Why game developers are scared to say they used AI

Ibrahim Kashif — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 06:13:02 +0000

A friend of mine recently posted in a game dev Discord asking whether he should include "AI used" in his Steam page description. The replies were unanimous. Don't do it. Players will **skip your game **before they even read the description.

That fear is** real**. And it's worth talking about honestly.

About 70-85% of all digital content created today has touched AI somewhere in the workflow. Whether that's idea generation or actually producing output. The problem is that people see the term "AI used" and immediately picture the same slop they scroll past on social media. Cheap generated videos, hollow images, content that took 3 seconds to make and looks like it. Their prejudice is understandable. It's just not accurate.

There is a fine line between people who waste time producing below average content and people who are using this technology to enhance their own capabilities. AI is a bicycle for the mind. Nothing more, nothing less. Where an artist creating game assets would take 500+ hours to generate all the artwork for a game, AI can take that artist's intent and generate it in minutes. Where a programmer would spend months **defining and refining code, a single prompt to a context filled model gets it **done in seconds.

We as humans know exactly what we want. We know the correct feeling. We are the architects. We've never been the fastest creature or the most sturdy. We gained dominance because we knew how to invent tools that suited us. AI is exactly that.

Majority of Claude's code is generated by Claude itself. Majority of Google's code is generated by Google's own AI. Nobody has a problem with that. Because the output is real, it works, and real people built something with it.

Having a game touched by AI in the development process is a self filter. If it truly is just slop, nobody plays it. Simple. But if you forget that label for a second and just look at the actual game, you'll find out pretty quickly whether it's good or not. The label was never the point.

When I heard some of my Game Developer friends were scared to put the term “AI used” inside their info for the game they're working on in fear that people won’t play it, what's the hope for *Campfire? *

Generated 100% from Campfire. Game Assets, tilemap, ui, logic, terrain, entity placements etc. Took a few natural human-like planning prompts.

Campfire is something that we’ve been building for the last 6 months now. It’s an agentic system that builds entire games from simple prompts. Backed by a real game engine. If people shun at “AI Used” what about** “Entirely built by AI”. But the truth is, if you produce something real. It doesn’t matter*. Like google, like claude. If the output is real, and you’ve done your due diligence to iterate and refine and update then your outcome is **more powerful than any label.* Campfire isn’t a means of removing creativity, its just a means of lowering the barrier of entry so that people can have ALL their focus on creating instead of figuring out how to loop an animation.

It’s definitely not perfect, but its the first thing we’ve seen that shows us that a time will come where everyday people will actually be able to express their ideas as well. In the same way Claude Code or lovable, lowered the barrier of entry to developing real software products. Campfire is doing the same for games.

Here, this is a video of Campfire creating a game, its not 100% but its more than a proof of concept: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYd_-MEtOQ1/

Campfire, create entire games in simple prompts. This is why current Game Development is broken.

Ibrahim Kashif — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:52:02 +0000

The part time game dev communities are full of the same post:

"I wish I could quit my day job and just build games but games don't pay the bills."

The truth is, the world is filled with hidden flowers waiting to bloom. However the barrier of entry to create has been the sole cost of them not chasing their dreams. Lets examine if someone woke up with an idea to create a game, what would it require? There are 3 currencies everyone has and each increase or decrease depending on the person:

Time
Money
Skills

If someone really wanted to build a game and wanted to do it the most efficient way possible, you could average a few tens of thousands of dollars (20-35K). Hollow Knight was 50K with a skilled dev team. You would need to hire talent and lead them, having no idea of the basics, lets say 3 people (code, art, planning). And you would need months or even years of full time commitment to get things right. And remember, you only reap the rewards **after **the game is finished. Now if you tell this to an everyday person who has that idea for the next GTA level game, they're going to bed happy with their day job.

Instead of coming up with an idea, learning programming and art design and the rest of the game dev process, taking years, tens of thousands of dollars and most likely relying on a team just to express that very idea. Everyday people can do this in just a few back and forths with Campfire.

That's the essence that Campfire is built on. Campfire is an Agentic Solution that builds entire games with simple prompts. It's not a tool meant to be used by a game developer that wants to speed up a task, rather for an everyday person to one day wake up and realise they have a chance to do something incredible and express their creativity in a way never seen before.

And I want to be clear, this isn't a means of skipping or removing creativity. Rather the opposite. We're not giving people a shortcut, we're opening a new door. If Campfire can in a few prompts produce a well enough output, and provide people with good enough iteration tools, you'll find them more creative than ever. I myself am proof of this, having sold software using no code solutions because I had an idea, a willingness to make it happen and most importantly the barrier to entry was reduced by these agentic systems.

The eventual goal is not just to empower creativity for individuals to allow hidden gems to bloom. But it's also to allow those very people to turn this into a sustainable business for themselves, soon enough for it to be worth it. A means of sustaining their creative endeavors and chasing their dreams.

We've already seen this metric and this change in tools like Claude Code, Lovable.dev, Replit. These are softwares that have changed the entire engineering industry because they lowered the barrier of entry to create and enhanced an individuals ability to create.

The difference between a programmer and a non programmer in building something real like a software product is just an idea and the willingness to express it.

People tell me that this seems like cheating. That if someone really wanted to build a game they'd sacrifice the years and the effort and make it real to them. Well, not everyone can do that. People have kids, they have jobs. People won't even try yet because the cost of success is too high. That's what Campfire reduces. An everyday person is flexible unlike a dev. They won't say: "Give me a 16 frame loop animation of a run of this specific character". They'll just say: "Make the character run" and then Campfire handles the rest. And imagine a kid trying to express creativity. No responsibilities true but in the attention economy they need something proven to activate their natural creativity loop.

You see where I'm going with this? One path takes 15 steps and previous experience of redundant information to know. And one path is just: "Give me what I want." That's the point of Campfire.

Generated 100% from Campfire. Game Assets, tilemap, ui, logic, terrain, entity placements etc.

Imagine a process where you go back and forth with Campfire, debug, iterate and create a game to your liking. And then it's a 2 click upload to Steam. Something like that. Where people can turn their creativity into a revenue source.

Another argument may be that because of this every game will just become cheap and lame.** That is hardly the case.** 90% of games already are those cheap web games you see around, not a proper game like GTA or RDR. If more people are creating games, then the games that come out on top are the ones that are the most fun. People who want to express their ideas will have to actually try if they want to succeed. That never changes. The end result? Better games for everyone and people being able to make a life off their passions.

Campfire is certainly not done right now. We're trying really hard and it's a lot of work. To generate any game in the future we do have to start small (2D sidescrolling platformers), there are some things that are still buggy, but it does a really good job at producing a provable outcome and done some things remarkably great.

My theory is simple. If we can build a 75% good output on the first planned run, and provide 90% good iteration tools, people naturally fall into the creative spirit of iteration and engineering. That's truer than anything.

Telling is boring though, I want to show you guys, it's easier that way.

Here, watch Campfire create a game: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYjAyvXjEPB/

The video does the talking.

Ibrahim Kashif is the founder of Campfire, an agentic AI system that generates complete playable games from simple prompts.
Follow the build on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ibrahimkashai_/reels/

DEV Community: Ibrahim Kashif

Why game developers are scared to say they used AI

Campfire, create entire games in simple prompts. This is why current Game Development is broken.