I’ve written before about how November 2025 was an inflection point for coding agents—the point where Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.1 crossed a tipping point that meant their respective coding agents …
I really have to agree. GameDev is hard and takes a lot of skills. If you want to create a video game on your own, you need to know Programming. Game Design. Graphic Design. How to create Music & Sound. Storytelling. Marketing. Some people manage to do that, but it’s hard and takes a lot of experience.
I really understand why people use AI to help them here. If you are not a graphic designer, generate some AI art. If you do not know how to code, use Claude. Ask some AI music tool for background music. That does work and it is totally ok.
People will cry that you can maybe ask artists or musicians for help. Yes, you can do that, but finding and managing a group of volunteers is another skillset that not everybody has. And if you’re working on a hobby project, you might also not have the budget to hire artists for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
The author of the article is right: AI is able to create games. And it is a joy to create your own games.
I really have to agree. GameDev is hard and takes a lot of skills. If you want to create a video game on your own, you need to know Programming. Game Design. Graphic Design. How to create Music & Sound. Storytelling. Marketing. Some people manage to do that, but it’s hard and takes a lot of experience.
All you need is effort and creativity. And, my god, of you need AI to create things, you’re brain-dead and lazy.
Volunteers? Have you joined a game jam recently? Every day there are thousands of people all over the world doing ALL this for FREE.
I’m sorry; I’m a game dev and I am sick of this attitude. We literally have ALL the tools we need to create our own games already. There is literally no need to use AI. MAKING A GAME DOESN’T COST YOU AN ARM AND A LEG, LET ALONE THE PLANET.
Kids are learning and making games without any monetary input. I met a 14 year old who made a kick ass rhythm game using Scratch. And you know what sucks? When she goes out to find a job using the skills she’s developed over the years, will she be able to find an entry level position and earn a living? Probably not, because it seems that we’re no longer valuing hard work and the joy of learning.
Woah there. Pulling meaning where there is none - who’s pretending that jams are what studios do? And besides, have you seen how an indie studio works? Because I have, a great many, and there’s no one way to do it. We’re all flying by the seat of our pants and driven by passion.
And you expect one person, no money and an LLM prompt to be able to match a small and experienced indie team, or AAA studio of thousands of people? Get real.
And who said anything about data centres? They’ve been around far longer and are much better off being used to serve the users than an LLM.
And why would you even code your own engine during a jam? Why would using an existing engine be cheating?
I have so many questions that I don’t want to know the answer to.
For me, it depends on what is defined as an engine.
If an engine is a suite of prepackaged tools and editors—e.g. Unreal, Unity, Godot, etc.—then I dislike game engines.
If an engine is more like a library, or a framework—e.g. Raylib, SDL, LÖVE, etc.—then I very much prefer working with an engine.
I suppose the difference is akin to operating systems: on one hand, we have full suites of software, such as the BSDs and Godot; on the other, we have lots of seperate software, like Linux distros and SDL (+ the code and asset editors of choice).
My exception to all of this is writing ROMs for console emulators, and fantasy consoles like PICO-8.
Even though I like my jam games hand-rolled C or JS with assets made in paint (or laid out in text!) it’s a matter of taste. Even unity, which I could shit on at length, is fine.
Running around hosting purity tests about engines, or AI, only hurts creators who are just trying to make something by whatever means are available to them.
I have nothing against engines; I just don’t enjoy using them.
The trouble with jams is that the LLM is, legally, where the code came from, and said code should either count as an external asset or boilerplate, or the LLM needs to be considered a team member.
Also, legally, the “vibe-coders” or “operators” aren’t the creators of any AI-generated content.
I think there are legal tools which people can employ lawyers against in an attempt to hurt each other.
Indies don’t have access to those legal tools in the first place, so if anything, ‘It can’t be our intellectual property’ is likely a useful defense against large-scale aggressors, but ianal.
I really have to agree. GameDev is hard and takes a lot of skills. If you want to create a video game on your own, you need to know Programming. Game Design. Graphic Design. How to create Music & Sound. Storytelling. Marketing. Some people manage to do that, but it’s hard and takes a lot of experience.
