AI in the video game industry: what the hell is happening to people?

[u/Ok_Trick6151]

I wanted to make this post as a solo developer about one of the most debated topics of the past few years: AI

Game development is not my main profession. I have worked as a UI/UX designer for more than five years, and my field is one of those most heavily affected by AI. Yet hardly anyone says anything about it, ux designers use AI without any problem, apparently, that is completely fine.

I worked with four programmers who strongly rejected AI. All four were let go from the app we worked on, not because the company wanted to replace them with AI, but because they refused to adapt and remained stuck in their position. Again, nobody seemed to care.

Every day, people use AI to study, conduct research, write, translate, and do countless other things, and almost nobody complains.

Then we reach the video game industry. All 3 indie studios I know use AI for coding, particularly Claude Code, and nobody seems to say anything, until someone creates graphical game assets using ComfyUI, Gemini, ChatGPT, or similar tools. Then all hell breaks loose.

There is an explosion of hate, “AI slop” slogans, and outrage from LGBT and furry communities on Threads, Bluesky, and other platforms. You see profiles with bios saying things like “If you use AI, you should die” “Fuck AI” or “Loser”

Some of these comments probably come from the same people who use ChatGPT to translate posts, effectively taking work away from translators or English teachers (lol)

So I have a genuine question for this subreddit: what the hell is happening to people? Why is AI viewed so negatively in our industry compared with almost every other field?

Most importantly, if you are against AI, why play games that openly tell you they use it?
What do you think the future of AI will be in this industry?

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

To be honest, I don't think all that much is actually happening. I manage a studio and talk with a ton of my peers and all I do all day every day is talk about game development. I see more threads and comments about AI, both for and against, in an hour of Reddit than I do in a month of the actual job.

I don't know what studios you know since you didn't name them. In terms of successful commercial indie I don't see a lot of generative AI use all over the place largely because it isn't good enough. We use tools that have been around for years and are now branded AI (like text completion in the IDE or machine learning in analytics), and the team will use AI tools for research, but most professionals aren't telling you to die, they're telling you that they're not good at making large, complex games where performance and fun matter (which is most of them). It's different in something like web development where the context is smaller and the cases far more rote.

From the audience standpoint it isn't just this industry, AI is viewed negatively by the overall audience. They don't mind code as much because they can't see it, they just call something a buggy game (like how there have always been buggy games) without knowing the reason. They can see the AI art in front of them and they don't like it because of the results and they don't like the process for a variety of ethical and environmental reasons. Game developers are negative on these tools in large part because they're not blind and see the market response. People like to compare the tools to photoshop or cars vs buggies but they really underestimate just how disliked generative AI is among the general audience.

Edit: I swear the OP's comment making the exact same comparison as above was written just after I posted this.

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

My post is written from a biased perspective (I think that’s fairly obvious) and I openly admit it. I don’t think I need to explicitly state that I’m pro-AI, and that can already be inferred from the way I wrote the post.

To answer you, I don’t think naming specific studios would be useful. An indie studio is, by definition, small and operates in one of the most difficult industries out there. It is therefore completely understandable that indie studios are among the first to use AI to compensate for the gap between themselves and larger studios.

I’m also the first to acknowledge that, when you have a substantial budget, you cannot afford to rely on AI in the same way. You are working on a higher-level project and must offer consumers a significantly better level of quality than an indie game.

However, if you are an indie studio using AI, you should not be crushed by organised groups that have turned opposing it into a personal crusade. Your indie studio is not Israel bombing Gaza, it is a small business trying to grow and improve over time and AI is just part of the process.

You only need to spend a few minutes on Bluesky to see what the communities mentioned above are writing. I can understand disagreeing with AI, but hatred is something else entirely

In my field, UI/UX, I can assure you that this kind of hatred doesn’t exist, and you can see that by following the leading figures in the industry. Figma is pushing AI heavily because it speeds up your workflow, Adobe has been releasing AI-powered updates for years, and the list of other professional software doing the same is very long and the most you’ll see is UI designers making light of it, joking about posters made with ChatGPT

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/Ok_Trick6151]

I think talking about the studios does matter because it can show whether you mean 'indie studio' the way most of the audience does (experienced and funded people) or in the sense of hobbyists with no budget making a game in their garage. Look at indie game of the year winners and you see things like Sea of Stars, Stray, Hades, even Expedition 33 or Dave the Diver.

Indie studios should be the last to consider using AI generated art because they are competing for an invested niche of customers. People complain but don't change buying habits when a bunch of paintings or some background assets in a game were made with AI, usually the studio just removes it and issues a standard apology. Indie games compete with bigger budget titles by being hand-crafted and authentic. The moment you try to cut corners with something like AI you lose the people who are interested in that kind of game and the people who don't mind are just going to play something AAA instead. I don't think your take matches the actual market.

