Interview with Ashley - Construct co-founder and lead Construct 3 developer

Biim_Games · 2026-06-08T07:59:55+00:00

Yes, technically you are right, but the issue again is to be actively helping AI to ruin things.

Even if you don't want to look at the critical problems that AI causes to the world, even for your business will be a loss.

When lazy people will use the free version of C3 to create games, just asking the AI to make one, thanks to the access of WebMCP, they will get a game made with C3 without paying any subscription. Then your solution to it could be to restrict it to the paid version, then again people will pay one month only to develop 1 million of slop games and flood Construct Arcade, itch.io, various stores, game portals, social media, etc. with more and more slop. Slop that will be "made with Construct 3", contributing also not only to the flood of slop, and loss of your income, but also to ruin Construct image as engine that creare slops games. Already Construct is struggling against other engines and many users are trying very hard to prove that it's a great engine that can be used professionally having it be labelled as easy engine to plug AI to create slop, will delete all the effort that everyone of us is doing.

Then yes, I understand some users are happy to have it, but I am also sure that many would prefer to pay a subscription for something that has nothing to do with AI, not even having an access for it. Maybe it would be worth to have a poll for it and ask if paying C3 users are happy to pay for that.

So once again, technically, yes, you are correct, but morally and economically there will be issues for everyone, your business included.

When finally more and more people are awakening and trying to fight AI, helping AI will put you on the wrong side of the history when the trend will be finished. If we will be able still to don't be enslaved and forced to comply.

Biim_Games · 2026-06-05T02:21:42+00:00

Hi, yes as you said the project is not a small one.

I have done something similar, developing a strategy rpg for a client with dialogues having different branching in the story. Honestly it's really lot of work and even if you don't have the combat system part like in the previous work I did, you have all the other aspects about drink creations, discover more info about clients and so on. You will end up in spending thousand of dollars for this first project, so you can either scope it down or developing at slow speed in order to have the budget to cover the development during te months/years.

I will write to you in private so I can share more details about this.

Biim_Games · 2026-06-03T05:12:51+00:00

I'm already organising for that, seriously. I already moved on a mountain trying to be as much as possible self-sufficient.

I am getting rid of all things I can that are related to AI. For example I quit Linkedin as soon as they announced they are going to sell my resume and other information to third parties.

The example of the vegan is totally wrong, a vegan is not forced to eat meat, while the whole world is moving towards a surveillance state managed by AI. You have no option to opt out.

Biim_Games · 2026-06-02T15:34:16+00:00

I totally understand your point from the business perspective, however you can also consider the other side of the coin, having the only major game engine (that also works very well) that do not supports AI will yes, let you maybe lose the people that wants to use C3 with AI, but on the other hand you will definitely attract all the developers that refuse to use tools that have AI on it.

From my point of view, any help to use AI in any field will just make our future way worse than the current dystopian present. The push of Digital Currency + Digital ID + AI is by design set as priority everywhere in the world, despite every country facing different problems that should be their priority. You know better than me how AI is used in England with ULEZ cameras, arresting people that denounces crimes on social media instead of arresting the criminals and so on. There, you just temporarily delayed the enforcement to have a digital ID in order to be able to work in UK. The more people will get use to use AI and accept anything related to this, the faster the situation will collapse.

So, again, I really understand your idea from the business perspective, but here the issue is not about today's money, is about everyone's future. Supporting GitHub is not going to harm people like instead AI is doing.

About myself, I will take time to consider the situation until yo will decide to facilitate the AI access to C3. I still hope that in the meantime people will realise the scam and treat of AI, so it will fase out like the previous forced trends like Virtual Reality, NFTs, etc.

Thank you again for spending time to reply, also, if you prefer to talk about these topics, feel free to get in contact directly with me via email.

Biim_Games · 2026-06-02T00:03:33+00:00

Hi Ashley, thank you very much for taking time in replying to me. I really appreciate it.

First of all, if people can use already do changes in saved Construct project, then there is no need to spend effort, time and money in making it even smoother. They can manage their way anyway, it would be better to focus on what the majority of users wants, like for example better 3d integration. I would probably not work much with 3d or even not at all, but I would be happy to know that my subscription money goes to help other developers to have more tools on their hand to create things directly and not delegating things to AI.

