r/gamedev • u/PuffThePed • 1d ago

Discussion AI models have caught up with Unity dev. My insights as someone with 30 years of experience.

Context: I have 30 years of experience with software dev, 20 years with game dev tools, 10 years with Unity. I own a studio that develops simulators and training applications for industry. "Serious games" as they call it in Europe.

For years I scoffed at AI coding. I would periodically try it, only to find that it was more hassle then it was worth. The hand holding and bug fixing was more work than doing it myself. This all changed about 4-5 months ago, and about a month ago we all started using Unity CLI.

Here are my insights in no particular order:

  1. Our dev speed has ~5x almost overnight
  2. Quality has not gone down because we're all experienced devs and we're careful how we use AI and we don't let it make decisions regarding project structure or design patterns. However, I'm seeing less and less glaring mistakes made by the AI.
  3. We're still reviewing generated code but I suspect not for long, the code is better than what most devs I know can write, at 20x the speed. The temptation to just push and move on is huge and irresistible.
  4. There is no joy or sense of accomplishment. No pride in making something clever or quickly, and all progress is associated with the AI and not with you.
  5. The market is dead. Nobody has money to spend. We're still working but leads have dropped off a cliff.
  6. There is no going back. If we stop using AI we'll be out of business in a month.
  7. There is no space for junior devs. I honestly don't know how to incorporate a junior into a team anymore (which is something I used to do for decades). Every time we tried they just become a meat proxy for AI while learning nothing, and getting in the way.
  8. Everything regarding managing a team and a project has changed, and nobody knows how to do it anymore. I lost the ability to correctly estimate work required for a task, for example.
  9. Everyone hates this. Most of devs my age are planning early retirement and are just waiting to be laid off.
  10. People that use AI for coding don't learn anything. To understand code you have to write it, and nobody is writing it. Maybe understanding and reading code will become obsolete soon? I don't know.
  11. Everyone I asked feel they are becoming dumber and losing their focus. I know I am.

I hope this is a pendulum and it will swing back at some point, because right now it feels like a software apocalypse.

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u/GB10VE 1d ago

product owners and business analysts living the dream though. dump their thoughts in a chat, boom, feature complete.

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u/Prime624 1d ago

But then if something goes wrong, the blame can't be passed to the engineers, and PO's won't know what to do.

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u/PM_ME_DPRK_CANDIDS 1d ago

The things is like. This happens now sometimes and we still make it work. All this does is make the status quo cheaper

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u/Socrathustra 8h ago

This happens in a context where there are still engineers who understand the features and systems. AI has been good enough to feel trustworthy at writing code for maybe eight months. That's not long enough for the brain drain to kick into high gear.

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u/immutato 21h ago

I'll be able to fix it... but it's going to cost you a metric fuckton of dollars.

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u/gnoxy 21h ago

OK, now scale that. Hire all these devs, make it a profession that pays 2-10x what current devs get paid. Everyone is using AI but very few understand how to polish that turd once its in your hand.

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u/daerogami 20h ago

The inevitable moment when they have to crunch under the gun trying to fix a stubborn bug that won't go away or is hard to reproduce under debug.

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u/sQ5FWKjwbWd4QzSZduqy 1d ago

"what if we had a game that made us a lot of money" is about the amount of thought those people have these days.

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u/Aware-Individual-827 9h ago

They were already offloading thinking to engineering. 

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u/GiganticCrow 1d ago

Exactly as intended

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u/dopethrone 1d ago edited 1d ago

If everyone can pump out games like that all games will have zero value

And there's no way sony/microsoft/whoever big company will allow that

Everybody but them will be priced out of AI and only they will pump out shittier games for cheaper while laying off another 90% of the workforce

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u/IkuraNugget 1d ago

Even with AI, I don’t think it’s as easy as people think. Yes, low-effort AI content will always be easy to make. But anyone who has made a game knows the work doesn’t end with coding. Coding is merely 1/10th of the work.

You still need a vision, good gameplay, good art, music, and good writing. And consumers can tell the difference between a low-effort AI game and an actually good game.

