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> What I like about this post is that it highlights something a lot of devs gloss over: the coding part of game development was never really the bottleneck. A solo developer can crank out mechanics pretty quickly, with or without AI.

This is not true at all. I have never worked on games and it will take me quite a while (even months) to write a "basic" game. While I know a lot of good practices about software development and decade+ of FAANG experience, I don't know the intricacies or even the basics of game development.

I recently experienced this for a different usecase. As an experienced backend developer, I wanted to automate some javascript/browser stuff. I tried on my own for 2-3 days and had couple of prototypes but nothing actually worked. I spent 2 hours with an AI and I had a working solution. We even iterated together quickly and solved some runtime issues and the solution is working for me seamlessly now.

So, I definitely see value of AI even for coding for experienced developers like myself.



> have never worked on games and it will take me quite a while (even months) to write a "basic" game.

You're contradicting yourself. I promise it wouldn't take you months, unless you're just a really bad developer.


What is the contradiction? I am guessing it will take me a non-significant effort to learn game mechanics and code them etc.


You've never worked on games yet you are exceedingly confident about your estimation or the difficulty involved.

It's not that difficult to get a base level game up and running; ESPECIALLY with modern tooling.


Don't be a prick in public man, it looks bad


I mean it's a simple fact that the baseline for creating a game, roughly using the average developer experience/capability, is not months. Making a _good_ game might take months, it often takes years.

And that's the part AI is not going to be able to help you with.


Making a good boardgame, with zero need for programming, excluding artwork, is months or years of work. I would expect that much at a minimum for a (good) simple digital game, unless it is just going to sell on graphics and marketing alone (or luck).


Maybe you are a games developer and are overlooking the fact that people have to first learn the basic apis/models/etc. of graphical systems, engines, etc. before using them. Not sure how you are saying that it wouldn't take a few weeks to code even a simple production game like chess or more complicated but still simple Jump king etc.

Just think of the speciality in which you aren't an expert, javascript/storage/networking ...


I've dabbled and continue to dabble in areas where I know nothing about. And in this case, there's nothing super special about making a game.




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