I am...pretty negative on AI. I think my main objection to it is really just an objection to capitalism: artists and coders need money to live, and AI is a way to devalue their work and let tech billionaires siphon up even more money, and turn the Internet into even more of a slop heap than it already was in the process.

It's grotesque when corporations with actual budgets use it. Maybe it's the future and maybe it's not, but the future's shaping up to be a dystopian nightmare, and AI has been just one more step down that road. Here on itch, anyone selling AI assets and trying to make a buck off them directly is just trashy. Honestly I think itch should just ban the practice, or require all AI assets to be free.

A solo dev using AI...I personally find it distasteful, but I can recognize that it's more complicated. It's hard to make a game, and if the things you're passionate about--the gameplay, the characters, the story you want to tell--don't include the art or physically getting it to run as a game, I can see how it's tempting to offload that work to AI and focus on the parts that make your eyes light up. I'm not sure I have a good answer for this. Human creativity is still precious, and if AI is the difference between a game being made at all and a game never existing outside of your head...I don't know, I don't want to judge someone for that too harshly.

As for the cover images: both the original and the new covers read as AI to me. The original is more subtle and it honestly does have a personality that I'd like, if it wasn't generated. The new one...I took one glance and immediately went "Yeah a human didn't make this." It's got this uncanny tried-to-be-pixel-art-but-doesn't-know-what-pixel-art-is look. Was it a stock image you purchased?

Hey!

Thanks a lot for your comment — I really appreciate the time you took to write it.

To be honest, I believe that using generative AI always take away personality from a creation (a game, a movie, a song...) and reduce its perceived value. That’s why I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum.

In this project, I’ve had the help of friends who are musicians, a voice actress, and even a football match narrator. But unfortunately, I don’t have any friends who can do illustration work, and I can’t afford a professional artist at the moment.

The first cover image was something I put together using AI-generated elements, aiming to capture the feeling of a 90s game box cover — from a game I really love. Maybe it rings a bell... 😊

Have a nice day!!

Stick with the second one.  The first is full of those distracting little AI mistakes that add up to a jumbled and confusing picture, the most obvious being the floating torso on the left, which also makes it hard to tell which parts of the image are intentional and which are also mistakes.  The central character also doesn't resemble the in-game character portrait at all, which I realize was common in the 1990s, but I think it's an additional negative.  The second one is clean and has a more sensible composition, and being drawn from a real photograph makes it more personal.  The two images are very different in what they attempt to convey, though.  If you really want to use the first one, maybe just use it as a guide for your own pixel art scene.

But personally, I would always recommend just avoiding AI-generated assets.  If you're not skilled at art, work within your limitations.  I am not an artist either, so my cover images are very simple and mostly composited from in-game assets and screenshots.  It's not glamorous, but it works for me.

The goal of a cover image of course is to get people to click, but using AI for it is a gamble.  You may get more views with a glossier (at first glance) cover image, but you will also turn off some people once they realize you're using AI assets.  Whether that tradeoff is a net positive, I don't know.

I believe there’s no definitive answer to this question.

So I’m neither for nor against it.
In the end, time and public opinion will decide.

Personally, I don't think using AI is inherently a bad thing.
The reason is simple: AI cannot have passion.
Whether you use AI or not, you are the one who has to pour passion into your work.

That’s why I feel the question of "Should we use AI or not?" doesn’t really lead anywhere.
Instead, I think the better question is:
"What are you so passionate about that you feel no need to rely on AI?"

As someone who just paid a tidy sum for an illustrator to design the art for my game, I can tell you there is a definite financial barrier to producing high quality art without the use of AI. And whether we like it or not, AI will soon perform as well (meaning we won't know the difference). So where does that leave cash-strapped producers? It's not as simple as it all seems when you're facing debt vs building the game you want to build.

Im still kinda confused, im planning on publishing a game, im totally a newbie and its gonna be my first game,  i had to use chatgpt for things i didnt know and how to do them, is my game gonna be considered ai or nah?

