I kind of crashed out this week. Not in an explosive, dramatic way, but an implosion, a collapsing of the self, my resolve and motivation crumbling into the mush you get when you put tissue paper through the laundry. I’m doing better now, and I wanted to write down my thought process in case anyone else is going through the same thing, especially, probably, sadly, future me.

The reason for this is, I guess, all too familiar for anyone in a creative field: surprise, it’s generative AI. The ongoing devaluation of the work of artists and makers, chewed up and regurgitated back to us like a mother feeding a baby bird with a subscription model. I have some hope for my friends in other artistic fields; AI art is shit, kind of by definition anti-art, embarrassing to look at and cringe-inducing to be associated with. I hope that continues. On the programming front, where I mostly live, things look a little dicier.

Every programmer I know has basically gone insane over the last couple of years. This is the most turbulent time to be a software engineer I can remember. We’ve had it relatively easy up until now, but there’s an increased feeling that the whole craft is going through a huge shift and every individual needs to decide how they respond to it, which is very hard without the benefit of hindsight. I can’t really blame anyone who’s just gone along with things, despite the various negative externalities - peer pressure is very real, and LLMs are genuinely very capable at code generation now. Denying that is, I think, a race against a moving finish line.

I’m not writing this to try and convince anyone of any particular position but here’s mine: even disregarding all the environmental and societal issues, I simply do not enjoy programming with a code assistant. It isn’t fun for me, the output doesn’t feel like mine, and I take no pride in what it produces. For the last couple of years it hasn’t been too hard to just stay in my lane, noodling away at my little projects, but increasingly it feels like a lot of this craft I’ve made a career and a hobby out of has vanished.

I love making doodads, little shell scripts, little helpers. I use my interactive git branch switcher every single day. I was very proud of that. Colleagues said nice things. Now anyone can just order that tool or anything like it off a prompt. Nobody cares about my doodads any more. It feels gauche to admit but I do actually need those head pats from my peers to feel fulfilled.

This is happening in games, too. This week’s crashout was triggered by a thread from Zach Gage about how game making is moving to be more like music. I think it’s a good insight but I found it utterly devastating. I’ve spent years learning how to make games, and it’s been hard, and now it feels like that might have been a waste of time? I was bereft. Then I had a chat with Shad.

Shad’s one of my faves. He’s a terrifically talented designer and engineer and an all-round great person. His current project is Uncamera, a camera app for iOS that uses raw sensor output with lookup tables - rather than a filter in post - to produce photos that genuinely look like film. It’s a beautifully made thing and I honestly think a contender for an Apple Design Award when it’s fully done. You should check it out. Here are some photos I took with it (I am not a good photographer).

It also happens to be developed entirely without generative AI. Shad’s reasons for this are very similar to my own; a lack of joy or fulfilment in the making of the thing. His anxieties are also similar. The difference is that Shad has kept updating Uncamera in spite of those anxieties, while I wallowed in self-pity.

Here’s the thing: I’m already doing everything the hard way. I decided to make my own game engine, in C++ of all languages, because I wanted to do it. If my goal was to make games as quickly as possible, to be able to “compete”, I’d be using Unity or Godot or Unreal. I wouldn’t be messing about trying to produce a faux-3D renderer like in the header image of this post. I do things the way I do because I enjoy doing it that way and because I learn a lot through doing it.

Through chatting to Shad I came to realise there are only really three paths open to me. I can start using generative AI to feel like I’m “keeping up” or “competing”, but then I won’t enjoy the work. I could stop making things entirely, but as any creative person will know that’s never really an option. Or, I can keep making things the way I enjoy, keep learning, keep doing it the hard way, for no real concrete reason other than I want to do it. That’s why we make games. That’s why we make anything.