I made my first game last year. It is...

1. Made in RPG Maker

2. With a LOT of stock assets

3. A fan game of an IP I own no rights to

4. With AI generated battlebacks

5. Free to download

I'm really proud of it. It was an idea I had for years and I finally made it a reality. Today, someone saw my project and asked me if I used generative AI for the battlebacks. I happily answered "yes". I could've used more stock assets for this purpose but I wanted something even more fitting. And more surreal for the horror vibes.

This person suggested I should mark my game as "made with generative AI" on its page before dismissing my work entirely based on my response. I was not aware of this new tag until now. I went to the page, saw the now mandatory option, and marked it as such. Like I said, I'm proud of the game regardless of how pieces of it were created. 

I've had people dismiss it before based on being made in RPG Maker, even though it was the perfect program to create it. They've dismissed it because "they can tell" it was made in RPG Maker due to stock graphics/fonts/sounds, even though it all perfectly fit what I was going for. RPG Maker carries a stigma regardless of whether good games can be made within its limits which still takes a lot of time, effort, and passion to complete.

And today I found out that generative AI, despite being merely a tool, is now severely frowned upon (especially for assets) and that my project will be pushed even further into obscurity because of my honesty. I could've easily taken photos of landscapes and rooms to create similar backdrops if I had known it would turn into yet another stigma. Just like how RPG Maker games are all lumped together despite varying levels of quality, so will any project whose creator admits to using such a tool, even for a free fan project.

You should dismiss my game for the right reasons. Because it's too hard. Too cryptic. Too reliant on RNG. Unbalanced. Too reliant on an insider's knowledge of its source material.

I understand the controversy surrounding generative AI, that it resembles some works of art too closely. But all it needed to do for this project was to mimic stock photos of landscapes and rooms, which also aren't considered "fine art" in the art world, as even paintings of landscapes are often derided for simply being a copy, like a still life work of a bowl of fruit. Furthermore, I ran them through a second and sometimes third or fourth filter for additional manipulation of whatever sources the tool was gathering its data from to arrive at what I needed.

I believe further consideration and conversation is needed here instead of the "ban them all" mentality I've seen across the internet tonight. There are plenty of analogies to link here. One I could start with is within music, particularly hip hop and electronic which don't always gather permission to use audio samples from obvious to not-so-obvious, and yet they are still sold for a profit and revered as classics.

In closing, I'll step off my soap box and get a little petty for a moment to say that I've seen a lot of bullshit on Itch. Honestly, I've searched Itch looking for stuff to play and have found MOSTLY bullshit, regardless of whether or not an AI tool was utilized. I wholeheartedly disagree with anyone who says that using AI is always a sign of uncreative shortcuts and laziness when most non-AI projects I come across are indeed lazy, slapped together, barely playable, and over before you can ask yourself "is this even a game?"