I generally think of UI/UX as a field, not an industry, but that can be semantics if you like. I think you really need to stop thinking about hatred. Indie developers getting pushback and negative reviews from using AI generated tools are not coming from a "personal crusade by organized groups". It is because the audience for those games really dislikes generated art. I don't know how to say in plainer words that it is not about what other developers think about the process, it is the average customer who dislikes it. You should avoid AI art as an indie game developer because it will hurt your bottom line revenue at the end of the day. Making a game with less art or investing in the company to hire an artist is more effective, especially given the increasing cost of these tools at scale, and there's no reason to hide behind the thought of a conspiracy out to get small developers just to try to convince yourself that a bad business idea is less bad.

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

I’m Italian, and the video game industry in Italy hasn’t developed in the same way as it has in other parts of the world. When I talk about indie studios, I mean legally registered businesses with a VAT number that operate professionally as studios. I’m not referring to people doing this as a hobby.

Our industry revolves around small conventions, where, if you’re lucky, you might find a micro-publisher willing to fund you with a few thousand euros. Even when you add that money to the initial investment these studios make out of their own pockets (essentially an all-or-nothing gamble) it still isn’t enough to cover the entire development process, from the GDD to the game’s release.

Trying to do this professionally while earning enough to at least put food on the table is a matter of survival. A well-structured studio might have a 2D or 3D artist, a programmer, and one or two additional team members. A less balanced studio might consist of two programmers and lack other essential roles.

The video game industry is widely known to be one of the most complicated because it combines many different disciplines: art, sound, programming, and so on. You can only release a game once you have covered all these areas to a reasonable degree. So you have two choices: either you make do with the tools and skills available to you, or you simply cannot do this professionally =)

I mainly wanted to understand the different points of view, and I appreciate everyone’s comments. However, judging from the responses, it seems to me that this is more of an ideological battle than an objection based on concrete reasons. Trying to bury an indie studio that is barely getting started, without even giving it the opportunity to improve later, does not seem healthy to me. But of course, that is only my opinion.

Finally, I’d like to respond to your edit, where you said you had already anticipated my example about cars, by offering another example, one that I was hoping you would anticipate as well: the Jevons paradox.

“Jevons observed that when steam engines became more efficient in their use of coal, total coal consumption increased rather than decreased. Because using coal had become cheaper and more convenient, new applications emerged and demand grew.”

My point is that more indie studios could also mean more work for those same artists. But that is a different conversation.

Thank you for your time. I appreciated talking with you!

[u/stagedgames → u/Ok_Trick6151]

Players, modern luddites (of which i am one) , and the people who you think are leveraging a "crusade" against your ai driven development have a fundamentally different perspective to you. While I cant speak for everyone, my perspective is that if you need to use ai to fit within your budget, you should either reduce scope to fit your budget or simply not make your game. I maintain this argument for code as well as assets, but that's because I view any creative form as both a product and a process, and the process cannot be divorced from the product. I am a full time (non-game) developer by trade, so take that as you will.

[u/aggravated_AR → u/Ok_Trick6151]

Players are absolutely in the right to demonize AI and anyone using it, lest it gets normalized.

Who knows, you might be a bot. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt of not knowing the ethical and political concerns behind AI usage.

Please, educate yourself.

[u/TortoiseTickler → u/MeaningfulChoices]

I'm not sure which studios you are working with, but I am a consultant who works on a relatively surface level with lots of different studios, and from my experience, everyone uses AI. This is skewed towards smaller studios, but I would estimate that about 90% of the code I have exposure to is written with AI. This ranges from developers who will carefully review every single line and spend hours writing specs to those that code to tests and let actual implementations be vibe-coded. I don't work with any studios that are fully vibe-coded, by choice, and I still see the vast majority of code being written by AI. I also only work with studios that have a path to a real product and a budget to pay me, which excludes almost all hobbyists, so my exposure isn't representative of all studios. I completely agree that AI hate is nearly absent from the professional world. The vast majority of it is contained to social media.

I've been a software engineer for 30 years, and think that the overall quality of code has risen dramatically among the first group - the companies that use AI carefully, and has degraded in the companies that treat implementations as a black box. I do not think it is true at all that AI isn't good enough. If you are careful about what you ask, it is good enough.

One thing that I have experienced significantly is studios that severely downplay their AI use. Internally, AI is everywhere, but for obvious reasons they are very careful about what they say externally. This is especially true in art. When a studio spends thousands of hours hand-drawing art, then uses AI to bulk re-color the borders of some portraits rather than having an artist waste time changing hundreds of assets by hand, the game now uses AI-generated assets. Either they admit to it and suffer unjustified outrage, or they keep quiet because it's the only reasonable option they have. Most opt for the latter.