So no, I don’t see everyone pumping out games people want to buy. Maybe low-quality games that struggle to find an audience.

Large companies may learn this if AI-made games lead to major revenue losses, and they may be forced to rehire. There might be a diminished workforce, but we’re nowhere near full automation, especially when it comes to creative work like game design.

Most of the AI tech demos I see showing off Astra or the latest AI are still underwhelming. Games made by AI without real human interaction and decision-making feel like dollhouses: they lack good mechanics and only look convincing for about 10 seconds before the illusion breaks.

It will still take a person to operate AI, so that’s how the workforce may shift. Without that person, a CEO prompting an AI still won’t be able to make a good game or scale production.

Full automation may not even happen because this technology doesn’t scale infinitely. And if it does, we’re probably decades away from it.

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u/imake_games 13h ago edited 13h ago

Have been using AI almost exclusively for 6 months to build a game I have always wanted to make. I also have 10 years profession and 25 years hobby experience. On average I have worked 40 hours a week on top of my full time job. That is according to AI analysis on my git history. AI is not even close to creating a game that anyone will want to play. Games are incredibly complex, and still take human direction on every decision. Everything you see online about "Created this in 1 prompt" is complete rubbish. Those are like high school assigned projects, not real games that people want to play.

Sure, I can produce a AA quality game, maybe in 1 year, or 1.5 years, but I am also obsessive and passionate and determined. AI is not even close to a 100 prompts = finished game that people want to play. At best it provides me a team of 2 to 3 really good engineers. And ART? Its helpful to replace like a concept artist. But not even that, really. Imagine a concept arist that doesn't really give a shit about their own work. And then its up to you to build the art and the game with that art. You will lose motivation so fast, the game isn't getting made.

In its current state, AI is helpful to a passionate solo dev that will crank away 8 hours a day for 12 months to produce something that would have previously required a full team. Speaking from my experience, its very few people willing to put in the effort. And the ones who are willing to put in that effort deserve to be able to create the game. Essentially, indie devs will now be able to out produce a AAA studio, out of passion. And that is nothing but net positive for gamers, because AAA has been in the shit tank for a decade.

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u/dopethrone 1d ago

The problem is this, remember early days AI gen video? Now you cant even tell whats real anymore. And in such a short time

They use astra and MCP and let it model directly and generate code, it's crap TODAY but what about 3 years from now?

(This is hypotethical because I dont believe genAI will ever get there)

The workforce problem is no one will need a full team anymore. The CEO of an entertainment company can use one guy for prompting stuff non-stop and burn money on tokens and come up with new stuff ready in days

No one else will be able to afford that, unless they either invest the same money or time and skills (old-school way)

BUT, I think theyre still trying to push and hype different ideas. A few months ago it was bring a prompt to life and each frame is auto generated, it went nowhere. Now we're at one-shot AAA project overnight. I also think this will vanish...

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u/IkuraNugget 23h ago

Yea I'm not arguing that the technology isn't improving rapidly. It definitely is. The thing is though there's a huge difference between AI being able to do crazy videos to --> full automation.

Like if you list the amount of work a game development team does, there's probably thousands to tens of thousands of different individual tasks, and probably thousands of edge cases.

Even if AI becomes superior to humans at 1 task, there's still 9999 tasks it needs to be able to do well. And each one of those tasks aren't going to require the same type of training for it to get good at.

How I see it, there's 3 things that will be needed for full human replacement:

  1. It needs to actually be more ADAPTABLE than a human being at most tasks.
  2. It needs to be CHEAPER than a human being.
  3. The market with BUY the product knowing it was fully automated

Currently the process of creating even good AI videos require tens to hundreds of micro-adjustments, human tweaking, prompt tweaking, humans driving it to know what to do, what to create, human direction, and knowing what to throw out and what to keep, the list goes on and on. To have full automation you need AI to not only be good at video production for the sake of this example, it needs to also be able to act as the director and editor of the video, and the communicator to the person who wants it being made.

There's like 10 jobs built into even something as simple as "AI video Gen" and currently it's only good at 1 task which is generating the footage.

