With the Advent of AI

it really seems people are in either of two camps, either radically embracing or behemently rejecting the use of AI to augment their workflow. There are many extremely valid reasons to be against the use of AI, especially when those tools are built using content that is protected, or that the creator simply doesnt want to share or have used in this manner. Those type of ethical issues aside, I feel like using AI tools such as Large Language Models have enabled me to create beyond my own limits, and has given me a confidence to experiment knowing that I have backup that won't get irritated explaining every little thing ad nauseam at 2am while I'm chugging away burning off some midnight mania. 

As a developer

I believe it's extremely important to make clear how AI is used to aid production, and I hope we make a standard practice of disclosing these methods. Every project is different, different budgets, different team compositions, different individual capabilities, all of these variables lead to different capabilities in production and changes what's available in the arsenal, and how those tools are used. We all have a responsibility to each other as creators to empower each other, and I hope as we begin to integrate AI in game development we do so in a way that strengthens and invites more creators into the game dev community. 

Who am I? 

Petey Pab! hahahaha (much love if u get this ref)

Jk, My name's Journey. I'm a level 31 solo developer with 5 years experience in the industry mainly as an educator (I teach programming in a game design degree) but I started as a contract designer and programmer right out of college. One of my first contracts was a demo for a VR game that ended up going to Quakecon (at the time it was called Tempus 84, I've heard they've since updated the name, much love to you guys), but this will be my first public project other than a temporary stint with some Fortnite game modes. That's not to say I haven't been making awesome stuff: I lead initiatives on campus to create tech tools with the newest development tools every year, just, those are internal or educational tools that most people won't see or use unless you come to our school.

Saga

is the amalgamation of all the things I've learned over these few years, and the biggest one is to be crafty with what you've got. If you wanna make cool stuff fast, masterfully leveraging existing resources will jetspeed your production. In my case I have a solid background in programming, and a penchant for crafting fully-fledged experiences. But when I first started Saga, I didn't have a huge production dream or anything like that, this game was born out of a need to create something with someone who was giving up on indie development. I wanted to show them that we could make something impactful with few resources. I was heavily inspired by Cult of the Lambs at the time, and I had some experience making farming systems. Then I remembered the Cropout Template, and decided to use that as a base to save time. I dove into the project to learn how it worked, and learned a lot about a lot of systems in Unreal I wasn't familiar with, and how to use those systems together to make a production ready project. But being me, I needed drama. So I told my good friend ChatGPT how the project worked, and asked "How can we expand on this game with an angels/demons theme. We want to do something like Cult of the Lamb + Reigns + RTS." 

And the AI gave me a wonderful RTS game idea with an Angels vs Demons Faction System, Morality and Alignment mechanics, Special Units and Heroes, notes on Environmental Design, Map Design, Art and Sound Design. It basically gave a full treatment for a game in less than a minute. 

But that wasn't the game I made. 

AI Will Never Replace Us Entirely

because it's only as good as the model/information it was trained on. This means it's based on experiences that have already been shared. It's built on the documented past. But what makes US unique as game developers, as people in general, are those experiences that we have, that we each bring to the table, those experiences that just can't possibly all be shared, but make us US. We're so much more than what's been written, history itself is beyond record. That's why AI will never truly replace us. 

Reading through this new "game," I was reminded of a game that truly stands out in the history of sim games and in my heart. Spore.  You can tell from the minute you launch Spore that you're about to experience something special. When I first played the game, I was fortunate enough to be shown it by someone who told me nothing about it, just to play. I was immediately intrigued by the phantasmal soundtrack and celestial aesthetics of the game, but thought it was just a simple evolutionary sim at the start. Soon though, after my creature evolved, and I was presented with more and more choices, whether to eat plants or meat, whether to have two legs or four or none, whether to be aggressive or kind, I realized the game itself was evolving.

I then told the AI about these new ideas, and about how I wanted to try an evolving and ever branching tech tree, so that the actions you make as a player, and the stats your villagers have would influence the technologies you unlock, and therefore how you advance as a village. Going back and forth with the AI, refining my own ideas, felt more like a collaborative process that I was the pilot of. I was able to bullet out my thoughts, and ask the AI to help me populate documentation. I use Codecks to manage production on the project, and I frequently ask AI to give me fully detailed cards in Markdown which I can copy-paste into Codecks, and then edit further there. I ask AI for advice on how to implement new features, even asking for step by step instructions when it involves an entirely new system. I have my settings on ChatGPT to be extra informative and give background information whenever possible, so that I'm always being taught WHY. I also use AI for populating tables and tiers when it comes to progression. Initial design ideas typically come from me, and I use AI for tasks that require moreso time than creative effort. 

Long story short, 

AI has helped to create this project, but this project was not made by AI. This article wasn't constructed with any sort of AI help at all, even though I did use AI to help me come up with a content release and marketing strategy. I may use AI to help create content like this in the future, but I wanted to introduce myself authentically, and disclose my stance on AI and the industry. It's all about intent. I personally believe that small teams using AI generated work as placeholder content is perfectly ethically acceptable, especially if the intent is to replace the work with custom work when the means are possible. But it is ethically irresponsible in our field, for projects with budget to not properly allocate resources to employing creatives whenever possible. 

Now lemme get on off of this thing, I got work to do ;)

-Journey

Note from the Dev: 
Thank you so much if you've read this far, this is my first type of blog or anything like this ever, so I do hope to get better at it in time. And please check out the demo! I've decided I will give it regular updates all the way up til the crowdfunding launch, so that it's even closer to what I envision for the full game: some major features (villager stats and traits, and random events) are important to the base design and presently lacking