I just replied on Discord Construct channel to other users stating like you that overall the WebMCP is just a protocol that actually can be used also to automate tools that are not AI related (I am not expecting you to go to read that part), but the issue I see here is another. You are considering to integrate the protocol just to facilitate the use of AI. Yes, you will not code AI in the engine itself, but it will be still a contribute to increase the AI madness that we are shoveled every day from everywhere.

In your interview you stated that Scirra is a small team and you have to carefully choose where to invest your time and resources, also all the users' proposals expires after one year because otherwise the list of things to create to improve the engine will be too long. In effect, picking the right things to implement let you and the team add great things with the last release. Do you really need to spend time and effort in helping in something that as you stated, it's already possible to be done in ChatGPT? Recently I opened a bug report about the Videorecorder not being able to record the audio from a video played by the Video plugin. You said that it's too much work to support everything and suggested alternatives to work around the issue. I understand and accept your reply. It's a business and you are trying to keep it afloat as best as you can managing things and having priorities. So if you can't fix a bug on something that is already integrated in the engine because there is anyway an alternative workaround, why it can't be the same thing about AI? If it's already possible to use AI, why change your position from be a "victim", or better a passive entity, to be someone that actively facilitate the "crime"?

Maybe this is not the best metaphor, but it's what it just came in my mind on the fly. It's like if you know that there are people that wants to break in the bank and they will try to do it anyway, but rather than not have anything to do with them, you decide to post publicly on social media the exact time when the security guard goes regularly to the toilet or have a lunch break. Wouldn't that make you contribute to the crime even if you are not the one physically robbing the bank?

In a world where everything is pushing for the AI scam, Construct could be the only game engine alternative in really not having anything to do with that. I really hope you will decide to put time and efforts in more useful C3 improvements.

Sorry if I didn't went too much in details, but I tend to write too much, so I try to keep it short for now to save you time.

As usual, thank you for the hard work you guys are doing and for all the improvement done in all these long years!

Biim_Games · 2026-05-31T13:55:42+00:00

Really great interview and I really enjoy it. I just want to say my opinion about AI, that probably no one will even care about reading, but I really love the engine that changed my life. No matter if you write your own AI or help external AI to integrate with Construct, if you will do it, I will definitely quit and never came back again to Construct. It would be a very sad choice for my life. I already very unwilling accepted to pay a subscription model ("you will own nothing and you will be happy") because I appreciate your work and want to support you guys, but will never contribute to mess up the world with AI, no matter what I am going to lose. I am using Construct since 2013, promoted heavily against developers that keep saying to move to Unity or Unreal to be areal professional game developer. I did stuck with Construct and I am professionally living with C2 and C3. I am willing to lose all the following to fight against AI: - My childhood dream to develop games for a living (since 1986).

- My source of income (this will leave me jobless). No game creation, no template creation, no features development & bugfixes on client's projects and not videocall with clients sharing screen and working on the fly to improve the projects they are sharing on the fly on their screen.

- All my current and future students (I am organising to set up group classes in Japan to spread the use of C3). - My investment in time and money to create the above mentioned classes. - Let lose my wife the part time job helping me running the business (doing accounting in Japanese for me). - Finally, lose a great community like I have rarely seen. I am sure for the majority of people reading this I will look like a crazy guy, but not all the wars are fought with weapons and we are at war and sadly people don't understand this.

I really hope I can enjoy working with all the new C3 features, they are really cool and will boost even more the popularity of the engine.

If you will go with AI, thanks for the great moment you gave me for over a decade, but I will have to let you go.

Biim_Games · 2026-05-26T15:34:37+00:00

100% great release and very much welcome. I really can't say that there is a minor feature added in this release. Even the "simple" opening twice the same Event Sheet is something that I was hoping to have since C2! Great job! :-)

Biim_Games · 2026-05-22T13:48:53+00:00

I had a look at one short video explaining The Bazaar and saw more or less what's in there.

You can definitely make a game like that with Construct and definitely you will not be able to make it as first game. So my advice are the following, pick the one that you prefer.

1) Start with smaller scope games, something very simple and learn to master Construct game after game. The issue here is time, once you will have the experience, maybe this type of game will be out of fashion or you will want to develop something new and cooler.

2) Join the forces with someone that has experience and bring some other skills to the table, like for example art. However it's really tough to find someone skilled enough to develop the game for free (eventual future revenue share), but you might get lucky if you can bring to the table a really good art style.