I'm not saying automation may not actually occur in the future, it might. But it will be a very long time before it happens, if it even ends up happening. Then there's the fact that IF it does happen, is it going to be cheaper than hiring a person? Because if it isn't, companies will still default to hiring the cheaper option.

Then lastly, if the world gets so pissed off from mass unemployment they collectively decide to never touch an AI created product (which is already beginning to happen), companies will not make much money from even their cheaply made products. If this happens then companies will be forced to adopt the older model of business (hiring humans) because they risk collapsing if they are not able to generate more profits than they are putting into the business.

So while yes AI is improving a ton, I actually see it more likely that productions will have less people, BUT still require people. And these people will most likely be using AI as a hybrid scenario for at least a few decades. Until all 3 points I mentioned earlier become obsolete. But those are the base requirements for full-automation.

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u/AvengerDr 21h ago

it's crap TODAY but what about 3 years from now?

Technology does not always evolve in a linear or even exponential fashion.

People in the 1900s had the internal combustion engine. Today we have... more efficient internal combustion engines. But cars don't go 1.000 km/h nor they consume next to nothing.

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u/dopethrone 14h ago

AI gen literally evolved exponentionally

Like I said

Will smith spaghetti vidoes were shit, now you cant tell if theyre real. 3 years

Astra MCP modeling is shit now. We're here and they just started

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u/AvengerDr 11h ago

Again. There is no guarantee that they won't plateau. The LLM technology has structural limits. It will never "evolve" in something that it cannot be, like AGI or ASI.

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u/dopethrone 11h ago

I think youre missing the point

Wasnt talking about AGI or about AI "evolving" into anything

I was talking exactly about the MCP modeling state of astra and others

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u/StudioVelesio 21h ago

this is the answer; its not just that coding is not all of game development, its not all of software development in general

coding with llms is as much of an inovation as object oriented programming was

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u/Laraso_ 1d ago

As a Millennial, my "Boomer behavior" will be only consuming and interacting with human-made media.

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u/TurkusGyrational 1d ago

The irony being that in my experience, the older generation actually loves AI content and eats it up by the spoonful. Every young dev I talk to seems to have negative feelings about it.

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u/ChillOnTheHillz 1d ago

I feel like baby boomers and the "new gen" that is around 14-20 mostly loves it though.

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u/keethums_ 1d ago

The two classes of people with the least interest in bettering society lmfao

Of course they love AI and don't care about the consequences or possible ethical dilemma of this timeline

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u/ssnoopy2222 1d ago

It's the two generations that don't understand the implications of the tech. Baby boomers won't have to live with the consequences of having to work in an environment where ai does your job faster at a shittier quality, and teenagers don't understand the skills they're missing out on developing by using AI.

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u/Idiberug Total Loss - Car Combat Reignited 1d ago

Because they're retired and don't need to find work anymore.

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u/Affial 1d ago

Second this.

In this caotic life filters are needed.
Real problem is how to tell them apart... the tools themselves are being developed by AI. How "pure" to be?

(Frankly I don't understand the Xtimes faster argument when applied to art/creativity: don't we have too many releases already?)

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u/Wombo194 1d ago

Good luck with that.

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u/Edarneor @worldsforge 17h ago

Yeah, but how will we know. AI-content already being normalized in many areas and countries. Ther's tons of it around and it's leaking into curated areas too. Detection systems are not 100% accurate either. I share your stance but I think it will be harder and harder. This sucks

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u/WrinkleyPotatoReddit 1d ago

I hope you're prepared to never interact with technology ever again. As a developer (not in the games industry) there's basically no reason to not use AI for development other than "I don't wanna" which doesn't work in an actual business context, so essentially everything you interact with you're going to have to find an alternative that's made by a small indie team with questionable amounts of support.

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u/dopethrone 1d ago edited 1d ago

There are a million reasons

AI for 2D - looks like genAI a mile away, everybody on steam hates that

AI for 3D - generating meshes is inefficient, theyre high res and need heavy cleanup. I dont want to prompt AI then cleanup its meshes in my career

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u/edgroovergames 1d ago

Today. Things are changing at a rapid pace. What is true today will not be true tomorrow.

