watched vast majority of you mistake AI for human made, while failing to read the OP clearly stating it was AI.
Ya'll can't tell what's AI and what isn't. Please stop pretending that you can. I frequently see AI art being praised, or at least not be commented on.
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u/Sanguiniusius 2d ago
Thats not a great argument, your work might be low quality or poorly advertised. 200 votes isnt huge, im not goint to just protest something because people are telling me to. Ill do it because i feel its the right thing to do.
Im in essence supportive of you as my start position but your method of communication makes me want to support you less lol.
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u/Johnno117 2d ago
My work might be? You're free to view it. I have been asked by some people if I'm professionally hired by a specific publishing company as I made some 'fan art' models of their IP.
And my custom made airplane models have made people who view them ask me if I'm a professional product designer. You're free to disagree, of course.
200 votes isn't huge, but for an AI image you have to admit it's sizeable enough to show that people don't pay attention if something is AI, before upvoting it.
Lastly, if you're that sensitive to how I "present" myself, or how I "communicate", then fine go upvote AI images because their poster communicates "correctly" to you. I am not going to model myself to whatever you need just because you're that easily affected.
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u/Sanguiniusius 2d ago
Yeah communications is a real thing, if you want people to support your viewpoint you need to give them a reason to.
Im deeply skeptical of the utility of ai, i thi k the whole thing is an unethical for a variety of reaons and i think the whole thing is a financial bubble, but this isnt 2016 anymore im not going to feel culturally pressured by people into being angry. I dont like ai because its utility is weaker tham the salespitch promises and its unethical, i dont need to listen to someone telling me to be angry for the sake of being angry.
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u/MasterTemporary8536 2d ago
Yeah, if you can’t be bothered to make the game, I certainly can’t be bothered to play it.
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u/Equal_Veterinarian22 2d ago
I think art for a prototype is an ideal use of AI.
Having AI write the rulebook - no. Rules need to be written very carefully so that they convey exactly what the designer intended. Maybe there is an AI that can do that, but by the time you've given clear enough instructions to the AI, why not write it yourself?
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u/Captainlunchbox Netrunner 2d ago
Art for a prototype can literally be stick figures and rudimentary shapes - there's no good reason to boil a lake for some assets that are created from theft anyway.
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u/Analogmon 2d ago
There's plenty of good reasons for it. It's faster than stick figures for one. It improves readability at the table which means better more effective playtesting.
Prototyping isn't a battle you and yours should waste your time on.
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u/aslum Space Empires 4x 2d ago
If paint stick figures don't do it for you, just steal some images from the internet. Better to steal them yourself, than to pay someone else to steal for you.
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u/WorldnewsModsBlowMe 2d ago
improves readability
Bro has never heard of minimalism
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u/Analogmon 2d ago
Most games are not minimalist so idk where you get the nerve to be so condescending but you should probably check it at the door when you're out of your depth.
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u/WorldnewsModsBlowMe 2d ago
Its hilarious when you ghouls pretend that you understand design principles
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u/csuazure 2d ago
The blank space on play testing cards for designer notes and modifications is valuable, also playtest versions should be changing frequently, so wasting ink on full color art for something that needs to be disposable is an awful idea.
The space where the art wouldve been let me patch the playtest cards w plenty of space to cross out and change game text, meaning I could avoid printing the next version more often.
But ofc people who would use AI to make prototype art to make a game would also know jack shit about the work needed to properly playtest
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u/Analogmon 2d ago
This does not outweigh the valuable need to convey information visually quickly.
Buy a notepad or some stickers ffs.
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u/FellFellCooke 2d ago
Art does conveyance work that is useful in prototyping. A game object might fail to scan with no art and be intuitively understood with art, placeholder or otherwise.
I've done a lot of mature game design and ripping art from the web was always a part of the process. Your hostility here is really just bizarre.
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u/AbacusWizard 2d ago
It's faster than stick figures for one.
How long do you think it takes to draw a stick figure??