I really understand why people use AI to help them here. If you are not a graphic designer, generate some AI art. If you do not know how to code, use Claude. Ask some AI music tool for background music. That does work and it is totally ok.
People will cry that you can maybe ask artists or musicians for help. Yes, you can do that, but finding and managing a group of volunteers is another skillset that not everybody has. And if you’re working on a hobby project, you might also not have the budget to hire artists for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
The author of the article is right: AI is able to create games. And it is a joy to create your own games.
Um. No, you don’t.
All you need is effort and creativity. And, my god, of you need AI to create things, you’re brain-dead and lazy.
Volunteers? Have you joined a game jam recently? Every day there are thousands of people all over the world doing ALL this for FREE.
I’m sorry; I’m a game dev and I am sick of this attitude. We literally have ALL the tools we need to create our own games already. There is literally no need to use AI. MAKING A GAME DOESN’T COST YOU AN ARM AND A LEG, LET ALONE THE PLANET.
Kids are learning and making games without any monetary input. I met a 14 year old who made a kick ass rhythm game using Scratch. And you know what sucks? When she goes out to find a job using the skills she’s developed over the years, will she be able to find an entry level position and earn a living? Probably not, because it seems that we’re no longer valuing hard work and the joy of learning.
Thanks for sharing that! It’s super nifty ^^
It’s cute and these little jam games are important but pretending they’re the same as what studios do is fairly delusional.
I have dire news for you, itch.io is hosted in the cloud! In a data center! The horror!
Woah there. Pulling meaning where there is none - who’s pretending that jams are what studios do? And besides, have you seen how an indie studio works? Because I have, a great many, and there’s no one way to do it. We’re all flying by the seat of our pants and driven by passion.
And you expect one person, no money and an LLM prompt to be able to match a small and experienced indie team, or AAA studio of thousands of people? Get real.
And who said anything about data centres? They’ve been around far longer and are much better off being used to serve the users than an LLM.
And why would you even code your own engine during a jam? Why would using an existing engine be cheating?
I have so many questions that I don’t want to know the answer to.
We haven’t really valued hard work in a long time here in the good ol us of ass sadly. ):
Aw… :(
I agree with your last quote there, and that’s why I don’t use AI to create games for me ^^
It’s why I don’t use engines!
I couldn’t imagine using an engine for a jam game and getting what I want out of the jam.
But I can respect that decision, because for some folks it’s the vision, for others it’s the marketing, for some it’s making the assets.
There are a lot of pieces that go into making something that stands out.
For me, it depends on what is defined as an engine.
If an engine is a suite of prepackaged tools and editors—e.g. Unreal, Unity, Godot, etc.—then I dislike game engines.
If an engine is more like a library, or a framework—e.g. Raylib, SDL, LÖVE, etc.—then I very much prefer working with an engine.
I suppose the difference is akin to operating systems: on one hand, we have full suites of software, such as the BSDs and Godot; on the other, we have lots of seperate software, like Linux distros and SDL (+ the code and asset editors of choice).
My exception to all of this is writing ROMs for console emulators, and fantasy consoles like PICO-8.
My point is, engines are fine.
Even though I like my jam games hand-rolled C or JS with assets made in paint (or laid out in text!) it’s a matter of taste. Even unity, which I could shit on at length, is fine.
Running around hosting purity tests about engines, or AI, only hurts creators who are just trying to make something by whatever means are available to them.
I have nothing against engines; I just don’t enjoy using them.
The trouble with jams is that the LLM is, legally, where the code came from, and said code should either count as an external asset or boilerplate, or the LLM needs to be considered a team member.
Also, legally, the “vibe-coders” or “operators” aren’t the creators of any AI-generated content.
I also don’t believe in intellectual property.
I think there are legal tools which people can employ lawyers against in an attempt to hurt each other.
Indies don’t have access to those legal tools in the first place, so if anything, ‘It can’t be our intellectual property’ is likely a useful defense against large-scale aggressors, but ianal.