Hi there
My name is Austin Paulraj and I am currently a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati. I am doing a research/study on Indie game development and would love some insights and inputs because at the moment I don't really have a starting point. Please I need the help :'(

You could answer these questions or you could just give any general thoughts you have on the relative landscape of Indie game development -> Have you or do you want to use AI in your Game Development process?
-> If you could automate 1 part of the production pipeline for games, what would it be and how much control would you need over it?

I'm not touching generative AI with a ten-foot pole. It steals the work of others, destroys the environment and gets everything wrong. As for automation, I already made many games with procedural generation. That removes the tedium out of many tasks (at a cost in output quality). But it's best used in moderation.

You need to clarify what you mean with AI.

You need to clarify what you mean with development process. If you only talk about the software development process, anyone seriously and professionally creating a video game is doing software development and will hence use the tools of the trade in a similar statistical distribution compared to any other software development.

If you talk about code creation, that is not necessarily part of the development process. A process would be to test each function by an advanced spell checker, that could be powered by a llm ai. But a process could also be to let an llm prototype a part and then refine it.

And if you talk about things like story, dialogues, background images, character images, other graphics and so on, those are also not really part of the development process. They can be made by a single developer, especially in the hobby sector. But professional indie game developers would have someone dedicated to that task. Either in the team or commisioned artist. Those art works can be made with generative ai, but if faces such a huge backlash for various reasons, that there is kind of a limbo between not creating a game at all because you have no art, and having a game so successful that you could just hire an artist. In that limbo you will find all sorts of constellations, but one will notice that sporting ai art is not something to brag about. It does not enhance mediocre game to a top game. It does give some games existence that would have otherwise have not custom art at all.

There is also an outrage in the community about a special type of ai usage and those are ai generated assets. Those are not made by game developers for their own games. They are made by people trying to compete with artists and selling those ai creations. Often in large quantities for cheap prices or even available for free. There is a market for those, obviously, but in my opinion that is rather paradox. If someone has a budget for external art, why spend it on ai assets. It will not enhance the game, it will degrade it in the public eye.

Since Photoshop has inbuilt generative AI tools, you might also study the usage of AI in the creation process by digital artists.

For (indie) games in particualy you should also consider game engines. In an extreme case, "developing a game" can consist of creating bascially a custom level/mission in a level editor. The software development comparision would not hold true here, as you do not have such engines for most types of software. But one can also see the usage of such an engine as a step up in the hierarchy of programming languages and some of those do have special programming languages - that you could ask an ai to give you code for. Some engines are so abstracted from programming that they market it as no programming knowledge needed. You just drag and drop some elements around.

Have you or do you want to use AI in your Game Development process?

I've experimented with tons of different AI assets from help troubleshooting code, using AI visuals for things, and even using it to help me brainstorm. Honestly, I like it, and I think it helps enable creativity and bringing a vision to life that someone may otherwise not be able to figure out how to integrate. I can understand artists who hate it and think it's eating away at their share of the game dev/creative job market, but at least thus far, AI visuals are in no place to be used as game assets, maybe backgrounds or concept art brainstorming, but not as in-game assets (objects, characters, etc), atleast I haven't come across anything that looked game-ready.