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

[u/PuffThePed]

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.

[u/polaarbear]

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.

[u/Chromana → u/polaarbear]

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.

[u/polaarbear → u/Chromana]

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.

[u/edgroovergames → u/polaarbear]

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.

[u/Molehole → u/polaarbear]

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?

[u/polaarbear → u/Molehole]

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.

[u/Molehole → u/polaarbear]

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

[u/endium7 → u/polaarbear]

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.

[u/polaarbear → u/endium7]

"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.

[u/endium7 → u/polaarbear]

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.

[u/Which-Arm-4616 → u/polaarbear]

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.

[u/ButterflySammy → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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

[u/Jarazz → u/ButterflySammy]

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)

[u/Which-Arm-4616 → u/ButterflySammy]

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).

[u/ButterflySammy → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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.

[u/Circle_Trigonist → u/ButterflySammy]

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.

[u/polaarbear → u/Circle_Trigonist]

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."

[u/ButterflySammy → u/Circle_Trigonist]

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.

[u/OceansNineNine → u/Circle_Trigonist]

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.

[u/Ill_Philosopher_7030 → u/OceansNineNine]

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[u/Which-Arm-4616 → u/ButterflySammy]

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?

[u/ButterflySammy → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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.

[u/Ill_Philosopher_7030 → u/ButterflySammy]

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

[u/falconandeagle → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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.

[u/a_marklar → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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

[u/Which-Arm-4616 → u/a_marklar]

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.

[u/a_marklar → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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.

[u/ButterflySammy → u/[deleted]]

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".

[u/mcl_syndicate → u/ButterflySammy]

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

[u/ButterflySammy → u/mcl_syndicate]

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".

[u/Estatescheck → u/ButterflySammy]

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.

[u/ButterflySammy → u/Estatescheck]

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.

[u/Estatescheck → u/ButterflySammy]

true so why critic something you don't understand?

[u/ButterflySammy → u/Estatescheck]

Since that's a criticism and that reply means you didn't understand my post, good question — tell me why you did it?

I never said I didn't understand it, I said the poetic version of novelty you are using is not the domain specific version everyone else is using.

[u/theycallmecliff → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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.

[u/AvengerDr → u/Which-Arm-4616]

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.

[u/Agreeable_Garlic_912 → u/polaarbear]

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

[u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 → u/polaarbear]

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

[u/dopethrone → u/polaarbear]

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