Since my last post, the AI developed games debate has been ongoing, and I am swayed more towards human made computer games than those generated with AI. It seems that a developer named Kirby2000 has been pretty prolific in what would seem to be churning out new entertainment software for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and compatibles. And that's all good, but it would be unrealistic for this to be done by a single Human alone without an extreme case of what my colleagues in previous companies referred to as "no life" a way through a project.
BreakSpace is now the only publication that I write for. Perhaps it reminds me of my days of writing Retro Computing Today for that one issue I put out, or Penning the occasional article or review for Commodore Scene, published by the great Allan Bairstow, but doing so before it was cool and when almost no one cared about 8-bit computing or gaming? In any case, I'm working with a great bunch of lads, with excellent direction from a sensible editorial overlord with a clear vision. It is always helpful if you have a good editor, and I have the best.
BreakSpace is avoiding reviewing games that have code assistance with AI, but that is dependent upon the authors of such games declaring that AI was used in the generation of the game. Therefore, some could sneak through that we don't know about, but as Mpk has stated, that's on them and not on us. In doing so, the 'zine is the publication of record for all human created Speccy games of this time, and that might mean we have fewer reviews in the future. Only time will tell on that point, but the recently published issue seven there are 40 individual titles pored over. That is 18 down from issue six, but still showing rude health for human made games.
As a developer myself, I have used AI, but it is mostly to understand error messages and debug; I found that posting the code with logging, and then posting each JSON packet to a LLM saved me a lot of time, especially as I work with large and complex datasets. But it would never completely solve the problem as I still needed to fix based on the information relayed back to me, and ensure any corrections offered were logically sound as well as working asynchronously too.
As a writer, I do not use AI at all. I want my words to sound like a human has written them, and to preserve my own voice and style (that's if you could call it style). Spell checkers are fine, though sometimes I use computer software that doesn't have even a copy and paste. I find the more simpler the text editor, the freer my mind. This is why I hated MikeRoweSoft's Office package. Notepad worked for me until I broke it with too many characters. Then I moved to Word Pad. And then GEOS with geoWrite. More recently, I've used a rubber keyed Speccy clone, still Z80 powered, to generate content for BreakSpace; you may find the post about this here on this group on the Facebook platform (at the time of writing, it's the first post, so you may need to scroll down in the future).
I think my point is this: as a developer, I can see why AI might be useful. It does the tedious work for you. Using it to do most of the heavy lifting isn't for me, but I am able to see the allure of getting the hard work done with minimal effort. As a non-artist, having graphics made for me, should I develop a game, well that's different perhaps, as I have no creativity.
As a writer, I'm very much against AI. Though, as per my previous blog post, I wouldn't want an AI assisted game to receive accolades, which in BreakSpace is the coveted Ace award. My other caveat is that games developed in such a way must work on real hardware. As I own real hardware, I know some of them don't.
Ultimately, I see why Mpk is so set against giving coverage to AI assisted games when that assistance is with the code side of things. It's a sensible policy. I'm sure, anyway, other publications are keen to cover these wares. Maybe those writers, or indeed the publishing process, use(s) AI for their articles and reviews, or for the magazine layout etc. If that's the case, AI assisted code generated games aren't so frowned upon. It's just another means to an end, after all. Just like the tedious work of writing your next feature: let AI do it for you, eh?
