[STEAM] "It creates lesser games": Indie game studios are supposed to love generative AI, so why do the 25 devs I spoke to avoid it?

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We're told generative AI is going to make game development more efficient. Platform holders

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it can aid devs "by removing repetitive tasks and enabling faster iteration and higher-quality outputs." Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney seems to

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and, going forward, will "enable games like Destiny to thrive" by making mountains of new content easier to create. Supposedly, AI-aided developers will be able to work quicker, save money, and punch above their weight.

So, indie game developers, with their limited resources and unsure footing (

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in the games industry is sure right now), should surely love the idea of gen AI. AAA companies purportedly stand to rein in bloated production budgets and timelines, and small teams working with less funding on riskier games should be able to do more with less through the power of AI. That is the pitch going around.

I spoke to more than 30 game devs about this and, just as I heard numerous arguments illustrating

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, indie developers consistently told me that they aren't interested. As a companion piece to that report (which also featured indie veterans like Rami Ismail and Xalavier Nelson Jr.), I wanted to spotlight their perspective. It's also a good excuse to mention some very cool games. Roughly two dozen indies told me that they see gen AI as some combination of a threat to their reputation, a trap for entry-level developers, a legal hazard they can't afford, or just plain impractical.

Creator-first

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Queen's Domain (Image credit: Freshly Baked Games) Not one, but two developers said "***** that *****" when I asked how they feel about gen AI. That'd be Eric Berger and Bradley Boothe of

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maker Freshly Baked Games, who maintain that AI is counterproductive. "Making things is the whole point, so why would you not?" wonders Boothe. Berger says, "I don't really care if it's made by a machine and polished to perfection. I'd rather see human ingenuity and expression." He thinks people "just shouldn't be using it in any artistic sense," including disciplines like coding, which some people weigh differently than AI-generated art. Boothe adds, "It stops you from building important skills and understanding things. It's a machine telling you what to do. You're not gonna learn anything."

I would rather not be able to make games anymore than use generative AI.

Colin McInerney

Tons of people told me that making things, not having things made, is what matters.

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creators Sam Webster and Toby Dixon sum this up. Webster compares indie games to "bake *****" goods, so using AI "can definitely detract from that" homemade feeling. Dixon reiterates that just sitting down to do creative work, "thinking about it and lovingly forming it," is an invisible ingredient AI can't replicate. "That finds its way into the finished article and does make a difference," he says.

Indie studio Strange Scaffold has "a strict anti-AI policy," producer Manda Farough tells me. "We believe so fervently in the power of human developers and letting our artists be artists and not feel like they need to conform to standards that exist outside in the industry," she says, stressing that, "I got into video games to make. I got into video games to write and to help people."

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Strange Scaffold's Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! (Image credit: Strange Scaffold) "Using gen AI to remove the most important human elements, whether it's pre-production or full production, it creates lesser games," Farough adds. "They're not art anymore. They're not an expression of the human soul. Even if it's silly nonsense, like we make at Strange Scaffold, it's still made with so much intention and heart that gen AI literally could never."

Colin McInerney, a Strange Scaffold dev who also heads his own studio, Pedalboard, says, "I would rather not be able to make games anymore than use generative AI." He emphasizes that, "If you don't want to write the code yourself and you can't get the juniors to do it, then why are you even doing this? I personally can't fathom the mindset of, oh, I don't actually want to be doing this, so I'm going to make a machine do it. It's like, why are you here?"

In a similar vein,

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dev Michael Overton Brown says, "I'm a solo developer. I wouldn't be doing all this stuff if I didn't like the whole process." He feels that "anything visual" made with AI is "so soulless," and while the tech could meaningfully aid engineers, it shouldn't replace anyone. This is where he sees a "disconnect between execs and developers and players" regarding AI, echoing

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Pocketpair and Palworld comms lead John Buckley.

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Sable (Image credit: Shedworks)

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lead Gregorios Kythreotis of Shedworks is tired of AI arguments made by people who seem to reside in another reality. "Some proselytize AI as a world-changing technology but I don't see its place for me," he says. The best possible version of a game lurks unseen in the act of writing every sentence and drawing every line, he finds. "They are a way of thinking, processing thoughts and arriving at solutions. Often, the process of doing those tasks allows me to think about my ideas and the game more broadly."

"You can mass produce plates but there are still plenty of artisanal potters out there and there is still an audience for that practice," says Kythreotis. "I'm not interested in using AI. I also feel some of the so-called 'easy' or 'mundane' jobs that AI can automate, such as writing barks, are part of the process of authoring and making art, and provide important places for junior level staff to cut their teeth in the industry. If we automate junior roles out of existence, the industry will suffer greatly." Former Dragon Age narrative boss David Gaider

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.

Artist Nidhi Naroth has bounced around the industry and most recently contributed to

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. "The core of my beliefs is that I feel like we should prioritize jobs for people and they shouldn't be replaced," she says of gen AI. "That's my priority. Down the line, I think there's always going to be some future integration, but I don't think there will be any full replacement of anything."

Industry-wide effects

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(Image credit: Joakim Sandberg ) Gen AI feels "a little inevitable" to

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dev Chris Sumsky, but his team isn't using it and he also doesn't think "anything's going to replace the creativity side of things."

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creator Joakim Sandberg says he won't use it because "I know I have so much I still want to create, and want to see how my mind creates it."

Sandberg also worries AI use will reinforce the industry's most destructive trends. "I think it's a perfect tool for

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with useless apps and games that will

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else, same as it will do with other media," he says. "Art isn't meant to be assembly lined. It's supposed to be 'you,' not 'that.' It's already a problem with opportunistic people being more interested in making the same thing as another solely because it made money, and this is a worse version of that, but the product will likely not even function in any worthwhile way, if at all.

