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redonihunter169 days ago(+1)
The reason is simple: AI cannot have passion.


That's not a good reason to be indifferent. A lot of things have no passion. In fact, all things have no passion. It goes with the attribute of being a thing.

You can ask if we should use a certain thing for a certain task. And why, or why not. Should we use guns to feel secure? Should we use cars that burn fossil fuels to commute? Should you use a spoon to open a can? Should we use tools to do work? What about if those tools are unethical? What if those tools make human work obsolete? What if that work was art, a thing that makes humans human?

There are valid concerns about AI and they should be discussed.

The pragmatic view on games is, that games with AI art usually look boring and all alike. Same with texts generated by AI. You can tell a lot of profile and even game descriptions were not written by an amateur developer, but most likely the result of a prompt. It is low effort and cheap.

On the other hand, with AI you can overcome a barrier. Can't draw, have no money, wanna make a game with images that still had your influence? AI can help there.

"AI"'s thoughs on this are this, btw:

AI should not be used in the creation of video games because it can undermine human creativity, reduce job opportunities for artists and developers, and lead to generic, less emotionally resonant content. Relying on AI may also result in ethical concerns around originality and intellectual property.

AI should be used in the creation of video games because it can speed up development, reduce costs, and assist with complex tasks like procedural content generation, adaptive gameplay, and realistic NPC behavior. It enhances creativity by handling repetitive work, allowing developers to focus on storytelling and innovation.

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hadhad@Had2Apps169 days ago(+1)

You're absolutely right. AI is just a tool.
And like any tool, it can be used ethically or unethically, creatively or lazily.

But when I talked about “passion,” I wasn’t referring to what the tool contains.
I was referring to what gets projected through it.

Take a camera, for example. It's a useful tool.
It doesn’t have feelings—but if the person behind the lens has something they genuinely want to express, it can capture something deeply moving.

I’m not blindly advocating for AI.
What I really want to ask—whether someone uses AI or not—is this:

What is it that you truly want to express through your game?

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redonihunter169 days ago

Well, there are tools for which their existence is already unethical because of how they were made. There is debate about that. While an exagarration, you can see a similar thing going on with veganism. The tools being food and things like leather. Vegans do not care how you use that leather glove.

And whatever someone wants to express through their AI made game, some will consider it cheaply made. Games are part of the art spectrum of crafts. They are not a necessity. So which artists to support is a complex question. And I think if you support an artist who uses AI, you do it despite the AI usage, and not because of it. While you might support the artisanship of a hand drawn game because it is hand made.

I can tolerate AI out of need for resources and lack of skills in the visual arts. But there are some that let even the plot be written by AI. That can be funny once as an experimental game. But it would be the core of what you call expression. With AI, that's not expression, that's a cheap cash grab. You do not even need AI for that kind of shovelware.

It will be a while till AI operating and prompting skills are recognised as their own skillset. Unfortunately, there is no grace period where only professionals can use the tech, like there was for photography. Anyone can type something in a prompt. I wonder how photography would be seen, if it had started with a device like a smartphone.

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hadhad@Had2Apps169 days ago(+1)

You clearly have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and it's interesting to see how deeply you've considered it.

I appreciate seeing perspectives like yours — they definitely add variety to how people think about tools, ethics, and creativity in game development.

Personally, I lean more toward seeing what people manage to create and why, regardless of the methods they used. In the end, everyone’s creative journey is shaped by different priorities and limitations.

Looking forward to seeing what kind of passion goes into your next project — I imagine it’ll be something that reflects your strong beliefs.

Thanks again for the discussion. Let’s see where the future takes all of us.

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RATASOFTWARE.INC168 days ago(+2)

I really enjoyed your debate about AI — I'm glad I brought up the topic in the forum. In the end, I think our perspectives are quite similar. It's not so much about whether we use AI or not, but rather how we use it and for what purpose.

As I mentioned in a previous thread, for me, the fact that a creative element (a drawing, song, or story) is made with AI ALWAYS diminishes its value. That said, I think it's perfectly legitimate to use it to tweak certain details we wouldn't be able to achieve otherwise.

For example, I’ve used it for some illustrations, like the cover of my game, because I feel that by working on elements generated by the AI (obviously, you can’t just use generative AI outputs as-is without refining them thoroughly), I was able to achieve an effect closer to what I was aiming for than if I had done it myself (I’m terrible at drawing).

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LowKeyDev93 days ago(+1)

To be super honest I think that it would be better, personally, to leave the games graphically lacking a little bit rather than cheapen it further with AI. Whenever I have a problem with really low quality, I search the Itch community for aid. Do you know how many digital artists, sound designers and story writers are just BEGGING for a game to work on?

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