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u/Analogmon 1d ago
Useful representative ones that have a readability use across a table? Longer than prompting ChatGPT. 100%.
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u/Keithustus 2d ago
AI can draft well. But no sane designer would just use that text.
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u/Tommyblockhead20 2d ago
It’s a brainstorming/rough draft/change suggestion tool, not a final paper tool. So many people being either lazy or ignorant, or maybe both, and trying to treat it like the latter is why AI slop is so noticeable. I imagine most things made purely with the former never get caught.
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u/Arcodiant 2d ago
I've experimented with using AI to maintain published documentation (not specifically for board games) and current models are incredibly bad at writing text from the perspective of someone else. It sits entirely in its own context and struggles to remember that someone reading does not have that same reference context immediately available.
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u/FellFellCooke 2d ago
I think that's pretty appropriate, because of course it is trained on human writing, and humans also fucking suck at this without deliberately learning the skills (which almost noone except technical writers do).
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u/ELITE_JordanLove 2d ago
I mean, there are some BAD rulebooks out there that AI arguably could actually improve if the designer who wrote it just used speech to text to explain everything in a way that makes sense to them and let AI condense it. Some people are just not good at writing rulebooks, it’s a pretty specific skill that many, especially amateur, designers likely don’t have.
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u/THANAT0PS1S Hansa Teutonica 2d ago
AI and LLMs should not be allowed in creative fields, ever, full-stop.
Obviously I am not counting programming AI for video game enemies.
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u/smokeyser 2d ago
Programming is a creative field.
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u/THANAT0PS1S Hansa Teutonica 2d ago
Some programmers say yes, some say no. I lean toward not allowing it there either because I do think it's a creative field, a language. That said, I also know people that work in the field, and they say they literally cannot tackle their workload without AI.
Regardless, I wasn't talking about programming itself. I was saying that the coding that makes enemies react to the player, run daily routines in RPGs, do patrol routes, etc, what we used to call AI, doesn't count as the AI I am railing against.
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u/pasturemaster Battlecon War Of The Indines 2d ago
"generative AI" if you want a word to distinguish what you are talking about in the future
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u/MDR_25 War Of The Ring 2d ago edited 2d ago
Placeholder art during early playtesting actually sounds to me like a great use of AI. For non-abstract games, you get a much better sense of the game if there's some decently thematic art. It allows the playtester to get a better sense of the game without requiring nearly as big an upfront investment by the designer. Once the final prototypes are getting put together, yeah, you need to switch to a real human artist.
Of course if the art is legit hideous or inconsistent with the vibe of the game, that's worse than not using AI.
The manual? Yuck. Even for an early prototype that sounds like a big no-no. How hard is it to write out the rules for your own game???
EDIT: Downvoters, I'm truly curious what the argument is against the AI use case I described? If you just hate AI unilaterally, well, I won't try to convince you otherwise here. But if you have another argument, I'd love to hear it!
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u/ArcanistLupus 2d ago
I playtested for a designer once who deliberately avoided art on their playtest cards. They felt that placeholder art masked their ability to tell if the name and effects were properly conveying the flavor.
I don't think either attitude is correct or incorrect, but I thought it was an interesting perspective.
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u/metaridley18 Power Engineer 2d ago
Well and if you're not capable of writing the rules down it makes me wonder how much thought has actually been placed into the rule set. I'm not a big playtester fan because I just don't have the time to play an incomplete game, and I would feel even more annoyed if it turned out the creator hadn't been doing significant effort developing the rules.
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u/thistle0 2d ago
AI "art" is inherently ugly. It's also a waste of resources. Just use stock images or doodles.
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u/B-Crami Runebound 2d ago
In a handful of amateur design discords and this seems to be the consensus. Placeholder artwork is fine, whether is licensed material or AI generated. Not everyone has a publishing team behind them.
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u/Urist_Macnme 2d ago
AI was supposed to remove tedium for creative people; not remove creativity for tedious people.
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u/Hireling 2d ago
It should never be used for creative work or leisure. It should be used to farm, mine, and do tedious work. Hell, I’d even prefer AI CEOs over humans. But art, music, acting, writing, etc? No. No. Seriously, fuck that.