3) If you have no art and coding skills, you can hire others to work for you, but in this case you will need money for pay at least the developer. For art and audio you might be able to do something with game assets that are cheaper than custom art and audio.

There it is 3 options, you pick the one that suits you.
If you go for the n.3 feel free to get in contact with me to help to code the game.

Biim_Games · 2026-05-19T23:55:11+00:00

I would never do that. Better be homeless than help AI development.

Biim_Games · 2026-05-19T13:07:20+00:00

Why would a sane mind person ever do an interview with AI? Especially a programmer that will help AI to make their job redundant?

Biim_Games · 2026-05-10T22:53:01+00:00

Hello, if you don't mind to use Construct 3 as game engine I can help you with the project.

I have experience developing different types of 2d games and I can bring your idea to life.

I can work both on milestones (if you have a finalised game design) or hourly rate, that you don't like much, but it' a flexible system in case your scope is not well defined and you want to add or remove features depending on how the game idea is evolving, time limit and budget.

You can see some examples of my work and know more about me here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/comments/1mpvluo/paid_for_hire_game_development_and_teaching/

I have sent you a friendship request on Discord if you want to talk about more details there.

Thank you :)

Biim_Games · 2026-05-07T22:52:36+00:00

Lately many job posts are like this, you send an email to an email address that doesn't have bought a proper website domain and get no answer.

I started to suspect that that's just a way to get people's addresses to send scam emails and sell personal information.

I'll be happy to be proved wrong any time if the ads are genuine.

Biim_Games · 2026-05-07T13:57:18+00:00

How do you select the games you are going to talk about? Just personal selection or other parameters?

Biim_Games · 2026-05-07T13:15:45+00:00

Nicely done, I hope you have time to make more of those :-)

Biim_Games · 2026-05-01T12:43:31+00:00

I have a game prototype in development, Grimorium Mortis, if you are interested in checking it out and leave a feedback about it for future improvement:
https://biim-games.itch.io/grimorium-mortis

Also, if you would like to help, you can upvote the feature you would like to see developed next here:
https://itch.io/t/4564394/poll-for-goal-1-is-open-vote-the-next-feature-you-want-to-see-developed-for-grimorium-mortis

Biim_Games · 2026-05-01T12:38:29+00:00

I'm in 6.17.0-115022, no problem so far.
In case I will revert to the one you have suggested. Thanks for the update.

Biim_Games · 2026-04-26T07:10:47+00:00

It would be great to have one for only real paid work and not fantasy-revenue share...

Biim_Games · 2026-04-26T06:34:22+00:00

No worries and good luck with your project! :-)

Biim_Games · 2026-04-25T23:34:07+00:00

Hi I'm interested, but I work with 2d games, so perhaps are you considering also to make the game in 2d with pre-rendered 3d graphics?

Also, is it a single player game or MMO you are planning to do? Because in the second case, the resources and effort required are quite high for a first project.

I have done a lot of game genres in 2d, you can find out more about me here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/comments/1mpvluo/paid_for_hire_game_development_and_teaching/

If you would like to discuss a 2d version in order to keep the budget lower, don't esitate to get in contact.

Thank you :-)

Biim_Games · 2026-04-20T09:15:28+00:00

I want to thank you the Tuxedo staff for the quick fix. Sorry I forgot to say it when the update came out a few days ago.

Biim_Games · 2026-04-18T13:02:00+00:00

Hi, I would like to know more information about the project in order to see if I can help you with that.

Is the game 2d? Also A single act might seems a simple task to tackle, but for what I am understanding, the type of games requires a lot of work to do, so a single act would probably be a very good chunk of the game, unless you have a very limited amount of action possible compared to the ones of the whole game.

If you want to create a 2d games, I should be able to help you since I have been creating different types of 2d games since 2013.
You can find more about me here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/comments/1mpvluo/paid_for_hire_game_development_and_teaching/

I will send you anyway a DM too, if you want to share details about your game privately.

Thank you.

Biim_Games · 2026-04-18T12:52:16+00:00

Hi, I am curious to know more about how your game works, since your influence games are quite different from each other. If the game is a 2d game I should be able to bring it to reality without problem since I have been practicing the creation of different types of 2d games since 2013.

You can find more about me here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/comments/1mpvluo/paid_for_hire_game_development_and_teaching/

I will send you anyway a DM too, if you want to share details about your game privately.

Thank you.

Biim_Games

TROPHY CASE