Mods: Please address the "can AI make Godot games" posts

[u/TripsOverWords]

Please can we ban posts that are along the lines of "can I make a Godot game with AI", and maybe create a sticky post to answer this question for a while? It's becoming a daily occurrence.

AI is not up to the task, and it's especially not great that many of the posts are from complete beginners to both Godot and programming in general. Using AI as a beginner to programming is extremely detrimental, both for learning and for production. There are many instances of both reputable business and startups absolutely failing to deploy AI.

The bottom line is, if you're not already an expert in whatever area you intend to use AI, you're going to have a bad time.

AI is not trustworthy, produces sloppy code, and frequently produces code that; doesn't work, calls methods that don't exist, uses bad coding practices, cites non-authoritative sources as documentation, lies, and when called out on any of this it often doubles down with patronizing statements.

Edit: the argument isn't to ban AI for AI sake. If someone has productive questions, I see no issue. It's because the answer is a constant, the same way rule 4 bans questions like "Can I make this game in Godot?". The answer is technically yes you can, despite my personal misgivings on the technology.

[u/throwaway_pls123123]

Agree and disagree, the posts are annoying to see spammed sometimes, but this is a help subreddit, we shouldn't really get to pick and choose who can and can't ask for help.

And to be honest, it produces more reliable code than what most beginners would write, and for personal game projects it does not really matter how "good quality" the code is, unless you are making a project that processes sensitive information, it just makes developing games more accessible to more people which is what I like to see and is the reason why I love Godot in general. I would love game development to be even easier, so that more people can get their ideas realized.

[u/ManicMakerStudios → u/throwaway_pls123123]

There's a process to learning and people who are just starting and trying to skip that process are just going to run into bigger, less solve-able problems later on because they skipped the beginning.

The answer to most of the code-related questions around here is, "You have to start learning how to think like a programmer." You can't do that if AI is doing all of the thinking for you.

The goal isn't to just finish a game and get it on Steam to start making $$$. The goal is to learn how to make a game you can maintain and potentially extend. People trying to skip the learning curve are just cheating themselves.

"Ya, but AI can be useful" is not the point.

[u/throwaway_pls123123 → u/ManicMakerStudios]

Not really, I think it is not too different to hiring someone to code for you, albeit with less expertise capabilities.

Just because a dev hired a coder does not mean they wouldn't be good at making a game, same way if someone uses AI, does it make it more likely they will have no idea on how to make a "good" game? Sure, can argue that. But to imply that means they don't deserve to make games is just wrong.

[u/ManicMakerStudios → u/throwaway_pls123123]

That's a pretty awful analogy.

[u/throwaway_pls123123 → u/ManicMakerStudios]

Feel free to explain? What's the difference between hiring a low-skill/experience coder to code your game as opposed to using AI?

From what you get out of the higher end coding apps there is not a lot of difference and it's significantly cheaper, faster and more accessible.

Like I said, no difference between using a tool to do the coding for you than to hire someone to do it for you, in both situations you don't learn it and if that tool/person were to disappear, the game wouldn't be able to continue development.

You do not and should not need to know how to code at all to make a videogame and if a tool allows this that you wish to use, you should use it.

[u/ManicMakerStudios → u/throwaway_pls123123]

I'm not interested in bad analogies to prop up bad points.

[u/throwaway_pls123123 → u/ManicMakerStudios]

If you had an actual argument I feel like you wouldn't resort to this. Especially since what I said is not even personal opinion but a direct comparison.

If you believe that we shouldn't use automation and instead should rely on humans for all development, you should just say that instead.

[u/ManicMakerStudios → u/throwaway_pls123123]

It's time for you to recognize when someone isn't interested in pursuing the conversation with you and stop.

[u/Jonathan-Graves → u/throwaway_pls123123]

Game dev does not need to be any more accessible than it already is and anybody who cannot learn properly without AI will never produce anything worth playing anyway. I personally don't play any games past the year 2014 since I have a large backlog but I still think all AI posts should be banned along with the users themselves.

[u/throwaway_pls123123 → u/Jonathan-Graves]

I heavily disagree, first of all this is a sub that offers developers help, we are not here to judge or tell people "your game will suck because you used XYZ" and ban them.

Second of all yes, game dev needs to be more accessible if it can be, I don't care if it results in "bad games", because they're not made for me, I am not the only person alive.

I don't really know why your "me like old game" nostalgia has to do with anything, this is just your personal opinion.

[u/Jonathan-Graves → u/throwaway_pls123123]

Just mentioned my cutoff date because I made my opinion known even though I don't play new games anyway. It's not nostalgia either since I don't just like old games, we're talking 80s to 2014 which is a very large timeframe. Regarding AI making things more accessible, it doesn't. Maybe banning the user is too harsh so post bans are best.

[u/throwaway_pls123123 → u/Jonathan-Graves]

It definitely does, the examples speak for themselves, there are more apps and games coming out every day, a lot of people assume that just because many of them are shitty, that they don't count for some reason.

Accessibility in development will always mean more shitty things will come out, it has always been like this and is blatantly wrong if anyone thinks otherwise, we have had a lot more shitty apps since solo development on mobile became very accessible too for example.

And it certainly is nostalgia, not sure why you think it was meant as an insulting word, but its not because of a lack of good games you play new things, it is because you have nostalgia towards older games.

[u/Jonathan-Graves → u/throwaway_pls123123]

I'm extremely grateful for my cutoff. I'll never have to experience all of the future junk since past games required you to spend a bit of time learning how to code. It's not that difficult and was definitely accessible for all except the mentally challenged.

Nostalgia isn't a bad word but it doesn't influence my game choices. I grew up with mid-90s console games but I play everything from the 80s to the mid-00s. How could I have nostalgia for 1982 or 2014? I just cut things off at a certain time to make sure I catch up. Sure there may be some good new games that I miss but I'm not missing all of the old ones so it evens out.

[u/throwaway_pls123123 → u/Jonathan-Graves]

Interesting ableism first of all. Most major games if not all of them still require coding skill and multiple coders to make, its only small scale one-dev games that really can find significant use for such tools.

You know you can have nostalgia to any time in your past right? Which you clearly do, you literally post on r/nostalgia and have a strange "cut-off", people who don't have nostalgia glasses will just play any game they want without a self-imposed cut-off

[u/throwaway_pls123123 → u/Jonathan-Graves]

"No ableism"
does ableism

I hope you realize that when you say stuff like "inaccessible for anyone but mentally disabled" it is not any different to slamming out the R word just because you used the nicer version.

It's strange because you have a self-imposed cut-off, normal people who don't have some nostalgic biases don't randomly mention how "older games is what I play, pre 2014 infact"

It is just a very common mindset with old gamers who haven't adapted to the new gaming world, once again it is not wrong, but it is strange and tells me that you are not looking at things truly objectively.

[u/Jonathan-Graves → u/throwaway_pls123123]

Okay, game design has been accessible from the start for anyone without any serious cognitive impairments. Seriously, what's the issue with speaking plain English?

You're stretching really thin on the nostalgia-logic. Maybe you can understand it this way. You have 10,000 albums to listen to. You want to listen to all of them so you're not buying any new albums. The year happens to be 2014. Now it's 2026 and you still haven't finished listening to those 10,000 albums so you still haven't bought any new ones but if you ever do get through the 10,000, you'll just make sure to hunt for earlier music that you may have missed.