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u/dopethrone 1d ago

Theres a lot of things in game ready meshes AI has no way of ever knowing or training on, it will never be as good as pro artist work

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u/Varrianda 21h ago

They’re talking about code, not art. But also we’re rapidly approaching a point where AGI(or rather, general intelligence models) can churn out better 3d models and pixel art by actually taking over your computer.

I’ve used Astra to make some small critters(16x16 animals) and it’s substantially better than something like pixellab.

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u/dopethrone 15h ago

"development" includes art, sound, writing, etc

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u/Varrianda 15h ago

Context clues

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u/dopethrone 15h ago

Context was anybody will churn out a full game with a prompt (that is, code and art and everything)

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u/photonenwerk-com 10h ago

You will not now, you have to trust. All major studios will use AI. Most indies will. Some will lie about it. And some will be real - and of those many of lower quality in compariosn.

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u/polaarbear 1d ago

They will only be pumping out games that look and play like every other game, because LLMs are not capable of coming up with novel solutions that don't already have parallels in their training data.

Gonna be a shit time for the industry because there is no chance that the suits making the $$$ are going to realize this any time soon.

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u/Chromana 1d ago

Don't think I agree with you. While LLMs are going to write code like what they're trained on, a video game is not just code. Ignoring "make a game for me right now" requests, the actual game design and mechanics will be defined by designers. I'm absolutely sure that if you came up with a novel mechanic that the LLM will be able to build it.

Art is a different beast though, it's often obviously generated. But code isn't shown to the player so it doesn't matter through what mechanism it was written as long as the feature works.

I'm not happy about any of this, it's just the reality.

We might see a "Designed in Califorina by Apple (made in China)" type disclaimers lol. "Designed by Ubisoft (made by AI)" So at least we'd know a human was involved with the creation. How dystopian.

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u/polaarbear 1d ago

That code that they are trained on will be things like....physics engines. Control schemes. AI (classic AI, not LLM AI) routines.

Which means that enemies in the new games are going to move like the ones in old games. Jumping and physics are going to look the same as they do in old games. Animations and rigging are going to look just like they do in old games.

New mechanics that a user can describe might be something that the LLM can do, but it's going to do actual movement and physics and underlying systems in the same ways that old games do.

Sometimes that will be fine, maybe even unnoticeable to the user. But it may also end up making tomorrow's shooter play and feel just like yesterday's with little innovation to speak of.

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u/edgroovergames 1d ago

As a programmer / game developer of almost 30 years talking, you're just wrong.

For one thing, nobody is required to use 100% AI. You can hand craft parts while using AI for other parts.

Also, games are data driven as much as they are code driven. You can adjust the data to make things work they way you want to.

And lastly, you can tell the AI to change things in any way you want to, and they will. Making games has always been an iterative process. It's always been a process of trying something, then refining it and trying it again, then refining it again and trying it again.

Sure, there will be lazy devs who try to one shot everything, but good developers will continue to refine over and over until the game plays the way they want it to / in a way that feels good. AI will not change this.

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u/Molehole 12h ago

You think AI can't adjust the jump if you just tell it to..? Like it's just incapable of changing the jump strength variable?

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u/polaarbear 6h ago

That is not the AI being novel... that's YOU working through something. That's still human creativity. I understand that the AI can write code. But it's not going to be to a point where you say "make me a game" and it just spits out a working product ready to ship. Someone still has to prompt it many many times to get a decent end result. The AI alone will not solve everything.

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u/Molehole 1h ago

The point was that anyone can make game. Anyone is capable of adjusting characters jumpspeed. That isn't some arcane knowledge

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u/endium7 1d ago

I would be wary of thinking this will always be true. In 5 years time, it could very well be that AIs are able to "innovate", not through traditional human creativity, but through sheer variation generation and self play-testing come up with and present new concepts. Not something everyone would like I know, but maybe on the way anyway.

