Worried my game will be hated just because I used AI
I’ve been using Claude to help me code a video game that I’ve been dreaming about for nearly twenty years. The game concept and design decisions are all my own. Claude is just helping me put it all together in Unity and helping program it. I’m essentially filling the roles of director, producer, playtester, and occasional 3D artist. My text prompts for the game (not including Claude’s responses) currently total up to around 50,000 words of my own hand-typed vision and direction. I first tried to make this game back in 2022, and found that Unity was phenomenally capable of doing what I needed, but also realized that programming and scripting may as well be alien languages. I could pick up a few key phrases and terms, sure, but my degree is about as far from computer science as it gets - I’m a high school English teacher. I toyed around in Unity, learned the most basic of basics, followed a few tutorials, and ultimately left my project on the back burner as it got too ambitious and impossible for me to realize without leaving the rest of my life on the back burner. it’s not like I have any money to do build a development team, so I was content to have tried. I didn’t think it’s really go anywhere any time soon. Holy smokes, though. In the last month I’ve been using Claude Fable and Opus to build the game, and it’s been insane how far it’s gotten. it removed the friction between my having a great idea and implementing it! Previously, if I wanted to add a cool new idea, I would have to more or less drop everything and learn for a solid month to figure out how to even begin to execute the first step of it, and if I ever stepped away from the project I’d feel lost upon returning. Now I can prototype and implement so fast that the flow of ideas has been strong and I’ve felt downright empowered to make my dream game. That being said, I do worry that people will hate me or the game just on principle. There is a huge amount of ill will towards AI, and much of it is justified (though, I suspect, blown out of proportion). I don't want people losing their jobs, I don’t want data centers obliterating our resources, I don’t want to live in an oligarchical technocracy. But also, I’d never have gotten to make my silly little game without AI. This project literally would never get traction if not for the huge boost given to me by AI coding assistance. I’m proud of my work, and it feels like it IS my own work. I just don’t look forward to the inevitable rejection when people sneer at me for having used AI and then never even give me a fair shake. It’s a passion project, and I’m deeply invested in it. Hopefully that shows. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling this way, surely?