Industry frustration and AI

Hey everyone!

I started developing games in 2022, jumping straight to adult games because I wanted to write kinky smut. It wasn't about making money. It was about expressing myself. Later, however, I started collaborating with artists on my project and that's where I needed funding. So around 2024 I began selling my games, as a way to afford artwork.

In my professional life I'm a software developer, and I'm seeing first-hand how AI tools are transforming the day-to-day work that we do. For now, a senior engineer's opinion is valued above AI, but the vast majority of programming is being done by LLM such as Claude. This is not why I became a programmer. I don't want to be a manager describing tasks to a junior employee (AI can be considered a junior developer who needs clear instructions). But... That's what I do now. If I don't, my deliverables are 10x slower than everyone else. It used to be that you would be assigned 1-2 tasks and work on this for 1-2 weeks. Now I can easily get through 10 tasks per day, in different projects. The context switching in my brain is exhausting. I already feel like I'm losing grasp of the nuts-and-bolts of the code (because I didn't write it at that level of detail). And this is what frustrates me. I've lost the part of my professional life that I loved the most: Finding solutions to problems, getting it working, and firmly understanding every part of the code.

I know for a fact that AI is used in game development, by no doubt the vast majority of studios. It just doesn't make sense not to use them. Games already cost a fortune to make, and AI is a very good tool for increasing productivity without much additional cost (around 5% increase per developer, depending on the region). I'm frustrated that this is where the industry is at, but that's just something I have to accept.

In my games, however, I'm luckily doing practically no programming. The writing is what carries the stories, together with the fantastic art by people like Synthetic Rush. As a result, I'm feeling more and more satisfaction from writing adult games than I feel programming in my professional life.

I'm grateful to everyone who's ever bought one of my games or subscribed on SubscribeStar or Patreon. Without you, I couldn't afford to collaborate with real human artists, which in return allows me to turn text-based smutty writing into interactive games with fantastic art.

PS: I have a secret project that I've already finished writing, and I'm currently collaborating with one of the artists behind Taru's Infernal Pledge to draw art for it. I will share more details on that once we get more art done for it. What I can share now is that it will be a short story with a male protagonist.

Thank you for your support, and for reading my wall-of-text! We'll have news about Neuro/Splice again very soon!

Cheers,

FlimsyLegs

Animus Non Grata - Special Edition v1.2!

After 2 years, we're going back and improving Animus Non Grata with some much needed polish! Devlog and changelog here:

https://flimsylegs.itch.io/animus-non-grata-demo/devlog/1698763/animus-non-grata-special-edition-v12