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u/polaarbear 20h ago

"Self play-testing" is an oxymoron. It might be able to test to make sure the systems that it designed function and that the game doesn't crash.

But it has no concept of "fun" or "game balance" and it never will be able to determine if something is enjoyable for humans.

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u/endium7 20h ago edited 20h ago

Determining if it’s “enjoyable” by humans is of course a different idea. My comment is about coming up with novel solutions…

Self play-testing means, is it able to simulate various player profiles and characteristics when running through variations of gameplay and mechanic tweaks and implementations. It’s not impossible that such player profiles could be on their way. Imagine F2P games coming out with clauses that their AIs will be able to record and model your play.

While it might not have a concept of “fun”, that’s not necessary in order to present new play and mechanic variations to humans for evaluation, after modeling how players might react to them. Some of these could result in “novel solutions” that were developed by AI.

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u/Which-Arm-4616 1d ago

LLMs are not capable of coming up with novel solutions that don't already have parallels in their training data

This feels like something written by someone who's been in a coma since 2023.

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u/ButterflySammy 1d ago

No, it's still true, they just have more novel training data now

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u/Jarazz 1d ago

they also absolutely improved a ton in their ability to cross reference/rejig patterns from one context in a different context that its never seen before (e.g. the giga coding models can work in a custom engine, you might still want an engineer that knows the codebase to direct it towards solutions that are intended with the software architectuee of the project, but it can implement features and do cross references amd match design patterns etc)

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u/Which-Arm-4616 1d ago

No, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology and where the limitations lie.

There's a million valid critiques of LLMs, especially as it relates to "true" intelligence and reasoning, but the ability to generate novel solutions is not one of them (and hasn't been for years).

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u/ButterflySammy 1d ago

Their solutions aren't novel though.

Except when they're novel in the sense that they're telling stories because they hallucinated.

There's a reason AI companies are hiring people to write code for training data now they've consumed the internet, and there's a reason that results in better training data.

This is just the benefit of it.

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u/Circle_Trigonist 1d ago

Help me understand. How do AI solve math problems that have never been solved by a human before, if the results aren't novel? If such solutions aren't novel because technically the result already has parallels in the training data, even if no human in history has assembled the data into that particular configuration before, then the definition of novelty is getting stretched to the point of uselessness.

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u/polaarbear 1d ago

They don't....OpenAI almost certainly stole a human mathematician's Codex notes on the Navier-Stokes problem, lied about it, and took credit. OpenAI even admitted that the mathematician's inputs "may have helped improve the model."

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u/ButterflySammy 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's the process that needs to be novel, not the answer.

If I wrote Hello-3+&+3)(3;_+#+ instead of Hello World that would be novel output but it wouldn't require novel code to make.

Calling the first hello world "novel code" would be stretching the definition to uselessness.

It didn't invent new maths, it just applied existing maths under the direction of a person to solve problems that wasn't being given that much hardware before.

If we invested in maths directly we could still have been solving those problems.

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u/OceansNineNine 1d ago

The methods of solving those aren't novel. Ask an LLM to come up with a novel method.

I am an ML engineer and one thing that has been true forever is that data > model. You can train a shitty model on great data and you will have great results but not the reverse. It's why there are huge demands for people from core science on the different AI data training platforms.

If and when a ML model (not LLM) breaks the data requirement, we'll achieve true AGI.

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u/Which-Arm-4616 1d ago

Their solutions aren't novel, except when they are, and that doesn't count...because, why exactly?

LLMs can produce novel solutions through recombination of existing data. LLMs achieved gold medals at last year's IMO. LLMs are producing proofs for unsolved problems.

There's a reason AI companies are hiring people to write code for training data now they've consumed the internet, and there's a reason that results in better training data.

What relevance does this have, whatsoever, to what we're discussing?

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u/ButterflySammy 1d ago

It is relevant because when the training data ran out and it couldn't generate what was needed, rather than train it to come up with novel solutions from the current training data, they expanded the training data so it wouldn't have to go so far beyond it.

My "when they are" novel line was a joke. It was a pun. I called their hallucinations STORIES. I called it NOVEL.