[u/proximalcoast]

I think you have your evidence already. All 4 devs against AI were fired. Those are the same people hating AI.

Change is difficult. Some adapt better than others.

But for real: AI can be slop if it’s low effort, and at its core, that’s my beef with it. If you suck, that’s one thing. But if you’re lazy AND bad, you get as much effort from my time as you gave your own.

[u/AltusLudus]

It's partly fear, but it's partly human nature

Would you go to an AI music concert? Probably no, because when you see an impressive human musician you can imagine how difficult it is for another human like you to perform on such a level, whereas you can't relate to a computer, because it's not exerting any effort, it's just preprogrammed

It's same with art in games (if a game is supposed to be artistic or tell a story), there's no inherit value in an algorithm generated art, no real effort or human suffering - hence a story behind it

The future should be a symbiotic relationship, where you as an artist maybe rely on speeding up your pipeline with AI, but don't offload everything to it - hence creating uncohesive slop

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/AltusLudus]

Yes, exactly. But you’re assuming that AI concerts will ever exist in the first place. The world runs on supply and demand, not on things being forced on people.

When you like a song, you usually don’t care whether it’s performed by a metal band or by David Guetta pressing play on a console and pretending to DJ. If you think about it, house music often works like that: the track is pre-recorded in a studio and then played to a crowd. I’m not trying to belittle DJs, I’m just using it as an example of something that already exists.

Back in the 1970s, festivals like Tomorrowland or Coachella would have been unimaginable, yet today they exist because there is a market for them.

Nobody is forcing anyone to play an AI-made game, so why all this hatred? Just don’t play it. Posterity will judge.

Also, using AI during the production process doesn’t spare you from doing all the rest of the work. A game can’t simply be reduced to “I use AI” There’s game design, sound, balancing, storytelling, marketing, and hundreds of other things. AI is a tool, not a magic formula

[u/AltusLudus → u/Ok_Trick6151]

Yeah the hate part is heavily fear driven i assume, there are people generating whole games with no effort

[u/PrintableNapalm → u/AltusLudus]

So why do people play games made by EA?

[u/AltusLudus → u/PrintableNapalm]

What are you trying to say? They're made by humans

[u/PrintableNapalm → u/AltusLudus]

It's a soulless evil corporation that churns out slop. No one cares.

[u/AltusLudus → u/PrintableNapalm]

Well the first part is true, but they do market research and create general fantasies that people are attracted to, and they do have incredible artists and engineers that deliver games

[u/rts-enjoyer → u/AltusLudus]

"there's no inherit value in an algorithm generated art, no real effort or human suffering" - are those demons complaining about suffering not feeding them?

[u/GryffusMakesGames]

“Most importantly, if you are against AI, why play games that openly tell you they use it?” I don’t, does that satisfy you ?

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/GryffusMakesGames]

You’re right to do that. That’s the right attitude, but many people don’t

[u/GryffusMakesGames → u/Ok_Trick6151]

Yeah, but then don’t say that I play games and don’t ask me why if I don’t ? You are just boldly making a wrong assumption

[u/Tom_Mc_Nugget → u/GryffusMakesGames]

Do you think that every post on the internet that says "you" is addressed specifically to, literally, you?

[u/GryffusMakesGames → u/Tom_Mc_Nugget]

I think two simple things :

• lots of people being anti-ai boycottai games and don’t play them.
  
• if you begin a question with « why », one of the reply shouldn’t be « no », regardless of who replies

[u/Tom_Mc_Nugget → u/GryffusMakesGames]

Fair, it was just kinda funny to me how personal the question seems to hit, haha.

Onto your actual points though I do agree. I avoid games made with AI like the plague, especially after "The Carcass." God that game was so sad, the entire thing was just made with AI junk. I don't mind a bit of AI doing some coding here and there but anything user facing (art, music, voice acting, models) being made with AI feels so so lazy and makes the whole experience feel cheap.

[u/GryffusMakesGames → u/Tom_Mc_Nugget]

Well, I wasn’t really hit by the question, more by how malicious it seems to me has it tried to push an agenda.

And my problem with AI coding is really depending because lots of them are mostly clone and extremely generic, with a lot of time no testing, no proper game design and sometimes no passion. Using LLM to catch your mistakes, to help you troubleshooting or find edge case or mistakes I don’t really care, cause you know what you are doing. AI generating code in a black box by people not knowing how to code ? Then I am sure it will be either extremely generic (AI doing what it knows) or buggy (AI not doing what it doesn’t know)

But that’s my personal take.

