Generative AI has made its way into practically everything by now, and it was only a matter of time before it made it to video games. Any tool that makes game design easier and more approachable is generally a good thing, right? But of course, simple isn't always better, and the use of Generative AI in game development has remained a controversial topic.
Last year, Steam hinted that it would not be accepting games that used Generative AI to create art assets only to walk much of the policy back soon after. While steam has decided to not categorically reject a game for using AI in its development, it has decided to reject AI generated content that infringes on copyright law. How steam decides what is and isn't outright plagiarism isn't exactly clear. What is clear, is that tools are being created and used to help designers bring their games from a dream to a reality. The "No Code Generative AI Game Engine" Jabali takes this to a whole new level, however.
Jabali lets users create entire games from prompts entered into a Discord server. Apparently, Jabali will take a designer's idea and help them do everything from write, create assets, and do all the coding for you. This sounds both amazing and terrifying, so of course I wanted to check out the trailer and see what this AI game engine could actually do. Judging by the trailer alone the results were very underwhelming to say the least. You can check out the trailer for yourself here:
In the trailer, Jabali proudly boasts that "...in just minutes, you'll have a fully functional game to play." If that sounds too good to be true, it is, and you really need to see what the final products in the trailer look like. The art style was inconsistent, clipping in weird ways, and the writing reads like a fever dream. Absolutely nothing in the trailer looks like a game that anyone would want to play. I doubt that will stop grifters from flooding the internet with their easy bake oven like games. Great games take years, and it doesn't matter if you're a team of 100 or a team of 1. It took the lone developer of Stardew Valley four and a half years to make their game. What kind of quality could anyone expect from four and a half minutes? Some of the most anticipated games of the last year have suffered from delays that sometimes pushed the launch back months. While these delays are largely unpopular with fans, they usually occur because developers need more time to finish the game or improve it somehow.
I felt as though I might have been a bit too harsh, so I tried to imagine Jabali as a useful tool to teach children and newcomers the concepts of game design. Then it dawned on me that the entire point of Jabali is that the creator does basically nothing other than describe the game to an AI that does all the heavy lifting. There will be no coding, so no learning there, the art is (poorly) generated and slapped together, and even the terrible writing is regurgitated aimlessly. What could anyone possibly learn from a tool like Jabali except how to pump out a hopeless stew of simply bad everything. Take a look at the images up above, and then compare them to what Roblox has done with their generative AI tools. With competitors like this, it baffles the mind that Jabali was able to raise almost 5 million dollars from start-up venture funds with names like Sony, Google, and Amazon attached just to name a few. If it's really that easy to get companies like these to write a check I would encourage anyone reading to ask them for money for the first business idea that comes to your mind.
There might be room for the use of Generative AI in the creative process, and it might even somehow not directly rip off the art of others while doing it. But, after seeing what Jabali is offering I find myself rooting for Steam and their attempts to curb AI generated content from entering their platform at all. Without this kind of tedious case by case scrutiny, we'll likely see platforms like Steam, GOG, and Itch.io absolutely flooded with grifters trying to make a quick buck by sheer volume. I'm never one to rain on someone's creative process, but with tools like Jabali, is there even a creative process to rain on?
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