>gamers are pretty critical of games made with AI/LLM assistance

I think this is a misinterpretation of this general dynamic.

Gamers are pretty critical of "art" made with AI assistance. That includes not just graphical art, but voice over work, animations, writing, etc. And most of that criticism surely comes from the fact that it's apparent and ruins the willing suspension of disbelief while gaming.

But I don't think most of these gamers care at all if the game's code was made with AI assistance. I don't think they care at all at that level, just like they don't care what language the code is written in, the frameworks and engines used for the game, or even things like the developer environment. I'm sure there are some diehard anti-AI folk who would disagree, but those people are more "anti-AI" than they are "pro-gamer".

I'll add that even on the art front it's really just a matter of survivorship bias. Gamers hate AI art because it looks bad, is clearly low-effort, or is even because its putting real artists. But we're well past the point of proper AI assistance in art looking bad, and the gamers who don't notice it will simply not care about it.

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its-summertime 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It depends on how you define "Gamer".

Would Duangle's tale for NOWHERE have made a diversion into making the programming language NONE if AI was involved?

Would Voxel Quest have been nearly as interesting if all the dev blogs were just "I asked claude to do X, Y, and Z"?

I don't doubt that most don't care, same with how most people fairly don't care about most things, but I do think those that like to immerse themselves in the whole journey as well as the result are probably not feeling great. At the very least, this one doesn't feel great.

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nater5000 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but I think I was careful enough to qualify my statements to account for these kinds of "gamers." I'd say the kinds of people you're describing are really game dev enthusiasts. It's certainly the case that almost all game dev enthusiasts are gamers, but it's also certainly the case that almost all gamers are not game dev enthusiasts.

Of course, even for those people, I doubt AI is, in itself, a turn off. You can use AI, even considerably, while still adding important creative elements to the process. Obviously something completely vibecoded and spit out in a cycle wouldn't qualify, but you can still do serious development on top of code that is being primarily written by AI.

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Lerc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The two hypotheticals are difficult to answer because any change in process produce a change in result, but in general, I would say the answer to both is yes, perhaps more likely.

Diversions are one of the most discouraged things ing game development. The most common advice to a starting developer is "Limit your scope" I think that advice might need some recalibration. If a developer has a neat idea for a thing, they might now be able to explore it and integrate it into a game over a few days instead of pausing the core game for several months so they develop an idea while their money runs out.

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hollowturtle 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So based in reality. I don't really understand people enjoying doing stuff with prompts, either they're very mediocre or there must be something else. There's also the question that usually some famous game mechanics existed because of trial and error, line after line of hand coded stuff, and patterns emerging as you see fit from the code to the test, if all you do is prompting and piling slop over slop I'm afraid what we have ahead won't be fun, in any industry really

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cookiengineer 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Since assembler was released, 99% of "computers" didn't need to make punch cards anymore.

Since compilers were invented, 99% of "programmers" didn't need to write assembler anymore.

Since agentic harnesses were invented, 99% of "coders" won't need to write code anymore.

The current revolution of AI is not about writing code. It's about (re-)designing workflows so that they're reproducible and testable.

Shitty workflows always led to shitty outcomes, they're just way easier to spot now.

	▲	hollowturtle 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Since agentic harnesses were invented, 99% of "coders" won't need to write code anymore. Not true and > The current revolution of AI is not about writing code. It's about (re-)designing workflows so that they're reproducible and testable. Not true, it's all about "accellerating"(towards what and why who god knows) the code generation. The hardness/loop thins it's just yet another pattern invention to justify agentic coding. Btw many of us still hand code, not just reading it, for assuring and be actually accountable for what we release. And i believe so many still hand code it's they won't tell for convenience