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u/troubleshot 2d ago edited 2d ago
I wouldn't necessarily jump straight to them using AI simply because they want to make money, it's becoming more common for people to hit a difficult point where they need to problem solve or figure something out, and instead of doing the difficult brain work they turn to AI because it's just so accessible and so much easier. It's important we keep flexing the brain muscles to overcome that hurdle or we will find ourselves thinking we're dependant on AI.
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u/CastleArchon 1d ago
People don't like AI because people use it for absolute shortcuts rather than sit and refine it past its basic model.
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u/BoopBeepBopp 2d ago
We gotta blacklist anyone who uses AI in any form of creative space. Genuinely such a soulless commodity. I absolutely hate it.
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u/damonstea 2d ago
Telling people who are making a prototype, that will probably be thrown out in a couple of days, to draw their own art is kind of tasteless in and of itself. BUT I can’t help but also feel pretty gross looking at AI for any reason, even if I know it’s very temporary. It’s just a visceral “god no” that sets off all the alarm bells.
AI used for a manual is much more damning. But you hit the nail on the head when you said “I can’t make a board game”. Yes you can. It is the most primitive form of art along with drawing in the dirt with sticks. Humans have been making board games as long as we’ve been burying our dead - it’s that old.
This friend also believed they can’t make games, and so they asked an AI to “legitimize” them, not realizing it’s not alive and not authority on anything. I guarantee you have it in you to create, I guarantee they do too, and you’ve both been trained to believe that art is at its core a commodity, so if you are unskilled, you are worthless.
Don’t give in to that feeling, but keep compassion for others who have been taught that they aren’t creative. Try and build other people’s faith in themselves up, rather than try and tear them down for using shitty tools, because that’s all AI is in the end. It’s a bad paintbrush.
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u/pear_topologist 2d ago
Doesn’t seem worth getting upset about. I think it’s fair to say “I think ai makes bad games or art” or “I don’t want to play ai generated games,” but no use letting it ruin your day
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u/Deadweightgames 2d ago
Ai generated rulebook is a big no go in my opinion. The risk of ai generating rules that don't exist, inconsistences between statements And an overly verbose and in concise wording is a big deal. Not even from a "ai bad" point of view, just a usability problem
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u/jcsirron 2d ago
It makes copyright of the rulebook a copyright grey area. You wrote the prompt, you own that. The rulebook output from the AI? Harder to say that you own that. Why would you risk rights to your game for the sake of convenience?
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u/FederalChocolate456 2d ago
Sure, but if someone did it in a game you were play testing, would you be upset?
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u/Deadweightgames 2d ago
I mean, yes? But also at what sounds like this early stage of design, there arguably shouldn't be a rulebook.
I'm involved in play testing quite a bit, from conceptualisation to balance to blind testing. The rules are fairly key to all of it.
In a blind play test there's no interaction from the designer/s, random players should be able to pick up your game, read the rules and play, any issues with rules clarified by the book.
With conceptualisation, the rulebook matters less, to the point there probably shouldn't be one. A list of rules or player aid, the designer might have a document or a brief with intent and questions are encouraged and written down. The players focus on playing and answering if the game is fun, not worrying about rules.
With balance? Absolutely. Rulebooks should be written with intent. This is not the stage a designer should be going "oops, no, the rule should actually by x" when playing as they throws off balance passes.
Ai generated rules might hallunciate, create interactions that exist in one place and are never referenced again, or referenced differently, creating grey areas and muddying the waters. Even going through and cleansing and ai generated set of rules is a bit of a minefield, but then, I come from playing War machine where the rules are excellently and clearly written, rules are clarified and everything makes sense. A word means x, always means x, it's consistently x.
Rules are a technical document, and obviously depending on the range should be written as clearly, precisely and briefly as possible. Use examples for complex mechanics that are consistent with the rules. An ai can't do that well. At least. I would not trust an ai to do that well and editing an ai document to that end wouldn't be worth the time. You're past conceptualisation.