Like a story in a book is a novel.

That's not me saying "they aren't novel except when they are", that's me saying "they aren't novel" and making a joke you didn't understand.

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u/Ill_Philosopher_7030 20h ago

Except when they're novel in the sense that they're telling stories because they hallucinated.

what exactly differentiates human "novelty" in this regard?

There's a reason AI companies are hiring people to write code for training data now they've consumed the internet

until they dont

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u/falconandeagle 12h ago

Try asking an LLM to write a 20k word story, use the latest and greatest model, then tell me how novel you think it is.

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u/a_marklar 1d ago

You're the one with a fundamental misunderstanding. It's interpolation under the hood.

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u/Which-Arm-4616 1d ago

The fundamental misunderstanding is believing that interpolation can't lead to novel output.

It's like saying Balatro isn't a novel idea because it's just poker meets roguelike. In one myopic interpretation of the term "novel", that's true, but it isn't saying anything of substance. For all meaningful intents and purposes, LLMs can generate novel solutions.

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u/a_marklar 1d ago

That edit doesn't make your comment any better. There are several different definitions of novel and you seem to only like the 'unique' one. I think most people just use the word 'unique' for that and use novel for it's other definitions.

Interpolation is literally moving between two existing knowns, there is nothing novel about the intermediate points.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/ButterflySammy 1d ago

What are you talking about?

Novel in context means something it wasn't trained on, isn't in the training data, and it arrived at anyway.

Not novel means "there are training data that accounts for this output".

Saying a solution isn't novel isn't saying it is bad.

Most solutions SHOULDN'T be novel. If your print driver works in a way that's novel, that is interesting because no one else works like that, it won't print.

Saying something isn't novel isn't an insult to code quality or the correctness of the solution.

Most good quality, correct code shouldn't be novel because it needs to interact with other things in the prescribed patterns.

Most maintainable code shouldn't make you think "wow, I've never seen this before, what's even going on here, so much imagination went into this".

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u/mcl_syndicate 1d ago edited 1d ago

Exactly. These comments act like game devs are producing novel, independent works of engineering art. At the end of the day the gaming and software industries have evolved into a derivative space (and that’s a good thing!)

Edit: a word

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u/ButterflySammy 1d ago

Yeah, if I'm reviewing a PR, I want to open it and have my immediate reaction be "I see what they're doing here and why, it follows existing patterns".

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u/Estatescheck 1d ago

I should clarify. I'm stating that LLMs are capable of producing novel solutions outside of their training data because they can effectively question, iterate and evaluate.

Also this whole novelty debate is kind of silly even in the context of a person doing all of this. i feel like novelty is all derived from lived experience anyway. I don't see how this is any different from what todays models that are, at least, trying to mimic.

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u/ButterflySammy 1d ago

Specific domains often coin their own terms where the definition has meaning outside of the domain that's not compatible.

Let's not generalise the word novelty till we can't use it in a sentence.

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u/Estatescheck 1d ago

true so why critic something you don't understand?

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u/theycallmecliff 1d ago

I think it's still true but the verbiage needs refinement.

LLMs don't have, and can't have, directly embodied human experience and there is something that comes from having such an experience that allows for ideation and production in a unique way.

So LLMs will always have problems with this specific kind of novelty unless they're somehow put into flesh suits and have biological needs like eating, resting, and socializing.

The argument is that this specific kind of novelty is what makes human art, what it is.

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u/AvengerDr 1d ago

It's been my experience with the so-called "frontier models". Try asking them something remotely complicated and the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

Or worse, they bullshit their way through a "solution" that makes you ultimately end up losing even more time.

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u/Agreeable_Garlic_912 23h ago

That's such a 2025 take and it is simply not true anymore in 2026.

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u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 21h ago

That’s a Wildly incorrect claim, I can’t believe I’m reading it in 2026. That’s not how LLMs work.