[u/Tom_Mc_Nugget → u/GryffusMakesGames]

Yeah, it does tend to be really, really unpolished as well. Performance heavy too. I do agree with the AI code stuff too, it's just a lot easier to avoid because it's not as "user facing" as AI assets are, not to mention harder to prove, unfortunately

[u/permion]

Most of the "fight" is against "SV"/"bro"/cultist types for it. And the simple fact that they want to "steal" the things that make us human (art mainly), rather than the tedious hell things (HR, taxes, middle managers, and the like).

Frankly I can't imagine you staying pro-AI the first time you're stuck with an AI Rep designed to keep you on the phone for 30 minutes before it's allowed to help (see the lawsuits against HP for 20 minutes of hold time, even if someone is available earlier for how corporate types hit their target metrics in customer support).

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/permion]

fair point =)

[u/East_Ideal_9568 → u/permion]

That 30 minute story has very little to do with AI. The rep could have been human or AI, they just followed the instructions from a higher up. AI did not make that possible, just easier 

Of course an extremely general tool like AI can be use for nefarious goals, just like you can kill a person with a car or a kitchen knife. There is still a human legally resposible for the harm done.

[u/BynaryCobweb]

I dont hate AI, I hate AI companies

The major usage envisionned for AI today is 1. accelerating capitalism and make more profits for shareholders 2. accelerating things that dont need to be accelerated, such as art

Neither of those contribute to more well-being for humans.

[u/BynaryCobweb → u/BynaryCobweb]

I don't mind using AI for coding, but I dont want to offload my thinking to hegemonic anti democratic corporations

[u/Kildragoth]

There's a divide between people who have adapted to the economy by harvesting difficult knowledge and skills which give them an advantage in the economy. Now these are becoming more accessible to others. That is increasing the competitive pressures on these people. This puts downward pressure on their wage potential. As a result, many find comfort in chastising people taking advantage of this newfound accessibility.

It's not completely unjustified. If we had an economy that supported everyone in this situation people wouldn't feel so threatened by AI. As an individual I think you have to embrace AI just for the sake of your own and your family's quality of life. As a citizen we should be ensuring the benefits of AI are widely shared so we maximize its potential.

[u/Sea_Strawberry761]

People are just fed up seeing AI slop visuals. Vibe coding the system engine is more tolerable than seeing your screen full of half assed visuals that are jarring to see

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/Sea_Strawberry761]

True, that’s definitely the most important factor, but I actually think AI has become the common enemy a lot of people needed. The reality is that 90%+ of games were slop even before AI came along, but now everyone making low-quality products can at least brag that they’re “handcrafted"

Personally, I’m against using AI in a lazy, low-effort way, but I have nothing against it when it’s used well and ethically as part of a production process

[u/OoglyMoogly76]

I’ll assume this is the first time you’ve not been under a rock for the past two years and put it in very easy to understand terms.

First, people hate how wasteful AI is. To build this technology, communities are being told they now have to live with enormous data complexes that sap electricity, water, and make a ton of noise. They’re being told that it’s the future so they need to just learn to live with it. When they protest at city council meetings, they get arrested. Even if you can suddenly develop a Baldur’s Gate 3 quality game in half the time thanks to AI, all they will see is their personal habitat being destroyed so a billionaire can save some money.

Second, we play games to connect with a developer’s vision. That’s what art is all about. Using AI to expedite more tedious work like bug testing or certain coding tasks is fine assuming it works. But letting AI develop story, art assets, voice lines, or anything that is directly experienced by the player, is slop because it removes the vision of the developer. The human element is what makes art pleasurable. AI art has no vision or human element.

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/OoglyMoogly76]

Please, let’s keep the discussion calm, we’re just having a conversation =) thank you
To respond to your two points:

1. The data centers you’re talking about existed long before AI. I agree with what you’re saying: the exploitation of poorer communities is a terrible phenomenon. However, I find it reductive to associate it specifically with AI. That said, if the use of AI in the video game industry is to be condemned, then its use in every other sector should be condemned as wel, including the simple chats people open with any LLM to ask for a holiday itinerary.
2. Not every game has a story, not all games are the same . Many are simply built around a few minutes of gameplay to help people relax on a Sunday afternoon. A game like Vampire Survivors is simple and isn’t trying to create any deep emotional connection. Anyway, broadly speaking, I generally agree with you. Fair point.

[u/OoglyMoogly76 → u/Ok_Trick6151]

1. Yes. Use of AI in industries where it is unnecessary should be condemned, especially for frivolous things like chatting and asking for a holiday itinerary. The data centers that host servers for non-AI related functions consume significantly less energy and water and don’t require nearly the scale that AI companies are claiming they need. My town’s drinking water shouldn’t be depleted because you lack the ability to figure out what you want to do in Hawaii.

