It's interesting that while gamers are pretty critical of games made with AI/LLM assistance there are some game developers really going full steam ahead (pun intended) with coding agents for game development.
The website redesign is incredibly cool too, sure it starts the fans on my potato of a laptop (and stutters a bit) but it runs well enough that it's actually made me interested to give it a go.
I'll save everyone a click and encourage them to check it out too, not just the blog post:
I'll speak not as a professional gamedev, but a hobbiest. I enjoy offloading a lot of the work to LLMs because that's what a game engine did anyway in the before times. A lot of core logic in computer graphics, user input, dialog systems, etc... are incredibly tedious to build and have been built a thousand times over.
Lerc 27 minutes ago [-]
An interesting phenomenon tha I have noticed is that there has been a proliferation of Commodore 64 games.
This shows people are using AI to make games that they know hardly anyone will play.
Making things for the joy of making them is wonderful to see.
hollowturtle 14 minutes ago [-]
> Making things for the joy of making them is wonderful to see.
ehm except they're not doing anything really? the real joy was getting to know the processor, write down some assembly and see the result on an emulator, that was real joy, too easy writing a prompt that god know what it generates
dvt 18 minutes ago [-]
> This shows people are using AI to make games that they know hardly anyone will play.
People have always done this tbh, I've probably built like a dozen+ games at game jams that even I barely remember.
nater5000 2 hours ago [-]
>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.
its-summertime 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Lerc 19 minutes ago [-]
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.
hollowturtle 11 minutes ago [-]
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
keithnz 47 minutes ago [-]
my guess would be virtually all games are going to made with AI assitance. People are going to have to get over their AI phobia and just judge the quality of the result, there's awful things and good things.
Interestingly, a number of my non coder gamer friends are having a lot of fun lately making their own games using AI.
christkv 3 hours ago [-]
It’s fun to build some small games with the kids for kicks. I’m definitely going to explore LittleJS for sure
em3rgent0rdr 2 hours ago [-]
On the train jumping demo, I'm noticing a lag after pressing space bar before I see my character jump. I remember even with the 8-bit Nintendo, the controller would be polled and my sprite immediately updated every 60Hz screen draw cycle. Despite all the new technology, that simple thing doesn't happen here.
KilledByAPixel 2 hours ago [-]
probably because space bar does not jump during that demo.
aitchnyu 1 hours ago [-]
It will be mindblowing if the Youtube demo and screenshots were replaced with actual playable games.
The website redesign is incredibly cool too, sure it starts the fans on my potato of a laptop (and stutters a bit) but it runs well enough that it's actually made me interested to give it a go.
I'll save everyone a click and encourage them to check it out too, not just the blog post:
https://littlejsengine.com/
EDIT: And it looks like there's an ongoing jam for it too, mentioned in the blog post:
https://itch.io/jam/littlejs-jam
This shows people are using AI to make games that they know hardly anyone will play.
Making things for the joy of making them is wonderful to see.
ehm except they're not doing anything really? the real joy was getting to know the processor, write down some assembly and see the result on an emulator, that was real joy, too easy writing a prompt that god know what it generates
People have always done this tbh, I've probably built like a dozen+ games at game jams that even I barely remember.
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.
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.
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.
Interestingly, a number of my non coder gamer friends are having a lot of fun lately making their own games using AI.
And I invite everyone to join their Discord: https://discord.gg/zb7hcGkyZe
The author is very welcoming and helpful.