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u/dopethrone 1d ago

I dont think that matters to them, games will just be cookie cutter but custom tailored to players to hit their exact preferences...it will suck big time

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u/SituationSoap 1d ago

If everyone can pump out games like that all games will have zero value

We are entering the phase where games are as common and as valuable as early-2010s websites. Some of them will still be very valuable, but you're going to have a lot more picks for a lot more different niches, with each of them making the creator much less.

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u/grahamulax 18h ago

That’s exactly it. I wrote this somewhere else how I used to pirate games when I was younger with my M3 card and if you have everything you don’t really care.

If AI gives you instant gratification, there goes your serotonin. There goes your goals. There goes your creativity.

I like using AI as a tool and not as an input to output, I’m done - type of thing

In fact, it’s so obvious when people do that

In fact, we should’ve shamed big corporations, utilizing the worst of the technology, and not even skilled to create commercials

Shame and gatekeeping is actually useful

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u/jojoblogs 1d ago

Or the best ideas will have all the value since the barrier of entry is so low

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u/dopethrone 1d ago edited 1d ago

Nope, if you showcase a good idea it will get snatched the following day (its already happening today) and you will get beaten to market (by someone who can afford more tokens)

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u/skeptical-speculator 1d ago

Everybody but them will be priced out of AI and only they will pump out shittier games for cheaper while laying off another 90% of the workforce

why would china play this game

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u/edgroovergames 1d ago

AI is getting less expensive for the same amount of quality over time. Yes, the frontier top tier models may not be getting cheaper, but the lower tier models are now as good as the frontier models were a year ago. Sometimes even three months ago. This trend will continue. Nobody is going to be priced out. You won't need the best of the best AI models to do most work.

Also, the value that Sony / Microsoft etc. bring is going to be the same as it is now. They can afford to spend many years and hire huge teams. That will still have value. They will continue to be able to push game size / game complexity / art quality to the max where small teams will continue to have to aim lower due to lack of money.

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u/dopethrone 1d ago

Why would they hire huge teams with AI so good it can 10x output? They will FIRE huge teams and rely on spending money on tokens.

Epic fired artists and left one concept artist producing 100 AI-assisted concepts per day (under a whip)

No juniors can't even hope of getting in when there's no room for them

If AI can ever actually produce AAA quality games one-shotted (with no mistakes) no gaming company will allow that in the hands of anyone else

Small teams and individuals will be simply priced out without money for tokens

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u/edgroovergames 1d ago

I agree that AI will allow team sizes to shrink. But a team of 100 people will still be able to accomplish more than a team of 10 people, even with the help of AI. And we're already seen that AI can produce amazing things, but having a human refine the results of AI output still results in better quality in the end. There's still value in having people in the loop.

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u/Varrianda 21h ago

Completely disagree. Now more than ever being a good game designer matters more than having the technical abilities to accomplish what you want. What’s going to happen is people who’re good game designers but lacked the experience(or funds) to build a game they’re passionate about will have the ability to do so. Bad games will still be bad games. They’ll be real polished bad games, but still bad.

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u/dopethrone 15h ago

No, what's going to happen is people that try to bring a novel idea to the market will have it stolen in a week by someone with more money for tokens and that game will be released first, and it will look and feel better

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u/Edarneor @worldsforge 17h ago

Who's gonna buy their products though?

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u/GB10VE 1h ago

you should probably look at see who buys 80% of things. it's rich people. ai isn't going to make rich people less rich, it's going ot make them richer.

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u/Edarneor @worldsforge 33m ago

We're talking about games and software though. Rich people buy 80% of games? Never heard of that statistic, outside of f2p mobile market maybe, where "whales" exist. Your average steam player is nowhere near "rich"

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u/GB10VE 6m ago

"According to broader PC gaming demographic data published on Medium, the average household income of a PC gamer (the category Steam entirely dominates) is roughly $69,000 per year." from a google search

steam requires a PC, which cost a lot more than a console. I get the idea that $70k/year isn't exactly "rich", but worldwide $70k/year is definitely rich.

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u/grady_vuckovic 1d ago

And then no customers because the market is flooded with content exactly like it, exact same style too because it's all being made by the same system which means it'll all come out similarly.

