Game prototype using AI assisted graphics
Back in the 80&#x27;s, some of the defining games of the decade were made by a single person, and dev teams hardly consisted of more than two or three people. With the progress in computer hardware, with better resolutions and 3D cards, games developed too, into a space where the best games on the market required teams of 200+ people to design, develop, produce, market, and sell them.<p>Then, in the 2000&#x27;s, the indie scene started to gain traction in the public eye. Not because they could compete with AAA studios on their game courts, but because they found clever and novel ways to make games that piqued gamer&#x27;s interest who were perhaps a bit bored with the increasingly formulaic output they saw from major game developers.<p>But indie games also <i>had</i> to retract to such alternative game ideas because producing top of the line games had just gone way too far out of reach for a small team with a small budget - let alone a one-man studio.<p>I think we&#x27;re at the beginning of new dawn in independent game development. The tools available, even if you just look at open source tools, has never been so rich as they today. Now, with AI entering the scene, the dependence on very large teams will likely go down more and more, at least when combined with clever game design.<p>Will one person be able to create a solo project that challenges the AAA games of the top-selling studios any time soon? Of course not. But I think we&#x27;re on the verge of another indie game revolution.<p>AI threatens entire professions in a way that was previously thought impossible. Even a couple of years ago, hardly anyone would have imagined that jobs that typically require years of practice, training and skill could become equally under pressure as the traditional labour jobs that have been replaced by robots. We cannot even begin to imagine the the long-term effect on the economy at large.<p>On the upside, for gaming, the consumer will likely benefit from this development as new avenues and opportunies are opened to indie developers. Creating a character sheet automatically is just the beginning. This trend will continue, and it is absolutely foreseeable that further parts of the design process will be automated. Music and game sound generation will also be perfected by AI in the very near future. Actually, that is probably true for all game assets, it&#x27;s just a matter of time.<p>Even storytelling - if future games even need predesigned narratives (why not let an enticing story develop on the fly, thanks to AI, that really takes every user action into account and puts it into a coherent context?).<p>We&#x27;re living in the future.