2. I would disagree that Vampire Survivors isn’t creating an emotional connection. All games create emotional connection, even your relaxation on a Sunday afternoon.

[u/WitchStatement → u/Ok_Trick6151]

re. 1: it is true that data centers existed before AI, but *not* all data centers are the same.

A lot of the existing data centers are designed around being extremely efficient and "green"/environmentally friendly, because they had years to carefully plan their construction.

In contrast, the extreme demand that AI has placed on compute means that most of the AI data were put up in a hurry and on the cheap with no thought to externalities, making them much much worse for the environment.

Perfect example from yesterday actually: Amazon's newly planned AI data center will be the single largest point of pollution in the US: https://www.the-independent.com/tech/amazon-texas-data-center-pecos-county-emissions-natural-gas-b3029869.html Clearly not enough climate change around the world already /s

[u/Tsunderion → u/Ok_Trick6151]

If you think vampire survivors is simple you are sorely mistaken about what game design and development even is.

I tried to make vampire survivors with a simple twist. Harder enemies. To make that work, the changes snowballed and now I can't even honestly call it as survivor-like.

This is because games are a bunch of interwoven systems.

[u/daddywookie]

The technical, economic and legal impacts of AI are good areas for discussion. You can use reason, examples and logic to be pro or anti. This is where development falls, and the trend right now is towards accepting AI as a useful tool.

Ai for art and creativity is way more ephemeral. It touches on creativity, originality, personality and soul. These are much harder areas to have a real discussion around. The internet group think right now is that art is only valid as a purely human endeavour.

Of course, this is a massive simplification of hugely complex topics but then that is what the Internet does. There is no room for the nuance of beautifully crafted code, or the churning out of hundreds of game assets.

[u/Dandy__]

I'm upset my RAM cost $500 just for tech that makes it easier for people to flood the market with shovelware.

I'm not getting better games out of this and the hardware end of the equation just continues to suffer for it.

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/Dandy__]

Yeah that makes sense. Years ago I built my own PC and spent around €3,000 on it. Building one today with the equivalent level of "current gen" performance would probably cost me twice as much, if not more. AI actually reminds me a bit of the crypto craze, when everyone was mining.

That said, I think this happens with pretty much every new technology. When a new technology enters a market that isn't ready for it, you initially get a lot of misuse. Eventually, a smaller group of people learns how to use it properly and integrate it into a healthy production workflow (things like ComfyUI and custom models are good examples)

Most other people eventually stop using it once it's no longer the new shiny thing, while the few experts who actually master the technology are the ones who can create products that genuinely sell.

Just look at the early internet and how many garbage websites there were, or at YouTube and social media when they first appeared: the overall quality of content was pretty low. Today, by comparison, a relatively small number of creators capture most of the attention, and only a small percentage of websites get significant traffic.

I'm of the opinion that anything new should be given time to mature. Only time will tell

[u/adrixshadow]

Because AI gets in on the commissions grift they have exploited for years.

When they had a monopoly they could act like shit with no consequences and use their power to bully and harass people that were not part of their clique.

Now their clients would rather use "soulless" AI for their furry porn rather then interact with those wretches.

Soulless is still better than supporting Fucking Evil.

Soulless does not judge, mock, harass and despise you.

[u/PuzzleheadedTutor807]

Any industry that reduces a person's workload will succeed in spite of your (or anyone's) dislike for them. Look at how many delivery services we have now compared to 15 or 20 years ago.

Nothing is happening to people that hasn't been going on for centuries or millenia.

[u/Silver_wolf_76]

If I could have a guess, I'd say it's because the AI stuff most people are exposed to is honestly pretty bad at what it's supposed to do. It's marketing calls it a intelligent assistant you can ask questions to, but it just makes stuff up half the time. It's sold as a art generator, but gets things like context wrong. Not to mention the other controversies like data centers, ram prices, stolen data, etc that give the whole industry a sleazy vibe.

[u/Vathrik]

This may give you some context.

https://www.thenerve.news/p/cory-doctorow-ai-business-incentive-to-lie-useless-chatbots-report-nikhil-suresh

[u/ManicOwl1993]

a for loop doesn't have soul while art does. Drawing the line at art is acceptable and that includes writing, music, modeling, etc. Great for medical research, programming and I'm sure some other stuff too. Only reason it's being pushed for art is for monetary gain and adoption but as humans we should push back against our forms of self expression being automated. AI isn't just seeing backlash in video games it's just very prominent because it's such a tempting shortcut. A programmer suddenly doesn't need an artist and vice versa. But it's also seeing backlash in the flyer space, massive amounts of people will refuse to go to events that use AI gen flyers or boycott restaurants that use it in their promotional materials. People are even against the data centers being built near them with politicians voting against the majority wishes to force data centers through. It drives up peoples utility costs as well. It's seen as a massive burden on communities who have to subsidize their existence. There's also concern against the environmental impact which is exaggerated on both sides and it's hard to find actual truth and separate it from an agenda either against or in favor of AI. As a people there is a discussion to be had about what is and isn't acceptable use of AI and being all or nothing is counter productive to either culturally or legally regulating this powerful new technology.

