Have you ever felt that eerily familiar resemblance to a soundtrack while exploring a new indie game?

How about the visuals? Similar cobblestone pavement, soft skies, and to seal it all, a fox with a lantern tail.

Although it looks fine, you realize not too late that something feels off, as if your game has no fingerprints, as if it lacks a human touch.

You quickly check the credits to realize there are no writers or artists credited – just AI tools.

You ask yourself, "Did I just watch an algorithm think and unfold?"

The Double-Edged Sword of Generative AI

If you are someone whose career is knee-deep in creativity, chances are, you have already felt the pinch of AI invasion in your profession. Generative AI (genAI) has entered the indie game scene, similar to how a new game engine is introduced – powerful, customizable, and disruptive.

Think of the impact that solo developers and smaller studios felt with its advent, a level of accessibility beyond imagination. It could offer a new breed of algorithms to create content that can be created from scratch (but not truly), a whole another world of gameplay experience.

From algorithms that generate endless worlds to AI models that instantly create art and music, generative AI has firmly planted its roots in indie game development.

Clearly, capable of performing creative powerlifting, these tools can even automate new gameplay experiences. However, serious ethical and creative concerns creep up among indie developers who fear property theft, job displacement, and loss of creative control with the AI onset.

"We are extremely against the idea that anything creative could or should take [the] place of skilled specialists, to which we mean ourselves," said Rebecca Ford, creative director of Warframe, at Digital Extremes in London, Ont.
"The last world we want to live in is the one where the robots get to make all the creative decisions and we don't. It should be the other way around."

With tools like Midjourney for concept art, Roblox for 3D presentation, ChatGPT for dialogue art, and AIVA for music generation, indie creators are relying on AI to produce the work of a full studio.

As per a recent poll by a16z, 87% of studios employ Midjourney to generate alluring in-game environments.

Cost of Game Development vs Industry Struggles

AAA games are quite expensive and require a lengthy process of development. Be it the photorealistic graphics, the creation of massive open worlds or broadly speaking, identifying common pain points or bugs related to the same.

Many game studios are in high-cost-of-living areas, and employees need to be compensated adequately. The longer a game production takes, the more expensive it gets. And this is where AI tools come in handy, especially among indie and small developers.

It helps smaller organizations with a lower workforce to prototype faster. The hitch in the matter is how the widespread use of genAI can drastically impact creative professionals such as artists, writers, and voice actors.

Recently, Ubisoft, the studio behind series like Assassin's Creed and The Division, announced that they are working on an AI-powered tool called Ghostwriter.

However, the studio recognizes the inescapable reality that human talent should not be replaced with genAI.

"You can use AI to prototype a lot of early-bird stuff, but there needs to be that human element to sort of push that towards the finish line," said Antonio Miceli, founder of the Toronto indie team Megapower Games.

The Creative Hollowing and Talent Displacement

With genAI kicking in to almost every creative professional space, the question remains. Can it augment human effort?

To an extent, talent displacement is a major dilemma that may vex creative professionals, including artists, voice actors, and musicians. It is counterproductive to spend hours on a composer when AI can churn out an ambient soundtrack in 30 seconds.

While genAI can mimic a pixel artist's style, who owns the art, and what happens to the artist?

A stunning world created by AI could mesmerize many, but it may lack its soul, something only a human can create.

The legal and ethical landscape is even further gruesome. AI-generated content was produced as a result of training the machine on millions of human artworks, scripts, and musical varieties.

So, what rights do artists who trained the AI have? Or do they have any at all?

The Procedural Oatmeal Problem

If you have played Starfield, you would know that the planetary surfaces – the rocks and plains or the mining outposts – are procedurally generated every time you land.

It rearranges randomized board game tiles into a new layout with each playthrough.

This results in what game developer and researcher Kate Compton calls "procedural oatmeal" where AI-generated worlds are technically different but still feel the same, bland, and indistinguishable like the grains in a bowl of oatmeal.

The problem with adding AI to indie games is that it looks similar to the previous one you played; more oatmeal.

The jarring similarity of music, concept art, or dialogues that you may possibly encounter in every single one of those games lacks the unique sentiments and experiences drafted from human intervention.

It is unfair to expect the unparalleled and incredible experiences that only human touch and creativity can produce to be reflected in the AI-generated versions.

With the AI wave crashing down on us as a tsunami, the greater question still remains.

Will genAI remain a tool that developers can rely on to reduce redundancy, or would it take over the creative space but leaving it soulless?

Edited by Harshajit Sarmah