I understand that AI is a very controversial topic right now, so I want to get this out in the open. I intend to use AI where appropriate as I continue on this game development journey. I will try to be as transparent as possible, but AI is simply too useful of a tool to neglect.
I understand that it ruffles a lot of feathers, and I get the concerns many people have about its existential threat to livelihoods. I have my own conflicting thoughts on the topic, and maybe I’ll share them at a later time. However, as a solo developer trying to build something from scratch, I don’t have the luxury of hiring an artist for every post I make. So, if DALL-E can provide me with a “good enough” image for a blog post, I’m going to use it. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but a solo dev has to use all the tools available, and AI is one of them.
To be honest, for the longest time after ChatGPT became a thing, I kept forgetting it was an option in my day-to-day life. Call it getting older or being set in my ways, but when I wanted to learn something, I kept thinking about it from a pre-AI perspective. I’d think, “I need to Google that or find a book, a blog post, or a video to learn from.” It never crossed my mind that I could simply ask ChatGPT. That idea is still not a habit for me, but I’m going to try to change that.
I’m going to do something most people probably won’t admit to, for fear of condemnation: I’m going to very openly explore what AI can add to the solo game development experience. I’ll be upfront about how I’m using it. I’m not going to have AI write my blog posts because I think AI makes for a boring writer. I won’t have AI create graphics for my games either because I enjoy drawing, and I don’t think AI is the best artist. But could it be useful as a concept artist? I’m not sure yet—I need to experiment more with that. You can get it to generate some pretty crazy images if you get creative with the prompts.
So, maybe AI generated concept art could help explore a visual style, but I’d still want the final artwork for my games to be handcrafted. I consider the games I want to create to be highly personal projects that I want total control over. Blog post images, though, I’m less precious about. So, if you see a generic-looking image that seems a bit off in one of my blog posts, it was likely generated with the help of ChatGPT.
Honestly, you can probably tell just by looking that it’s DALL-E. Right now, AI isn’t very good at image generation. Maybe I don’t know how to prompt it correctly, but I find the whole process frustrating because it often doesn’t do what I want. I can’t seem to get it to avoid making things look weird. Maybe I’ll figure that out as I go, and if I do, I’ll share what I learn.
The above is an example of the creepy weird stuff I got while trying to get a decent image for my introductory post. Prompted it to show me kids playing the Atari 2600 in the 80’s. For the final picture I ended up just cropping out the weird stuff and only using the part that looked semi normal. As you can see, AI still has a long way to go and is kind of obvious.
I don’t think DALL-E is a great artist, but it’s affordable, and for the $20 a month I’m paying for ChatGPT Plus, the price fits my budget. I’ll take all the help I can get. If I reach a point where I’m managing a large budget and have a real team, I’ll consider hiring an artist. But for now, cheap image generation is a solo blogger’s best friend, and it would be foolish of me to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I’m also curious about what AI can teach me in general. So, I’m going to use it to learn more about game development and see where that takes me. I’ll share my findings here. I’ll prompt it for information and show you the results, and I’ll always let you know when AI is involved. If AI can teach me something about collision detection or game physics, why shouldn’t I use that resource? I need all the help I can get.
If you don’t like that I’m doing this, I understand. There’s a lot of hate going around in the world today. Feel free to hate on me for exploring this new tool. I won’t be offended, but I’m also not going to stop. I want to make my own games, and I’m going to explore all the tools available that might help make that a reality. At the end of the day, AI is just another tool in the toolbox. So, if you want to see how I’m using AI in my projects, stay tuned.
P.S. I did use AI to clean up my spelling, punctuation, and grammar for this post, and boy does it help!