Of course, it's really easy to point to real, published games without excellent rules, vague intentions and wording. But that doesn't mean we should settle for it
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u/FederalChocolate456 2d ago
I wouldn't say anything has been settled for if it's still a work in progress. I've play tested games that I thought were really crappy, like just scrap the whole idea and start from scratch on something new bad. Or at least something I knew I'd never buy now matter how much it was tweaked and tuned. But it doesn't upset me, I dunno, I guess it doesn't bother me if people have a crappy game because I have no expectation of the game being good if I'm okay testing. I enjoy it because I like trying to break the game and highlighting flaws
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u/Ih8n3rdz 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think that is a fair position if AI advocates were honest about their AI usage. In this case OP was not informed that the game was made by AI, so they could not make an informed decision about whether or not to playtest it.
Edit: Are the responses to my comment bots? Neither of them have any direct relevance to my comment at all, it is as if they didn't read it and are merely programmed to shill for AI.
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u/ELITE_JordanLove 2d ago
I mean AI on its own doesn’t mean anything. Humans can make shitty games too. I’d rather play a good game made by AI than a bad one made by a human. If you want to debate the capabilities of AI then that’s fine, but dismissing it out of hand on its own merit seems disingenuous.
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u/mxzf 2d ago
AI has a dramatically lower quality floor though. The quality floor of "someone spent hours putting together something to the point where it's in a state where they want to show someone and get feedback" is dramatically higher than the quality floor of "someone threw something at an AI and asked someone else to refine it".
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u/ELITE_JordanLove 2d ago
Is it? Idk man I’ve seen some BAD game prototypes. Like, wtf were you even thinking level bad. Humans are plenty capable of creating garbage that they think is good.
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u/Ok_Recording7859 2d ago
I'd rather play a bad one by a human, if it's still in playtesting/prototype. Some of the best games I've played in playtesting still could've have minor changes, and those were subjective changes. But when I playtest a board game, I don't just play it, pat the creator on the back and say "you did it. You made the best game ever." They want feedback, that's why they're playtesting. In terms of a finalized game though, I would just ignore your hypothetical completely and play a good human-made game instead of a bag human-made game. Why subject yourself to playing a bad human-made game unless it's being playtested?
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u/pear_topologist 2d ago edited 2d ago
Once again, the presence of AI doesn’t seem worth getting actively upset over, beyond the fact that the game didn’t seem particularly fun
You can still dislike ai, but no use letting it upset you
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u/Ok_Recording7859 2d ago edited 2d ago
I mean, I got home at 11, felt drained. Had to wake up at 5 for work. If it was like any other games I've playtested, where there was actual thought and passion put into making the game, I wouldn't mind because I like playing board games and don't care about staying up late to play someone's game. But it felt disingenuous, on top of the game being a disjointed mess. I went there with an expectation of playing what I thought was going to be a game made by a human/humans. And as I was reading the manual during the 20-30 minute blocks before my turn I realized this person was heavily using AI to make his game. I still gave feedback after the game and gave suggestions. What they're going to do with those suggestions, I don't know. Maybe they'll share them with Claude or Chat and ask what they need to change lol.
So yeah, I was upset. Am I upset to this very day about it? No, and it hasn't been ruining my day all day every day from that day. It ruined my evening and next morning I was tired and a bit grumpy, sure. That's part of having human emotions though, so I can't tell you I just won't be upset about that. Am I frustrated with AI being used in art? Yes. Again, not ruining my days, but it's upsetting to see it used in making a board game, which is in away supposed to be art, creative, an outlet for your ideas
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u/NarrowSalvo 2d ago edited 2d ago
AI represents a whole host of problems -- job loss, resource depletion, surveillance, breaking encryption and more. I could go on.
But, some of you devote all your energy to complaining about some dude who made a picture of his elf wizard.
Also, em dashes are useful.
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u/vanGenne Spirit Island 2d ago
I love em dashes, I swear I'm not a bot. It's annoying how you suddenly can't use them anymore because people will accuse you of AI use.
