AI Usage in Indie Games

space_goblin · 1:52AM

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right spot for this sort of discussion, but I’ve been curious about the use of AI for indie devs especially given recent articles about key games winning or being disqualified for using generative AI.

What are your guys thought on AI usage especially for indie devs in a small budget and small team?

For example, If ai art is used in the conceptualization phase for mood and inspiration but never makes it into the final shipped title, is that deemed acceptable?

Additionally, if something like midjourney were used to create references for a character, and the final design took some inspiration from said design but modified it, is that deemed acceptable?

Lastly, what about using ai for notetaking or documentation organization?

Looking forward to hearing your guys thoughts!

Rima · 2:34AM

Until it becomes impossible to avoid, if I see a game that was made with AI, I'm not going to buy it. Not only for the basic unethical, planet-fucking nature of the tech, but also....Why should I pay to play a game you couldn't even be bothered to pay to make?

One of the big benefits of indie games, supposedly, is that they're more creative than big projects, take more risks, make things more unique because they're less corporate, less controlled than in big studios. If you're going to use AI, you've basically taken all that away, because it's only really good for shitting out generic slop; it won't make anything risky, anything original, anything actually new. It's not creative.

Using AI under the excuse of "it's impossible to make X on an indie budget otherwise" pisses me off. The sometimes shitty reality is you have to scope to what you can do, and I'd still rather that than indies have a greater scope because they can increase their possibilities by having AI crap a load of it out. Not to mention, going back one step, those limits are often what leads to the reputation of indie games as more creative in the first place; their greater limits force them to innovate and find clever ways to get the most out of what they can create.

AI art has tells, but if you're using it as the concepting stage, that's probably going to be impossible to see in the final product if you don't disclose it, if you're trying to use it as a basis and not just go straight from there. But that'll still churn out generic slop in all probability, because your concepts are going to be generic slop. How can you make something interesting if the very foundations aren't interesting?

I wouldn't trust documentation to an AI. It can't reliably tell me that 2+2 is 4.

zetheros · 5:11AM

Games operate with two currencies; dollars and reputation.

An indie company will start with a high amount of reputation in their wallet due to being an underdog, but a low amount of dollars. Using AI will 100% damage an indie studio's reputation to the point where it negates the reputation boost of being an underdog. There are negative reviews on the game at my work purely because we used AI, despite my warnings

AI Usage in Indie Games

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