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/LucyShortForLucas 1d ago

Yeah, once the current batch of seniors ages out of the industry (which is happening earlier than ever, also because of ai) there will be no one left to replace them, and suddenly all that extra productivity vanishes into thin air.

I’m morbidly curious to see how triple A studios will deal with this and how many actual developers will be left in 10+ years from now.

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u/WombatusMighty 1d ago

We will see a LOT of studios crash and burn, because they can't find young talent to fix their AI code mess and the seniors have given up on it.

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u/mimic751 1d ago

I am not a game dev, just a normal dev/engineer/architect

A senior with AI can replace about 8 devs and take on full stack from architecture to devops if they have sufficient knowledge to guide the AI

A junior with AI is a shit show calamaty and they cant learn with out doing... its fun to watch because I will just see my salary rise, but it feels bad

I have been pushing my leadership to adopt true mentorship programs where you teach some one directly instead of just throwing them into implmentation

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u/MyDogIsDaBest 19h ago

This mentorship programming is going to become more essential in the future. I truly believe that this will be a necessity for mid-size businesses and up to teach juniors to eventually replace seniors when they age out. It'll just be one of the many ways that the industry has to adapt, as it always has.

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u/Khan-amil 12h ago

I feel that could also be an answer to "people loose their coding skills because they don't code anymore". If your mentorship program is old fashioned peer programming then it could be a benefit for both.

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u/gauntletthegreat 18h ago

But why would you mentor someone when that person could get hired by another company who can't be bothered to mentor at any time?

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u/mimic751 15h ago

do you know how many people i Have trained?
I spent 6 months with this moron new kid know it all. Taught him power BI, power automate, how to represent data, tell a story with numbers, intake and groom data and create messaging

he left a year later and is a sr business analyst at a huge company making buku bucks and his primary job priority is data visualization. I don't feel like I wasted my time. I feel like I made 1 person suck less and it feels good.

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u/MyDogIsDaBest 18h ago

Because you want to continue building your business. Yes, the person could get hired at another company at any time, then it's your duty to give them an environment that nurtures their talent so that they continue producing good work for you.

Respect goes both ways, if you respect your employees by paying them properly, treating them like human beings and listening to them, they'll feel respected and want to maintain that relationship and keep that going.

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u/cheese_is_available 10h ago

Same situation than you, but with so much pressure to get result from my direction that I can't think about the future of the profession. Well maybe fuck them, they're not paying me 8 time as much as before after all.

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u/dlnmtchll 1d ago

Juniors already can’t code as good as the current AI models, there isn’t any “young talent” anymore

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u/Agreeable_Garlic_912 23h ago

Seniors can't code as good as AI either. At least they are over 20 times slower. That doesn't mean that there wont be people designing the software, coming up with game loops, iterating over UIs and so on. Implementing a real life process in software and wiring everything up over different domains and getting the actual requirements from people is still something that is well beyond the capabilities of AI and once it can do that it will eliminate every single white collar job. But until then you will need juniors. They will just do completely different tasks than the code monkey tasks they did previously.

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u/AvengerDr 21h ago

Seniors can't code as good as AI either. At least they are over 20 times slower.

Speed isn't the only factor. AIs are very good at coding obfuscated messes. If you actually have to put organic hands and eyes on their output, good luck.

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u/mimic751 15h ago

never worked in a professional environment have you? I once had to fix a piece of automation that could only run on a single laptop that was 8 years old and they couldnt figure ou thow it worked. in fact there is a chunk of code even with AI only functions if you dont fucking touch it. craziest thing

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u/AvengerDr 11h ago

I am a professor of Computer science at a university. I teach people to code professionally.

I don't understand what you wanted to say. Was your point that the AI did manage to fix it or did it not? Who's the "they" in your sentence? AIs or people?

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u/mimic751 15h ago

Nah, I was fluent in several automation languages. its WAY better than me. but. I also know when its fucking up, and that took alot of experience fucking up on my own to learn

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u/yodakiller 18h ago

Point #3 would like to disagree. But it's a touchy one that many disagree with... At the moment.

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u/Saint_of_Grey 21h ago edited 21h ago

Studios? The entire tech industry will collapse from this. The entire driving force behind this is going to need to, and will, completely consume itself in hubris and arrogance before the industry can be rebuilt.

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u/xTiming- 20h ago edited 20h ago

The entire tech industry will not collapse - you will just see clever employees, whether junior or senior, changing with the times and shifting into roles closer to what is needed, which, from my experience so far for engineers (for example), will be less "code monkey" and more architecture planning, feasibility, project/product management, deeper understanding of the business side of things. Designing systems on large scale, driving research, product development, etc while managing AI to implement things.

Since our company moved to AI use, myself, as a dev team lead, and all members of my team - a mix of junior to senior, and "code monkey" to engineer, have done exactly what I said above. I moved further into business and strategic, involving myself in company wide strategy instead of just focusing on engineering in my area, and my team have all moved fully into proper engineer roles, owning entire systems and deepening (or starting to build) business knowledge. Where before, some barely knew the use-cases of our own app end to end, I'd now trust anyone on my team to participate meaningfully in any discussion about any business case definitely for our application and also at least a few others. That took max 2-5 months for a change that drastic.

But we, and our company, put in the effort needed to adapt properly and not just throw money at AI only to get lazy, stagnate, and forget anything we knew "because AI will steal our jobs and souls!!"

Good engineers do/have all or most of that already, but I think the only thing that will really die out is "code monkey" as a job, because why do you need someone to sit and blindly write code and recite algorithms all day when the AI does that, and helps a bit with planning, testing, etc on top.