I think it’s totally fine to use AI for cover images, especially if you don’t have the money to hire an artist, don’t know anyone who can make one, or just don’t have a cover image at all. A visually appealing cover can make a big difference in grabbing attention, and AI can help fill that gap without requiring extra resources.

That said, I don’t believe AI should be used to create the actual project itself—whether it’s a game, app, or story. AI can be really helpful in guiding you, like showing you how a feature works, pointing out where a button is, or helping you brainstorm ideas—but letting it make the project for you defeats the point.

So, for me, AI shines best as a tool for art support or guidance, not as a replacement for the core creative work.

https://framerusercontent.com/assets/1giLBga8s2mQie6V3RqtArnE8I.mp4

;)

First, define what a “soul” is in a video game. No, seriously. Because “soul” is being used a lot to discredit anything some people don’t like, whether it’s made with AI or not. So, if it’s such an important factor, maybe we should define it, because right now “soul” sounds more abstract than precise. (I know I sound angry but I’m not. :-))

For me, my subjective opinion: yes, AI is just another tool in the toolbox, one you can even talk to in many cases, but still a tool that can’t do anything of its own will and will only do what you ask of it. In some cases, even in the way you ask it.
It won’t replace artists or programmers. Personally, I’m not an artist (at least not 2D), but sometimes I make sprites to play around in sillytaver, and in the process, to get good results, I mix traditional digital drawing techniques with refinement and AI post-processing to achieve an outcome similar to what a real artist would probably spend several hours making by hand. And I acknowledge that if I were a real artist, I could use AI more efficiently to get higher-quality results. How do I know? Because when I program and need help from AI, I don’t just say “Do this,” but I explain in detail the way I want things to work, also using more specific programming terminology.

I also use it in programming to analyze uncommented or lengthy code, or to quickly find out what certain error messages mean—faster and more concise than Google. Can it be wrong? Yes, so can Google. Nothing and no one is perfect. But it’s just another tool. Nothing more.

“What place should generative AI have in indie game development?” Whatever place it ends up having. If you need photorealistic sprites and can’t afford real actors, or want to create impossible monsters with a photographic style—maybe here’s a use case. If you want to make a game with a Paint-drawn style like the Cursed games, or an animation style like the 1920s (Cuphead), then maybe not. Do you need an overture for your game? You probably need a musician to compose it, no matter how much AI there is—that would be their tool, not so much yours in this case.

I think it should be embraced as part of the creative process. It offers fast prototyping, 24/7 idea debate or feedback, less time banging your head against programming code, or quick creation of concept art.

We are in a new industrial revolution. Many things will change, others will remain the same. Not overnight, but through a process that will take years. How many? I don’t know. But it won’t be immediate. Will some people lose their jobs? It depends. Some jobs will be automated by AI, as with any automation (like when “human computers” were replaced). Others will probably lose their jobs due to resistance to learning how to use it. In other words, some people won’t lose their jobs to AI itself, but to those who learned how to use it. And new jobs will also emerge, just like others did in the past due to technological advances. Which ones? I don’t know. But in any case, we must keep experimenting and learning to face that future. (I’ve been watching Libre para elegir and now I have that way of speaking stuck in my head, LPM XD).

And about video games? Same story. Now we can make games with technology that in 2000 not only didn’t exist, but also required lots of people working for a long time to get worse results. Now anyone can make games with PSX, PS2, or NES aesthetics without spending what a studio had to spend back then. The entry barrier for indies has lowered, while the standard for what counts as triple-A has gone up. And AI, I think, brings more of the same. For indies, it will be easier to reach a level of visual, sound, and design quality closer to a studio’s, while for triple-A, their standard or baseline will be even higher than today.

Both covers look good. The top one I assume was made with AI, possibly Text2Img. Like, prompt-to-image? Could be? There are several details that stand out, like the black hand on the boy, the reaper is missing a finger, and… is that a giant mushroom? I don’t know if they’re flaws, artifacts, or “hallucinations,” whatever you want to call them. Could they be intentional and I’m spoiling something by pointing them out? :-o The bottom one, in my opinion, looks good for a main menu, if the game has that kind of aesthetic.

Sorry for the wall of text. I got carried away.