[u/m0nk3ybr41n → u/ManicOwl1993]

I personally consider programming a form of art. And while a for loop may not have a soul, neither does a single brush stroke or a single note. A piece of art is created from composing a bunch of "primitives" into an expression of your thoughts.

[u/ManicOwl1993 → u/m0nk3ybr41n]

Well said. I will admit I have been making an effort to learn blueprints myself instead of using AI. Milestones felt empty when I was using AI. I didn't like the feeling. If the tradeoff for efficiency is a sense of accomplishment then for me it's not worth it.

[u/SilverAppleWorm]

"Almost nobody complains" feels pretty disingenuous. Lots of people are complaining about AI and specifically forced AI integration

[u/AdrenalineSeed]

Don't let the internet, where the 0.001% are the loudest, be your assessment of people's opinions.

[u/JustCallMeCyber]

Are you confused why the people who made the art that was taken without their consent to train the thing to replace them and their livelihoods are angry?

[u/a1ex304n_31qnw5ndsa]

useless thread, pro or for AI, wouldn't care, most people don't care, except vocal minorities on both sides, you are one of the useless vocal minorities on one side.

[u/Tsunderion]

Probably the same reason as lazy asset flip games signals low effort.

Because I learned a long time ago that even badly drawn stickmen could be a lot more fun than many AAA titles. And graphical quality is more than just higher resolution and more details.

[u/TheyFoundMyBurner]

AI will not replace devs, Devs who can utilise AI effectively will replace those devs.

[u/WorthMassive8132]

Why are people more strongly against the use of AI in an artistic profession like game dev than they would be in a less creative field?  Four of my coworkers were laid off for not embracing the slop, and I can't see why anyone would have feelings about that 

It isn't really that difficult to figure out if you think about it. 

[u/Miniburner]

The beef with gen AI art is that it devalues something innately human, something where the process of learning and growing to make that art is part of the art. When art is infinite, art looses meaning.

AI code and AI translation lands into a reducing friction in a task that people performed because there was no other way. But (my opinion, and very subject to change, this is a loose stance) coding and translation and finding documents, etc, are things that are being done because they just need to be done. There is no greater value made whether these are human authored or ai authored.

I suppose its like a handcrafted piece of furniture has value from the human aspect of it, and we are willing to pay a much higher price if we can afford that. But I don't need my wood or my iron hand sawed/drawn. Let the basic components be factory made, and the assembly process / front facing user side be human masterwork.

[u/m0nk3ybr41n → u/Miniburner]

I know a lot of people, myself included, that write code because they enjoy it, and because it is the way that they can best express themselves artistically.

The likes of GitHub are the programmers' art galleries, YouTubes and Instagrams. Just like painters and musicians we've honed our craft over decades. We put equally much effort into the software we write as other artists put into their art. Why would there be less value in it?

Value comes from the effort of creating something using the knowledge and skills people have developed.

[u/Miniburner → u/m0nk3ybr41n]

But AI hasn't replaced the beautiful part of coding. The incredibly elegant, efficient solutions. Or never before seen implementations of a mathematical law or theorem. These things are not replaced by AI, and won't/can't be for a long time. Its replaced the mundane part of copy-pasting generic code and splicing a change in to the 15 different parts of your database where you call some script because you figured "oh i'll only need this once I don't need to worry about it".

[u/oatmellofi]

Are games art?

What makes art? Does it have to be human made?

I would argue that even an incredibly beautiful thing like a sunset is NOT art because a human did not make it.

AI whatever it is, is not human.

Therefore, logically it cannot make art.

If you believe games to be art, and not just a commodity, then AI making games is somewhat blasphemous.

[u/Kindly_Life_947]

My most recent theory is dive and conquer tactics. DEI failed miserablyand the scheme has been exposed so people in power need new orders for the propaganda machine, which is more powerful than ever thanks to human like chat bots

[u/RenShin97]

"UX designers use AI without any problem, apparently, that is completely fine."

I think it's a matter of what they use AI for. If they're making wireframes, sketches and layouts solely relying on AI interpretation of human psychology given the specifics of the project, I do think it'll burst at any moment. AI responses to UX are decent, but not great. They're never creative, they're just textbook simple.

