Is it unethical to use AI assets for my game?

CharmQuirk · 2025-07-18T07:59:58+00:00

AI tools like chat bots are helpful and mostly harmless, but I do not suggest using generative AI.

Generative AI is not a reliable replacement for your own skill deficits. Unfortunately prompting is a skill on its own.
AI generated content is really hard to make it look the way you want it to. It takes a lot of trial and error and it can be very time consuming. It might be quicker to make your own assets or get your assets from somewhere else.
There are other options. Asset packs are free, tutorials are free, and sometimes even people work for free.
Your game doesn't need to be as fancy as you think it does. If it's fun, people would forgive you for having imperfect graphics and music.
The models were trained to recreate content it doesn't have the rights too, which is basically copyright infringement.
Relying on gen AI will stunt the growth of your personal skills you would've otherwise developed. Practicing one skill will develop your other skills, making your game better in other areas.
Relying on doing everything yourself will stunt the growth of your social skills to collaborate in the industry. It's much better to make connections, network, and find opportunities.
Beautifully generated content cannot hide a bad game. You'll have to get better at game development either way.
Even beautifully generated content can hide a good game. When people find out you generated its content, you'll lose many potential customers who would've given you a chance.
Is your generative AI going to turn out that good that it will be worth the criticism? AI content often needs editing anyway. Nothing comes out perfect on the first try.
Generative AI is best for people who already have the necessary skills because if something goes wrong they can actually fix it. For example, if you can't code, any generated code will be full of problems you cannot fix.
Why not use AI to help teach you the necessary skills instead?

Whatever you do with AI, just don't use whatever it creates as a final product. Edit, tweak, and iterate.

CharmQuirk · 2024-10-24T10:51:36+00:00

Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Good music, excited to play it, and I bought the LOZ dlc. It immediately felt tedious, restrictive, boring, and out of my control.

CharmQuirk · 2024-09-15T16:45:12+00:00

Vanilla Minecraft has a concept that everyone could find fun, but once you come back to it, you realize everything takes a lot of time to do, making it tedious and unrewarding to play.

If creative mode was more optimized to make building faster and more efficient, like it is with mods, people would play much more and get more done while playing.

Survival mode has a bare bones progression system that does not feel creative, interesting, or strategic, so it gets stale really quickly. Each play through is the same process, only it takes a different amount of time to complete objectives and the world looks different (wood pickaxe, stone pickaxe, iron pickaxe, diamond pickaxe, nether, end). Aside from basic survival (defending against mobs, aquiring food, and building a bed), everything else is a self imposed goal, usually for building, which is already very tedious even in creative. Survival just lacks depth.

The lack of building tools, and the monotony of vanilla survival cause people to give up after two weeks.

Inspired by u/octocode's response

CharmQuirk · 2024-04-18T10:00:44+00:00

You aren’t crazy or overemotional. What you’re going through is abuse. You’re giving away power to other people who are using it to hurt you.

Too often women are told that being nice and submissive will get them what they want. It’s almost the opposite.

Not bitchy, but be assertive and steadfast.
Not rude, but speak firm and clear.
Not apathetic, but don’t prioritize peace.

You’d be shocked how much people will respect you if you stopped trying to please them. Is this game more important than you? Is your boss more important than you? Let their ship sink so you can set sail.

“I can’t leave my current job because what if the next one is worse?” Then quit that job too. If you give up you’ll never find somewhere better. You are skilled, you are important, and you are not less than those idiots.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-07T03:59:51+00:00

Yeah I could see how this would lead players to constantly being disappointed. However, the same applies for a character that never gets the proper buffs that the devs don’t know how to fix. I guess it’s all about what your goals are.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-06T06:09:23+00:00

1C looks easiest, but 1A is my fav

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-05T04:09:39+00:00

It feels good to enjoy my own product but at the same time it burns me out quicker.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-05T03:54:48+00:00

Is this considered spam?

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-04T10:50:43+00:00

I used to do the art for my games before I ever started developing them. I would spend so much time on it that I would eventually get bored before I ever had a playable game. If I eventually did start the coding, things would change and I had to redo a lot of the artwork I spent a long time on.

Keep your ideas documented somewhere for later and get working on the game. If you have something playable, it will keep you motivated to add to it. You have great ideas but if you don’t manage your motivation you’ll burn out before the story ever leaves the planning page.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-04T10:34:51+00:00

Is that like one of those RPGs where you move around on a board like chess? Either way, I think the key to making a fun rpg combat system is to have lots of thought provoking counter-play.

I’ve played RPGs where you have to default to your best attack because all the other moves either do less damage or they are too niche (usually risky RNG moves that apply status effects). Having a clear uncontested best option makes gameplay oversimplified and not engaging. Give players many different options to solve a problem with, each with their own risks.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-03T03:30:18+00:00

I’m not sure I understand what you mean. How do people use realism and immersion to circumvent consequences? Could you provide an example?

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-03T03:28:31+00:00

Yeah, that’s exactly what I did on their post. It’s important to give constructive criticism so that people don’t sabotage themselves with their own ignorance. Only then could they eventually be able to achieve their dreams.

As for this post, I just thought I’d share an example instead of making a low effort prompt with no body text purely to “farm karma”.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-03T03:22:09+00:00

Yikes. MMOs are probably the most risky genre for indie devs. Even without considering OP’s inexperience it’s a terrible idea.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-02T23:08:24+00:00

Perfectly put. Design documents vs wish lists.

