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Fair point, I’d only push back on how it hurts people who are new to making/shipping games. Those people have been told thousands of times “make small, simple games.” and to ship them to learn marketing and what Steam requires. Those folks no longer have the lottery chance of a breakout viral hit.

It's probs not a financial threat but it still kinda sucks tbh. It's like every other instance of sloppers entering any kind of dev community, just sucking the air out of the room by being massively disrespectful of the work of everyone else there

Thanks for these insights. Would you say the calculus of *when* you start showing things has changed? We used to love doing our development "in the open" but it feels very risky now. The hook isn't everything but at the start of development it's kind of all you've got!

Like, maybe? I think it'll depend on what kinda game you're making and where you think the real heart of it lies. Ideally, you'll be able to show things early that can grab attention and entice people, while still holding back enough that the full vision is a surprise for much later?

That's always kinda been ideal but I think it's more important now. And probably waiting until you at least know where the game is going (and that it's a non-obvious iteration of what you do show) might be best? And that it's sensible to want to hold your cards closer to your chest

First off, I'm not aware of any ai slop game that's had any real traction. At all. 4 years of "10x productivity" means that's 40 years' worth of missing product, unless we conclude that no one knows how to execute on ai developed games

Several months before "Hello, I'm not a human" launched, an AI-produced clone came out that took its idea and aesthetic, and not only did it see some success, but Twitch was pushing LOTS of streamers to stream it with their "popular with your audience" analytics.

And yet, No I'm Not a Human is game that I've heard of and has been a great success, but searching for vatious permutations of its name and "ai", "clone" "copy" "rip-off" etc gets me nothing If you have any more info I'll look further but this doesn't seem like major cause for concern?

The fear of "someone will steal my idea", has been a real fear in indie spaces for years, but it's never been a real issue because the idea is worth basically nothing. It's execution that counts - What can you create from that idea that is uniquely compelling to an audience?

I was with you but you’ve lost me almost immediately with this, there are plenty of examples of theft & harm.

If the distance between the idea and your vision for executing it is so small that anyone else could reproduce that, then you've probably already lost. You're essentially bringing nothing to the table. Ican count on one hand the number of ideas that are so good that the idea *is* the execution

I would love to agree if you on this but that magic library slop game sold over one million copies (and spawned dozens of clones); not to mention the needle in the haystack gold rush.

Is this the library tidying game? Missed that, but how much of the content are you attributing to GenAI, as that seems pretty unclear (official disclosure vs speculation)?