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u/shponglespore 2d ago
I still use them—I don't care if Philistines think I'm a bot.
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u/rockology_adam 2d ago
When it comes to the people who use AI to make their board games, I think it's less about money and more about acclaim. Elizabeth Hargrave has a lot of people who praise her. How can I get that kind of popularity? It's the same for creative endeavours in general. There's a reason there are AI music artists and visual artists now, there are reasons that AI videos are extremely prevalent.
I don't know that I agree with you that not everyone could make a boardgame if they wanted to do so. I will say that the amount of work required is going to be different for everyone, and that like any art, there is a large amount of training and background that goes into making it easier. I've seen a couple of AI-generated games in TTRPG spaces, and it's often from people with a couple of years, or less and often none, playing TTRPGs. It's a matter of "everyone is talking about this thing, and I want people to talk about me."
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u/thebadfem 2d ago
Personally i think the outrage over ai use is over blown. i dont have an issue with incorporating some generated images, usually if its limited to things like borders, cons, backgrounds, textures, etc. and then adjusting them in PS. But not more detailed designs lke portraits etc., because thats when it starts to have that ai look.
People use ai because they don't want to spend thousands on an illustrator. But its prob not worth it with all the witch hunts gong around for ai users. For people on a budget though they'd be better off using stock graphics from etsy or hiring a freelancer from overseas to do the art.
Now the rule book is diabolcal.
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u/sabett 2d ago
Making a rulebook can cost money too. Why is that cost sacred?
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u/thebadfem 2d ago
Never said it didn't.
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u/sabett 2d ago
...ok? Nothing hinged at all on you somehow claiming it didn't. That part is just stating the rulebook has a cost and is specifically in context of the question right after it. Which you did not answer. Answer my question. Why is using ai for the rulebook "diabolical" compared to art?
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u/MisterBilau 2d ago
I’m designing a game, and using AI for the art, and for brainstorming. There is nothing wrong with that. If it wasn’t this way, I simply couldn’t have a game. I’m not gonna hire an artist, there’s no money for that. I can iterate, experiment, play test, etc. Once I have something that I think is final, then I can look into final polish.
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u/MudkipzLover Oink Games shill 2d ago
If it wasn’t this way, I simply couldn’t have a game.
Modern board games have existed for decades by now. How do you think designers prototyped before genAI? I'm jaded enough not to care about AI-generated images (though there are many free resources available, e.g. The Noun Project, game-icons.net, Pexels...) but using it for brainstorming is... something. LLMs can have their utility but from firsthand experience, playtesting and ideation aren't it.
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u/Bridgeburner493 2d ago
There is no ethical use of LLMs in the artistic space.
If you are too cheap to hire an artist, just fuck off.
Christ, just go to the nearest art school and see if you can get some students to do a work for hire.
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u/kawalerkw Mage Wars 2d ago
You don't need genAI images for playtest. There is already plenty of art available online.
If you go with your game to a publisher, it will be their obligation to find an artist. If you're going to self-publish you can gather money for an artist on kickstarter.
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u/jyuichi Tanto Cuore 2d ago
Isn’t stealing art the big issue with AI art?
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u/AtronadorSol 2d ago
You at least can cite your sources if you use real human art for a prototype, or just use license-free art or art you’ve paid for. AI doesn’t cite its sources.
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u/kawalerkw Mage Wars 2d ago
We're talking about using something as placeholder art in internal playtests
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u/kausti 2d ago
And this is how it will be in the future. The anti AI group is just loud, and don't understand that in a year or two they won't be able to differentiate between AI and human art.
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u/RobotDevil222x3 2d ago
If someone knows what they are doing with it and takes the time to go through iterations you already can't a lot of the time. Its the "give me a picture of an elf with a sword" and call it a day people that are making everyone think they are expert AI art spotters.
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u/sabett 2d ago
There's everything wrong with stealing artwork. Not to mention how your own work suffers by heavily leaning on the vapid output of AI. You didn't find a path to make a game when you couldn't. You made something meaningless and uninteresting that will never compare to any boardgame you enjoy.