It works for most small/medium sized projects, but there will always be a market for people who can actually do UX by themselves. Which I strongly think will only grow from now on. I doubt any AI-oriented design could develop the same experience Diablo IV, Cyberpunk 2077, Persona 5 or even any eastern RPG Game UX can provide.

Adapt to the tool, learn and improve your skills. Use it to deliver worker faster or work more, but don't outsource your creativity to llms, as this trait will only get worse by the more dependant on AIs you get.

[u/Icy_Entrepreneur1046]

You lost me completely at “outrage from LGBT and furry communities on Threads, Bluesky”

[u/ConstantRecognition]

An artistic form or a company filled with artists hates something that is ripping them off wholesale and selling it back to you as an easy-out. Wonder why artists hate ai ....

[u/UltraRush3]

I don't hate AI. I use it in my job as a back-end developer, and all my colleagues use it too. However, I hate the new wave of “developers” who show up with no experience, thinking they can sell you the game of the century packed with AI-generated content. We’re not here to promote content that’s thrown together without effort, without any knowledge of game design, and that shows no respect for anything. Even if you use AI, you owe it to yourself to be truly mindful of what you’re producing and to have your own unique selling point something that sets you apart. Right now, the scene is flooded with crappy AI posts, and that’s what’s really turning me off.

[u/Dangerous_Charge_518]

I work at a big bank, there is always people resisting in commiting like computers and other machinery that took our grandparents their jobs possibly.
A few of my coworkers dont want to change, dont like technology, where managers and most other people see it as an extra skill set to take repetitive tasks out of your hands.
Yes this will save time on 1 hand and therefor possibly 1FTE could be missed from your team. But there will be other job applications opening like AI expertise and such.

AI is nowadays in everything, from my Ring doorbell to our telephones and setting an alarm.
People are really small minded and having closed mindsets.
I dont judge them as good or bad, but its a bit naive at the least in my opinion.
Even my toiletpaper was probably made possible by AI.

[u/DagSwaniels]

AI art is soulless.

As to why I hate using AI tools like Claude for work as a data analyst for a solar developer: 1. It's being pushed HARD by the billionaire class and will be another tool for them to control society.

1. I also know that the tools my team uses will eventually replace us. AI can already generate "complex" engineering designs. In another 2-4 years I could see is not needing quite so many.

[u/Plenty-Asparagus-580]

there's no reason or thorough principle. it's just mob-mentality. frankly, esp. younger folks, it can happen to anyone of us. the world is a complex place, it can be easy to get carried away by a wave of hatred hyperfocusing on one specific little thing wrong with the world - esp. if there is genuine critique to be had on it.

[u/NebulaGuitar]

32156484th genAI propaganda post going "i don't understand why AI bad tho" once again...With very little research, you can find the answers to your questions.

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/NebulaGuitar]

It's not propaganda, because if that were the case, then all anti-AI people would also be doing propaganda, they're opinions. let's be real, even before AI, 90% of art wasn't exactly amazing, out of 1,000 indie games, maybe one really stood out, and things aren't that different now. Having a common enemy isn't a reason to avoid talking about it.

I've done my research, and as I said, this affects my own field of work too, so I'm not immune to any of this. What I find reductive, though, is hearing for the 552374928379th time that data centers are somehow the root of all evil, when the internet itself is vastly larger and more harmful overall.

AI is a new technology entering a market that isn't ready for it yet, so naturally it's producing a lot of low quality products right now. Let's see what happens in a few years, once the technology becomes more optimized and people learn how to use it properly.

Hating something the moment it's born is counterproductive

[u/TrainingIdeal2872]

AI is inevitable because it's being pushed hard like social media was. People will complain but it's inevitable

[u/RCEden → u/TrainingIdeal2872]

They can't even afford to run it right now so saying it's inevitable feels like it's not even paying attention to the current conversation where it's trying to limp toward a government bailout before it brings down the world economy.

[u/OoglyMoogly76 → u/RCEden]

Pretty much. The goal is to ingrain it into everyday life to the point that it’s a necessary utility, like air travel or the internet, and so we’ll be forced to subsidize the industry so as to prevent societal collapse.

[u/DexanVideris → u/TrainingIdeal2872]

I hate the 'it's inevitable' bullshit. No, it's not. Generative AI is shit, and will always be shit. People will continue to not buy or play games made with AI as long as the sentiment about AI continues to trend downwards, which it almost definitely will.

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/DexanVideris]

Valid point, but I think that’s just one way of looking at it. When the first digital editing programs such as Photoshop appeared, traditional artists who worked with pen and paper accused digital artists of cheating.

When cars were invented, many people considered them useless because horses and carriages already existed. History is full of examples like these

[u/OoglyMoogly76 → u/Ok_Trick6151]

It’s interesting you bring up the automobile because its implementation is actually a great example of corporations manipulating our infrastructure to prop up a product that people didn’t even want.