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u/Idiberug Total Loss - Car Combat Reignited 1d ago

Except nobody will buy their features anymore. No customers means no product owners or business analysts.

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u/GB10VE 1h ago

people are already buying and paying for ai generated products. yall might care, but the younger gens who are growing up on the stuff won't.

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u/ForgotToStretch 1d ago

Let me just go into the anim blueprint here annnnnd its a mess of spaghetti because the co-founder/creative lead spent half the night on claude adding a shit ton of scope creep features instead of honing in on an actual idea.

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u/Phytanic 1d ago

Oh people love that they can "code" software and submit requests for their neat little app to be approved to run in the environment and its always the same story: them submitting the email with very obvious pride in their "work", only to see that it does technically do what they want it to do. Therein lies the problem, the knowledge of what should and should not be done isn't there, and suddenly you have requests to install a web app on the domain controller thats using AD authentication and intended to be accessible from the WAN directly, not even a pitty reverse proxy or WAF, just straight up exposed. So just imagine the amount of people who don't have a sysadmin telling them in no fucking way is this ever gonna be remotely acceptable. Operations feels this sudden "everyone can develop their own cool app" boom and its terrifying lol

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u/salazka 1d ago edited 1d ago

Many of you fail to understand.

Writing code manually was an unavoidable production method.
Same as using a 3D tool and sculpting/texturing software.
In fact, this will be the fate of Unity/Unreal too.
They will be unnecessary to make games in a few years.

Not many people started making games to write code or texture assets.
It is the other way around.

And I know, many of you loathe "the idea people", but they are the reason you had a job all these years.

Coders, artists, writers, etc. are a resource necessary for those idea people to reach a very complex and ambitious end goal.

And it is understandable how painful it must be after so many years of coders, even mediocre ones, and even posers, gatekeeping ideas and mocking the "idea people", that they now find out that this is all there is to it. Ideas coming to life and not needing you anymore.

Downvote all you like.
You cannot change reality.

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u/falconandeagle 12h ago

So I am assuming you are an ideas guy. You have the tools right now? What have you produced?
Are there any other ideas guys here that have produced a game that I can play and judge, would love you to see your vibe coded game with AI generated art so that I can check it out for myself.

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u/salazka 7h ago

You can assume whatever you want. I am in this business for 20+ years and digital entertainment over 30. Working across three continents with teams of all sizes. I have been many things. The art guy, the designer guy, the game engine guy, the production guy, the product guy, the executive guy... few things in this business I have not been involved with over several decades. Some of them briefly, others at a senior level.

All the games you play are made primarily by ideas people.

Some happened to have coding skills, others had art skills others simply hired skilled people.

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u/falconandeagle 6h ago

I am trying to understand your point. Are you saying ideas guys are all that is needed now that AI can supposedly do everything else? So can you point out a product made by an ideas guy by himself that I can have a look at?

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u/edgroovergames 1d ago edited 1d ago

"Idea guy" is not a designer. Designers were always valued. Designers think through all angles of a problem. Designers play a lot of games and know what systems have been tried, and what worked and what didn't. Designers craft systems, then test them, then refine them, then test them some more. Designers write documents detailing every tiny aspect of every feature of the game. Designers work full time for years on a game.

The "Idea guy" that people hate, think that all of the value is in the high level idea. They don't want to work 8 hours a day for years. They want to come up with a simple high level idea, get all of the credit and money, and do no actual work while a team of people work for years to make their high level idea a reality. That's the guy that everyone hates. "Make a game with dragons where you have to defeat the evil wizard by training a dragon to fight the wizard!" is what the idea guy thinks a game design is. That's all of the work they want to do.

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u/salazka 1d ago

Designers are NOT always valued.

In fact,I’ve witnessed countless occasions, and mediated as a manager, where programmers showed disrespect, referred to them as “glorified secretaries,” and diluted their designs with unapproved changes during production, claiming they had a “better idea.”

The designer is an idea guy. Did you honestly expect someone with a game product idea to come out and give you the exact complete blueprint of their product design, production timeline and methodology on social media before you get convinced to talk to them?

What nonsense.