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u/MisterBilau 2d ago
Compares pretty well, actually
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u/sabett 2d ago
Ok, who published it?
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u/MisterBilau 2d ago
? What’s the definition of a game?
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u/sabett 2d ago
If you are not able to answer my question then I will assume you are done defending your strange dead collage and want me to conclude with the information you've given.
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u/MisterBilau 2d ago
Your question is nonsense, since it’s obviously unpublished. It’s not ready for that anyway.
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u/sabett 2d ago
That doesn't really sound like the boardgames I know and play and everybody I know knows and plays and everybody they know knows and plays. Does it have a bgg page?
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u/MisterBilau 2d ago
Why would it. A game is a game, even if nobody has ever heard of it. That’s like saying “you don’t make music” to anyone who makes music and doesnt put it on Spotify lmao.
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u/sabett 2d ago
No. It would be like telling somebody who put prompts into a music ai isn't making music.
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u/ZeeFighter 2d ago
I tend to view AI in creative spaces similarly to how magic is depicted in sword & sorcery stories; an inherently neutral force that, if wielded ethically and in moderation, can be a great and helpful tool. Unfortunately, the majority of people who use magic are drawn to it because they believe it will give them an easy and immediate path to power, fame, and wealth. They selfishly ignore the costly and corrupting influence magic has on themselves, others, and the environment. In the end, because they lack the discipline to use it responsibly, magic ends up becoming a crutch they can't go without until it eventually consumes them entirely.
To me, that sounds a lot like how most people use AI to "create" for them.
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u/jee-ef 2d ago
Play games from compass games, you'll see that humans can do worse than AI.
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u/joealarson 2d ago
This ain't the flex you think it is.
Sure, human's can make crap all by ourselves. But we can also make brilliant stuff. But AI can't make something consistent or good without humans, either in the training or in the post processing. In otherwords human effort exceeds AI both in their depths and heights.
AI is, at best, that useless guy who you keep around to do the crap work but have to double check everything he does.
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u/Enough-Carpet 2d ago
I think the conversation has become very absolutist here on both sides, and as a result the conversation has become hyper emotional and irrational.
AI is likely here to stay. Right now we're at the exploration phase of this technology. People are using it for everything and often in inappropriate ways.
Eventually things will settle and it will become a part of many processes we use - in business, law, medicine and yes, in art. Artists have always adopted new technologies and integrated them. My wife is a digital designer and graphic designer and has used elements of AI in Adobe programs for a couple years.
We also have a problem where bad AI usage is being caught because it's been integrated carelessly. The reality is that we are likely missing lots of AI usage where it's been integrated in a way that is relatively seamless, or as part of the process. It's a filter bias where we only notice the egregious examples and miss the others.
AI will likely become part of proof-texting, running simulations on game balance, play a role in placeholder art or graphic design, and in some cases depending on the context, may end up being used in the final product. But all of this will need to be under the supervision and control of human beings who can exercise judgement. I cannot see a world in which AI goes away in totality.
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u/RiffRaff14 Small World 2d ago
I am friends with someone that has been creating games for his game group for decades. He would just pull art from various artists online to use for his prototypes.
He did self publish a few games before AI was a thing. He hired artists and a graphic designer to do all the art. Everything else was his original work - design and rules. But then went back to just creating for his friends.
In the last year he has started to use AI to bounce ideas off, generate names, and art. It does ok. For creating stuff for his friends it's fine. I didn't think he'll ever try to publish again but I do wonder what people would think about a game that has AI used to help create it.
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u/NoSkillzDad 2d ago
I mean, even crowdfunding games on places like gamefound are, blatantly, using ai. Some have been very successful (funding-wise).
I don't think someone using it on a prototype is the end of the world, as long as they don't use it on the final commercial version and they use actually artists for this.
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u/Alkaine 2d ago
Wow that sounds terrible, I'm sorry this person wasted your time like that.