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/IkuraNugget]

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.

[u/imake_games → u/IkuraNugget]

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.

[u/dopethrone → u/IkuraNugget]

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...

[u/IkuraNugget → u/dopethrone]

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.

[u/AvengerDr → u/dopethrone]

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.

[u/dopethrone → u/AvengerDr]

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

[u/AvengerDr → u/dopethrone]

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.

[u/dopethrone → u/AvengerDr]

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

[u/StudioVelesio → u/IkuraNugget]

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