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Let's Talk About AI in Game Dev

A topic by RATASOFTWARE.INC created 32 days ago Views: 583 Replies: 17

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RATASOFTWARE.INC32 days ago

Hey everyone!!

I recently decided to change the cover art of my game, trying to avoid the use of generative AI in my project.

I'll post both covers here so you can see the difference. I’d really love to know which one you prefer—and more importantly, why.

This got me thinking about a broader issue:
What place should generative AI have in indie game development?

Tools like ChatGPT and AI image generators can help solo developers (like myself) speed up workflows, test ideas, and even generate assets we wouldn't otherwise be able to create. But at what cost?

Are we giving up some of the soul of indie games when we rely on AI-generated content? Or is AI just another tool in the toolbox—like Photoshop or RPG Maker—that helps more people make games?

I'm genuinely torn, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Do you think we should avoid using AI in game development when possible? Or embrace it as part of the creative process?

Let me know what you think—about the covers, the tools, and the future.

No Time To PlayModerator32 days ago(+4)

Keep working on your art skills. You'll get better, and it will be all yours for a change. It will have a soul. You don't need AI. Trust me.

SisCalypsis32 days ago(+3)

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?

RATASOFTWARE.INC32 days ago(+2)

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response!!!

I completely agree with you when it comes to the use of AI by large corporations—it often feels like a way to cut costs at the expense of real artists and professionals who deserve recognition and fair pay. That’s definitely something we should push back against.

At the same time, for people like me, who aren’t skilled at drawing or painting, generative AI can be a helpful tool—especially for things like placeholder art, concept design, or, in my case, the original cover. It allowed me to visualize something I wouldn’t have been able to create myself.

That said, I totally understand the concerns, and that’s actually part of why I decided to replace the AI-generated cover.

By the way the new one is based on a real photo my father tooks—funny enough, it's from the real village where the game takes place!

Really BEAUTIFUL place :)

Thanks again for taking the time to share your perspective. I really appreciate it!!!

redonihunter32 days ago(+2)

The first image looks better. Also it does not scream AI. Except for the missing finger.

Mostly it carries more information about the game. The second image only transports the information of "pixel art". Ok, the text might carry information, but that is trivial.

Unless that information is only the mood. There are skeletons and mirrors and bloody axes and whatnot in the game, are they not?

You could use the screenshot from here as a basis for your cover image. https://itch.io/t/4891726/pesadilla-en-san-vicente-a-narrative-adventure-game-sp... You do not need a cover for your game's retail box. Because that is what the first image kinda looks like. 80s/90s game cover, which has nothing to do with actual graphics in the game.

The second image gives the feeling of that game being at night in the hills. Slenderman stuff.

Anyway, AI is controversial. If you do not have a good reason to use it, don't. Not having the money to commision assets is such a reason, but it has drawbacks. If it ads to the game better than stock assets, meh. As you said, it gives ability to create a game, where you would not be able to without those tools. Not unsimilar to how you rely on rpg maker to actually have a game engine.

If the game does not feature AI things, you should not use it for cover image or texts. It puts your game in a category for many players.

RATASOFTWARE.INC32 days ago

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!!

redonihunter31 days ago(+1)

I think there are three general use cases of AI.

People that can't do the thing, but can cobble up something with the help of this tool. Skill in AI low, Skill in craft low. That's the cheap AI looking games one immediatly recognises as AI.

People that might be able to do something on their own, but lack something to do it completely on their own. Skill in AI medium to high. Skill in craft low to medium. That's the better looking AI games.

People that can do it by hand, and use it for time saving, references, and boring tasks. Skill in craft high, Skill in AI variable. That's the games where you can't immediately tell AI was used.

If you ignore the other controversial things about AI, it boils down to a tool that gives ability to make a thing by other means, that previously needed certain skills. Not unlike the relation between painting a landscape and taking a photograph of the same landscape. The result is a picture. But it was achieved with different skills.

And curiously enough, photography became to be considered an art itself. Similar things can be seen with the introduction of digital paintings vs. painting on paper or with self made paint on canvas.

You asked about the future and I think some aspects of the usage can be predicted by looking at those previous radical changes in the creation process of images.

It is different skill sets. Some people will prefer the traditional thing. Some professionals will embrace the tech and enhance their already existing skills, and there will be amateurs and inbetween. Taking pictures with your phone comes to mind. Anyone can do it, yet there still are professional photographers and even physical painters.

DarkBloodbane31 days ago(+2)

What place should generative AI have in indie game development?

I want to say that it could have a place but on second thought maybe it couldn't. I admit it can help devs to visualize things and generate stuffs to assist development however I'm afraid it could make devs addicted and be lazy. OTOH if the devs tried to say draw images or concepts for their games themselves, it will train their brain to think and visualize.

Do you think we should avoid using AI in game development when possible? Or embrace it as part of the creative process?

It's hard for me to accept the latter because using generative AI means not being creative yourself.

I think the only reason to use generative AI in game development is to make prototypes in faster time. But even so, using crappy self made stuffs is still possible for that.

Midnight Spire Games31 days ago(+3)

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.

RATASOFTWARE.INC31 days ago

Personally, I like the first one more. In this case, the AI actually captured pretty well what I wanted to convey, although I had to do several touch-ups in Photoshop to fix the most obvious issues — and there were quite a few... I think I’ll use it as a reference and try to tweak it further in an image editor to polish the remaining flaws. If I can’t get it to look the way I want, I’ll just go with the second one.

Thanks a lot for commenting and sharing your opinion! I’ll be publishing the final version of the game in about a week, so you’ll be able to see which cover I ended up using.

Cheers!

hadhad@Had2Apps29 days ago

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?"

redonihunter28 days ago

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.

hadhad@Had2Apps28 days ago

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?

redonihunter28 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.

hadhad@Had2Apps28 days ago

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.

RATASOFTWARE.INC28 days ago(+1)

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).

12PDeny29 days ago

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.

RATASOFTWARE.INC28 days ago

Thanks for comment, my friend.

I used AI for some parts of my game -- especially in the visual side of things -- because I have no skills in drawing, painting, or design. I guess when AI finally reaches the level of professional illustrators (though I'm not entirely sure it ever will), low-budget developers like us might not even be able to afford it—just like we can't afford a professional artist now.

That said, I consider myself really lucky, because I've had some amazing friends help me with the art, music, voice acting, and more.

Happy Sunday mate!!

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