AI this, AI that - you can't go anywhere without something trying to force AI on you. Usually a company trying to get you to buy into what they've wasted billions on. So indie devs have begun fighting back with their No Gen AI Seal.
I know you’re replying to a reply here, but do people think I mean just putting in a prompt and then running the output and calling that something I made?
I’ve spent years trying to teach myself how to code but always inevitably would lose track of some part or get stuck on some bug or issue I alone couldn’t get past. I went to theatre school for chrissakes and I just wanna make games and silly little projects. I don’t have any friends in this field and pestering random people in discords or on stack overflow can be really annoying for those people.
So why is using an ai assistant I can berate with as many terse questions I want to iterate code that’d I’d normally spend hours struggling just to remember and string together, such a big stick people are putting up their butts?
I’ll acknowledge that there’s definitely an element of “well I had to do it the hard way, you should too” at work with some people, and I don’t want to make that argument. Code is also not nearly as bad as something like image generation, where it’s literally just typing a thing and getting a not-very-good image back that’s ready to go; I’m sure if you’re making playable games, you’re putting in more work than that because it’s just not possible to type some words and get a game out of it. You’ll have to use your brain to get it right. And if you’re happy with the results you get and the work you’re doing, I’m definitely not going to tell you you’re doing it wrong.
(If you’re trying to make a career of software engineering or have a desire to understand it at a deeper level, I’d argue that relying heavily on AI might be more of a hindrance to those goals than you know, but if those aren’t your goals, who cares? Have fun with it.)
What I’m talking about is a bigger picture thing than you and your games; it’s the industry as a whole. Much like algorithmic timelines have had the effect of turning the internet from something you actively explored into something you passively let wash over you, I’m worried that AI is creating a “do the thinking for me” button that’s going to be too tempting for people to use responsibly, and will result in too much code becoming a bunch of half-baked AI slop cobbled together by people who don’t understand what they’re really doing. There’s already enough cargo culting around software, and AI will just make it more opaque and mysterious if overused and over-relied on. But that’s a bigger picture thing; just like I’m not above laying back and letting TikTok wash over me sometimes, I’m glad you’re doing things you like with the assistance you get. I just don’t want that to become the only way things happen either.
thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’m in the first boat of just wanting to make games and other small, self driven projects. I think its mostly the feeling of being excluded from participating in things like game jams and the larger game development community because I use a specific tool.
In an effort to clarify what i think is an example of something like a middle ground between no AI code gen period and as you put it “do the thinking for me” let me see if i can put it in similar terms. Instead of “do it for me” its very much so a back and forth of “i want this behavior when these conditions are met for this function and expect these types of outcomes.” Copilot then generates code referencing the rest of the codebase as reference and i then usually manually copy and paste chunks over to the working files and then compile & run from there for testing.
I definitely agree that over reliance on tools as a means of masking a real understanding of a subject is a genuine problem. And I too hope it doesnt end up having the same kind of effect algorithmic social media has had on society as a whole. But i think i do have hope that it will enable a subset of people like me who struggle with the wrote memorization aspects of computer programming but still desires the thrill of putting some pieces together and watching it work.
I know you’re replying to a reply here, but do people think I mean just putting in a prompt and then running the output and calling that something I made?
I’ve spent years trying to teach myself how to code but always inevitably would lose track of some part or get stuck on some bug or issue I alone couldn’t get past. I went to theatre school for chrissakes and I just wanna make games and silly little projects. I don’t have any friends in this field and pestering random people in discords or on stack overflow can be really annoying for those people.
So why is using an ai assistant I can berate with as many terse questions I want to iterate code that’d I’d normally spend hours struggling just to remember and string together, such a big stick people are putting up their butts?
I’ll acknowledge that there’s definitely an element of “well I had to do it the hard way, you should too” at work with some people, and I don’t want to make that argument. Code is also not nearly as bad as something like image generation, where it’s literally just typing a thing and getting a not-very-good image back that’s ready to go; I’m sure if you’re making playable games, you’re putting in more work than that because it’s just not possible to type some words and get a game out of it. You’ll have to use your brain to get it right. And if you’re happy with the results you get and the work you’re doing, I’m definitely not going to tell you you’re doing it wrong.
(If you’re trying to make a career of software engineering or have a desire to understand it at a deeper level, I’d argue that relying heavily on AI might be more of a hindrance to those goals than you know, but if those aren’t your goals, who cares? Have fun with it.)
What I’m talking about is a bigger picture thing than you and your games; it’s the industry as a whole. Much like algorithmic timelines have had the effect of turning the internet from something you actively explored into something you passively let wash over you, I’m worried that AI is creating a “do the thinking for me” button that’s going to be too tempting for people to use responsibly, and will result in too much code becoming a bunch of half-baked AI slop cobbled together by people who don’t understand what they’re really doing. There’s already enough cargo culting around software, and AI will just make it more opaque and mysterious if overused and over-relied on. But that’s a bigger picture thing; just like I’m not above laying back and letting TikTok wash over me sometimes, I’m glad you’re doing things you like with the assistance you get. I just don’t want that to become the only way things happen either.
thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’m in the first boat of just wanting to make games and other small, self driven projects. I think its mostly the feeling of being excluded from participating in things like game jams and the larger game development community because I use a specific tool.
In an effort to clarify what i think is an example of something like a middle ground between no AI code gen period and as you put it “do the thinking for me” let me see if i can put it in similar terms. Instead of “do it for me” its very much so a back and forth of “i want this behavior when these conditions are met for this function and expect these types of outcomes.” Copilot then generates code referencing the rest of the codebase as reference and i then usually manually copy and paste chunks over to the working files and then compile & run from there for testing.
I definitely agree that over reliance on tools as a means of masking a real understanding of a subject is a genuine problem. And I too hope it doesnt end up having the same kind of effect algorithmic social media has had on society as a whole. But i think i do have hope that it will enable a subset of people like me who struggle with the wrote memorization aspects of computer programming but still desires the thrill of putting some pieces together and watching it work.