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Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

(marianogappa.github.io)
358 points maloga | 4 comments | 24 Aug 25 15:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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starchild3001 ◴[24 Aug 25 17:30 UTC] No.45006027[source]▶
What I like about this post is that it highlights something a lot of devs gloss over: the coding part of game development was never really the bottleneck. A solo developer can crank out mechanics pretty quickly, with or without AI. The real grind is in all the invisible layers on top; balancing the loop, tuning difficulty, creating assets that don’t look uncanny, and building enough polish to hold someone’s attention for more than 5 minutes.

That’s why we’re not suddenly drowning in brilliant Steam releases post-LLMs. The tech has lowered one wall, but the taller walls remain. It’s like the rise of Unity in the 2010s: the engine democratized making games, but we didn’t see a proportional explosion of good game, just more attempts. LLMs are doing the same thing for code, and image models are starting to do it for art, but neither can tell you if your game is actually fun.

The interesting question to me is: what happens when AI can not only implement but also playtest -- running thousands of iterations of your loop, surfacing which mechanics keep simulated players engaged? That’s when we start moving beyond "AI as productivity hack" into "AI as collaborator in design." We’re not there yet, but this article feels like an early data point along that trajectory.

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1. nahnahno ◴[24 Aug 25 18:16 UTC] No.45006386[source]▶
This is not true in my experience. Cranking out code is obviously the bottleneck, unless you have the luxury of working on a very narrow problem. The author describes a multi-modal project that does not afford this luxury.
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2. girvo ◴[24 Aug 25 20:45 UTC] No.45007609[source]▶
And it’s absolutely true in my experience, coding was never the bottleneck (modulo advanced shader programming which LLMs still aren’t great at despite my best efforts)
3. mac-mc ◴[24 Aug 25 20:49 UTC] No.45007641[source]▶
IMO, looking at most budget spend, it's the art & content that is the bottleneck.
4. Vetch ◴[24 Aug 25 20:52 UTC] No.45007667[source]▶
Unless you're also writing your own graphics and game engine from scratch, if you're making a truly novel and balanced game, then it should not be possible to crank out code with AI. When working in engines, the bulk of the work is usually in gameplay programming so the fact that its code is so predictable should be concerning (unless the programming is effectively in natural language). Not spending most of your time testing introduced mechanics, re-balancing and iterating should be triggering alarm bells. If you're working on an RPG, narrative design, reactivity and writing will eat up most of your time.

In the case you're working as part of team large enough to have dedicated programmers, the majority of the roles will usually be in content creation, design and QA.