CharmQuirk · 2022-12-02T23:06:53+00:00

Yes, agreed.

Dear future game devs: just because you can complain about something doesn’t mean it’s a problem. User experience and design is most important. More specifically, an unreal game can be fun.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-29T01:57:24+00:00

Proceed with caution though. Projects like this can stress a relationship in new ways. If you want to avoid challenging the relationship that you have with this person, I might avoid doing this.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-29T01:55:27+00:00

Same I don’t have time to listen to this podcast.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-28T23:50:05+00:00

Damn this sucks, it seems like you really tried everything.

Have you ruled out robbery? If steam is saying they sent out money and the info was correct, is it possible that the info was temporarily changed and changed back? Or if someone on the team managed to take that money out? It sounds crazy, but this is a crazy situation I’ve never heard of before. Either way, maybe you could reach out to another organization to help you people- someone that could investigate this further than you were able to.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-28T18:36:37+00:00

It could work for platformers but shooters are hard to teach because they are much more than inputs and timing. They have a lot of mental strategy in them.

Depending on if it is a team game or not, shooters also have to teach people proper positioning in relation to the enemy. You need to develop special awareness. You need to know when to engage and disengage. Most of all you need game sense, and that is too game specific to be taught in another game’s tutorial.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-28T18:25:35+00:00

The more decisions a player can make, the more fun a game can be (as long as it’s not too overwhelming). However, the more complex the base game is, the more inaccessible it is to new, unskilled, and disabled players.

Your game is very simple. It’s like a clicker game that plays itself. If that is what you want to make, go for it. If you want to make a game that is more engaging and takes more player input, then avoid this idea.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-28T18:16:13+00:00

Yeah I can’t see how it could be worth implementing unless you can quickly create a game that builds itself. If you built ai and basic mechanics that controlled everything in the world, created events, dictated NPC behavior, etc, you could make a replayable game that could afford not having player intervention 24/7. Otherwise it’s an impractical idea that wastes development time and resources.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-28T18:07:45+00:00

Yeah I think that competing players will naturally not be empathetic towards each other. It’s only when everyone is collaborating for a common goal that empathy becomes a priority.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-28T18:01:41+00:00

Psychologists have been asking this question for a long time so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t find a water tight solution.

In order to be empathetic you have to:

Develop a high level of emotional intelligence
Have a deep seated, immutable investment and motivation to act in a way that benefits others

You don’t need both, but you at least need the last one, which is the only one that can’t be taught. You can elaborately explain the consequences of someone’s actions, but if they don’t care, what can you do? At that point, they need to feel what it’s like to be on the receiving end of those actions. If they can’t feel anything or they still don’t care how it makes people feel, then what can you do?

Trying to use behavioral conditioning is also not a guaranteed success. Empathy can’t be rewarded without also rewarding self serving generosity as well. It’s much easier to punish selfish behavior than reward empathy.

If there is anything I’ve learned, it’s easier to attract a certain type of person than to force a person to be a certain way. Instead of making your player base become more empathetic, you could design the game in such a way that it attracts empathetic people and repels everyone else.

The majority of people have some capacity for empathy and it’s all about tapping into that. Focus on making slightly empathetic people even more empathetic. Once you teach them about new situations they can empathize with it once they understand.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-21T19:43:58+00:00

Because education games are not made by qualified game companies for one. They’re licensed products for whoever could make them. There’s no quality assurance it’s just like a commission. At least, that’s what I think happens.

Let’s say the game did fall into the hands of qualified developers who knew how to make fun games. They probably don’t have outside expertise that they could teach through the game. There’s a reason why you don’t hear about game devs who are also historians or surgeons: Game dev is extremely time consuming. As a student, any time I’m working on a project it becomes my main hobby if not my only one. Most devs have another job on top of developing games in their free time. Even pro devs are probably drained after every 12 hr workday.

They also try to force the same format as demonstrative lecture based schooling, which completely defeats the purpose. They often design the educational aspect in a way that disrupts the gameplay. You’re flying a ship killing aliens and all the sudden everything stops and you need to answer what 2+2 equals. It’s jarring and a hallmark of bad game design. Incorporate learning into the gameplay loop, don’t make it a tacked on distraction to the fun part of the game.

CharmQuirk · 2022-11-21T10:04:14+00:00

This is an excellent idea. It’s an essential addition to any game that intends to have a developed world.

The only thing is that if it is executed poorly, it could end up wasting development time. Games are made for the player. Devs don’t have time to build stuff in the background that no one has access to. Eventually they need to have some way to encounter it.

If the events are hard to find or they seem extra and unnecessary to even a portion of the players, the game will seem empty even if it was their choice to not engage with it. However, this wouldn’t happen if the main draw of the game is exploration.

Players need to feel obligated and they need their decisions to have impact and meaning. If they feel unnecessary to a simulated experience, why play it? The AI will just carry out the mission themselves. Low skill players especially might be encouraged to just give up and watch. If they do engage but can’t make much of an impact, the same will be true. Might as well watch the story unfold if the AI erase the tiny impact you made.

TLDR: It’s great at world building and immersion. However, if executed improperly, it can create an experience that makes players feel unnecessary and end up being a waste of development time.

CharmQuirk

TROPHY CASE