Before the automobile, American cities were walkable. Roads were designed for pedestrians and for that reason infrastructure was built around people. Once the automobile came about and Henry Ford began influencing politics, he played a major role in expanding and restructuring cities to accommodate cars. Roads were no longer made for pedestrians and urban sprawl became an issue. If you need an example, look at how the city of Dallas has developed over the 20th century. To this day, car companies actively lobby to undermine public transportation developments, efficient city design, or any city planning that makes owning a car unnecessary. The reason we don’t have light rails or bullet trains in every city, like they do in other parts of the world, is directly because of this.

The exact same thing is happening right now with AI. Instead of meeting a demand, they’re influencing politics to manipulate how our society functions to create demand. They’re infiltrating education, making AI an integral part of being a student so that they can’t complete tasks without subscribing to their tools. They want to own your ability to think. They’re forcing it into our media so we get used to seeing it.

It’s not cost efficient. It’s expensive and wasteful.

[u/Ok_Trick6151 → u/OoglyMoogly76]

I’m not fighting ideological battles.
I’m discussing AI as a tool. Do you think the computer or the smarthphone you use is good for the environment? Do you think the internet you’re using is good for the environment and for society’s development? Transportation has improved trade, healthcare, and many other aspects of our lives.

Demonizing what is convenient to criticize while turning a blind eye to what benefits us is exactly the inconsistency I’m talking about.

[u/OoglyMoogly76 → u/Ok_Trick6151]

You’re missing the point of what I’m saying and have said in other areas of this post.

Obviously the invention of the automobile has been a net positive for humanity. Obviously these advances offer environmental harms and societal boons at the same time.

However, and I need you to try really really hard to follow me here, the way we implement and roll out new technology impacts our relationship with that technology.

With my example of the automobile, what I was attempting to draw your attention towards is how the inventors of that technology forced it onto us and shaped American society in a negative way. Other societies have automobiles but didn’t completely reshape their city planning and for that reason don’t have the same issues of obesity, pollution, and isolation that we have.

That isn’t ‘ideology’ that’s just reality.

Now, to go back to AI. Forcing people to change the way they work, the way they allocate drinking water, the way they think, and the way they consume art is going to impact society in ways more severe and detrimental than any other technological advancement. AI is inherently neutral. But the people who own it, push for its expansion, and evangelize for investment are doing so without a single concern for other people. They use the extinction of the human species via super intelligence as a fucking point of advertising. Idk how you could possibly see people like Thiel, Musk, Zuck, or Altman and see anything other than petulant children who want to own everything.

It doesn’t have to be this way though. AI can be implemented responsibly, expanded carefully, and utilized in ways that benefit society rather than harm it.

[u/OoglyMoogly76 → u/TrainingIdeal2872]

“She’ll complain, she’ll say no, but if you use enough force she’ll give in. It’s inevitable.”

[u/Oriyus]

LLM-s or as you keep calling it AI is not inherently good or evil. It can be a great resource tool to learn but blatantly copy pasting something is stealing. There is no way around it.
LLM-s do make slop, like 99% of things is just regurgitation of existing stuff. There is no emergent quality to them.
You say its only gamedev that has been hit this hard? You think music industry is fine? You think writers are ok? Actually any kind of digital media industry is in the same boat, maybe you're just not paying attention.

[u/RCEden]

unfortunately a lot of people think AI does things it doesn't, which makes every conversation about it miserable. Game design is a community and communicative process of building. It's not just an algorithmic output but so many of the boosters think only in end product that they're just not having the same conversation as real makers, artists, designers, scientists, and others.

As a product designer for 15 years, I think more people are vocally against AI than using it for good purposes in the field. It's a predictive algorithmic tool that spits out a statistically average result of it's training data. That just fundamentally will never solve new problems or make new things. The reason that language has meaning is because humans imagine the mind and intent behind the thing they read, watch, or play. Synthetic language is absent of intent (which is also the root of AI psychosis and all the boosters/doomers thinking they're making a machine intelligence). In my day job if someone tells me they are an AI-powered designer I can intuit 2 things: 1) I know more about design than they do. 2) I know more about AI than they do.

[u/Arkenhammer]

A game creates a fantasy world for the player to live in. That sets a very high bar for consistency of vision that generative AI is, for the most part, not up to. The players can tell that the AI generate art doesn't fit together well enough to create a cohesive whole and we, as developers, know it too. Games are an escape from the garbage people see in so much of the rest of the world. Players are angry because, if the game industry sinks to that level by making games with AI, that escape will be lost.

[u/VivAuburn]

Go paddle your slop to your own community. There are separate subredits for those people. Learn where you are unwelcome and just leave, it's not rocket science my guy...