If we automate junior roles out of existence, the industry will suffer greatly.

Gregorios Kythreotis

"Executives that are already of the mindset that Studio A – who made their big hit – can be replaced with Studio B entirely because the games aren't made by human minds, they will replace as much staff as they can with AI and destroy the market before they realize a mistake was made."

Similarly,

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dev Husban Siddiqi argues gen AI has "rotted our industry" and he's "strongly against" its use in game dev in general. He dismisses the prevailing argument in favor of the tech: "This is not being done for the interest of players or 'making developers' lives easier'; it's actively being used as a tool to advance the agenda of individuals or organizations who are looking to reduce their overhead while thinking this is their path to maximizing profitability."

Siddiqi says making Rogue Eclipse was a "humbling" look at "how difficult every part of the craft is," and even if you can ignore the "plagiarism machine and massive copyright risk" that comes with the way generative AI lifts references in unspecified ways, avoiding the difficulties of development rather than learning how to overcome them defeats the whole purpose.

Is there a good way to use gen AI?

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Future? No Thanks! (Image credit: Molleindustria) Some developers are more receptive, or less immediately negative, to certain applications of AI.

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creator Paolo Pedercini says it can be "useful" for coding support in prototyping, but he doesn't think it's "necessary" and pushes back on "anything visual" made with AI. He calls out the same issues highlighted in our previous report, "ranging from environmentalism to intellectual properties." He agrees "it is kind of a toxic tool that is also increasingly aligned with the technofascist ruling class."

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creator Brian "Burgee" has tried using AI to "generate examples, debug my own attempts," but always comes back to "the human element." He believes the gaming community will "police this topic" on its own: if AI games become more common, he thinks "we'll see passionate indie developers surge in popularity more than ever."

Your ideas are what make things interesting and makes you connect with other people.

Mica McFarland

"Generating content on-the-fly within a game will never be appealing to me," Burgee adds. "I want to craft a very specific experience for players, and leaving any bit of that up to the whims of an LLM is not something I would ever consider doing. For me, handing entire pieces of production to generative AI goes against why I make games in the first place."

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co-developer Gabe Cazillo has had a similar experience. "I use it not to generate code or anything, or assets in the game," he says. Cazillo finds AI can be useful for referencing or learning specific code languages – in this case, Lua – but he doesn't want to minimize the core skills for making games. His thoughts boil down to "deep uncertainty" about the tech's future.

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Baby Steps (Image credit: Devolver Digital) "I have this feeling that everyone feels really certain," he explains. "It feels like they're presenting certainty about how it should be used and how it can be used. I don't have that. I feel deeply uncertain of both how it's gonna change things and how it's gonna change my process, and what ways it can be used. Part of me doesn't want to explore it because I've spent so long trying to learn these skills and I don't want to deal with it. But, a little bit, I feel like I should deal with it in some form."

Helen Carmichael of

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dev Grey Alien Games says her team doesn't want to "relinquish" creative control or problem solving, but she's curious about AI more broadly. "I’m interested in the ******* picture of how this technology is becoming prevalent, why it seems attractive to many, and where this may lead," she says. "I just learned from another developer that in some regions of the world it’s absolutely accepted in game dev. So there’s an element of culture at play, too."

Carmichael agrees that "it’s good that on some platforms [AI use is] being declared, as transparency matters. How do customers feel? Anecdotally, I see a push back against 'AI slop' from sections of Gen Alpha, but then again gen AI is widely used in the casual game sector, where older customers don’t mind."

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(Image credit: Hypersect) In response to this AI wave, many developers are taking the opposite stance, stressing that all of their work is human-made.

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makers Mica McFarland and Rafal Zaremba lead with an anti-AI stance in their startup screen. "All of the animations, all of the art, the voice over, are the product of people's passion and what they are," says Zaremba. McFarland adds, "Your ideas are what make things interesting and makes you connect with other people."

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boss Ryan Juckett doesn't see AI as a competitive creative option. "I think generative AI is nowhere near at a point that you can do anything that's as good as somebody who's a skilled craftsman," he says.Japanese dev Nama Takashi of

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fame also opposes using AI "for creative stuff." If anything, he is "looking forward to seeing if AI can do something only AI can do," rather than watching AI try to emulate or replace human labor.

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studio Artisan Games is in a similar position, according to boss Mario Rizzo. The clue's in the name. Rizzo says the team actually experimented with AI tools but never "found any value" in them. The studio is inordinately artist-heavy, and "the artists in particular felt like they lost a lot of creativity, because they felt like when they tried using some of the gen AI stuff, they were fed generic things that they felt took away from the idea of very creative monsters, or that almost slowed down our thinking process."

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(Image credit: Santa Ragione)

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developer Andrea Lucco Borlera says AI could "maybe" help him with code since he's not a programmer, "but then I still need a programmer to help me." He does expect it will "be used massively" eventually, "especially in the AAA industry," but "will not be as revolutionary as people think."

"I like the old ways," he says. "Because sometimes it's not so helpful. You can waste a lot of time. Maybe it can be somehow useful at the beginning, but I think creating your own things is much better. You have much more control. It doesn't make things faster, as people usually think."

Slowly but surely,

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dipping their toes into generative AI, but many of them have hastily yanked that toe right back. Plenty of people wholly reject the technology as-is for its many risks and consequences, or because work exists that they don't want or trust a tool to do for them.

The proposed upsides of gen AI may appear greater for devs with limited resources, but if anything, the independent developers I spoke to were even more AI-averse than creatives working within large teams. It's perhaps no coincidence that indies, free from the demands and expectations of big publishers and public shareholders operating under the belief that a world of finite resources will allow infinite growth, can more easily ignore AI.

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