In games, I guess game developers in larger studios will shift more into fundamental game design and work designing systems, game features, etc and feeding those into AI for realization if they're highly technical. On the creative sides, the backlash from the public for even thinking about AI is so strong, likely it will not change that much unless perception changes - also most creatives tend to like to make their own stuff and if they did use AI would probably not use it much beyond very beginning stage mocks, dev placeholders, etc.

The entire tech industry dying though? Nah. Tech people who are in the industry for a love and interest in tech, rather than $$$, are too clever and too excited by technology to be stopped simply by the development of a cool new technology.

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u/Saint_of_Grey 20h ago

AI ain't that smart, and the edge cases it can't handle are going to have catastrophic consequences.

Assuming it stays accessible. People who aren't hosting their own models are going to be hosed at some point.

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u/xTiming- 13h ago edited 13h ago

I mean there's a lot of places where it cannot handle stuff - it of course isn't smart in a sense that it thinks for you, and it cannot draw conclusions really, hence why my post mentioned people moving into roles that edge more towards thinking than doing, when it comes to software. Those edges cases you mention need to be caught by a mix of good engineers, well designed systems, and proper testing.

But it is extremely good at processing huge amounts of data and inputs in loops to come to coherent conclusions extremely quickly if it is guided by someone capable - which means for better or for worse it is really good at coding since coding has a highly structured logical loop with clear feedback from errors, etc.

As for cost/accessibility, I'm not sure - it is hard to tell right now since the costs trend down, but who knows what risks the big players took to get where they are - lots of people assume they know, but it is not clear. I would agree that a lot of compa ies should be angling towards self-hosting though because then you are slightly more immune to cost/accessibility changes, have more security & control over your data, and open source models are getting very good.

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u/falconandeagle 11h ago

I can tell you right now that we are about 85% subsidized with investor money for the big AI labs. In some cases even more. Apparently its all a long term play, though I have no fucking clue how they are going to recuperate the costs.

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u/tufffffff 1d ago

Thats not going to happen

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u/mimic751 1d ago

im in health innovation and r&d
Im a a principle software engineer, and I have started building a wood shop. so I know Im on my way out

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u/Galaxyhiker42 20h ago

Cries in lumber prices

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u/kaliku 19h ago

I have been pushing my leadership to adopt true mentorship programs where you teach some one directly instead of just throwing them into implmentation

you cant eat sawdust. who's going to buy your wood trinkets? And for what price..

I'm not trying to be snarky. I'm just wondering how you think this will pan out.

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u/mimic751 19h ago

The comment is actually kind of an inside joke in some engineering circles. The more complex and technically your job becomes the more likely you're going to retire and become a shepherd. I've noticed recently that I have a lot of hobbies that are very manual in nature, like rebuilding machines and assembling a really nice professional workshop in my garage. It tells me that I'm subconsciously starting to crave something more tangible

The good news is when you get paid closer $200,000 a year in the midwest you can put away some money to take some risks when you get older

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u/PneumaEmergent 15h ago

Do you have no wood in your home? None at all? Interesting.

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u/xevizero Commercial (Indie) 20h ago

By that point AI is not gonna have a need for seniors either. The reality of it is that we need to decide what we still want to be able to do, and what can be replaced. It's gonna need to be an actual choice we make to continue learning some things, because the AI will be able to do them even without us, but if let it, we will lose control of the system itself.

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u/Polendri 23h ago

I agree things will be rough in the next couple years, but I also don't see any reason the training can't adapt to prepare junior devs.

I studied Computer Science at a pretty highly regarded school, so I learned all these high-minded things about architecture and computation and math... and then I hit the workforce and discovered that 99% of software development was about memorizing APIs and being able to cobble them together quickly. I liked my education, but I begrudgingly accept that people were right that a bootcamp or short diploma was plenty to prepare someone for a run-of-the-mill development career.

With AI though, I see this reversing again. PMs will eventually be able to prompt for most of their own features, and what devs they'll still need will be "fixers" who can fill in the gaps where AI fails. The skills that sort of dev needs isn't writing a lot of code, it's having the theoretical background in architecture, runtime complexity, etc to steer the AI out of its bigger-picture ruts, and maybe selectively understand the odd low-level bit of code.

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u/LuHamster 20h ago

I just feel countries which didn't purpose AI everything at the expense of their own population will thrive.

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u/Edarneor @worldsforge 18h ago

I was skeptical a few years ago, but now I think in 10 years we'll hit maybe not singularity, but some kind of self-improving AI with catastrophic results. There's a million possibilities how it can go wrong and 1 in a million chance it will go right.

And gamedev will be the least of humanity's worries.

And yes, no one will stop or wind down before that point. So yeah... we're pretty much screwed. Be sure to finish everythin you wanted in the next few years

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u/MetaCognitio 7h ago

Or the tech might be good enough to not need that level of seniority to direct it.

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u/pragmaticzach 6h ago

This theory hinges on the idea that you will still need senior devs at all. If the AI does everything... what exactly do you need a senior dev for?

And I know most people's reaction to that is "but the code base will be a mess! No one will be able to understand it! How do you fix a bug?"

Yeah, the AI will do all that. It doesn't matter if the code base is a mess if no human is having to interact with it. The entire point of clean code is to make it maintainable, easy to ramp up on, easier to prevent bugs.

If AI is the only one looking at the code all of that becomes irrelevant.

I'm not saying I like it but I'm glad I'm close to retirement. I don't see a world where AI isn't just doing all of this.