The Age Of AI Copy Cats Is Upon Us. Here's What Game Devs Should Do...

How's it going? How you doing? Um I I I know it's been like kind of weird not getting videos from me as frequently as you used to. [clears throat] And that's because my game Twisted Tower launched August 18th. So it's been over a month and um it's I've just been there's a lot going on. That's all I'll say there. I'm working on some really interesting updates for Twisted Tower that I want to eventually share with you, but I can't share with share you with them now. But I do want to share with you I do want to share with you something that I've been thinking a lot about, especially after Twisted Towers launch. And then also just some weird stuff going on on Twitter, just conversations on Twitter about well people copying games and you guessed it using AI. AI is getting particularly [sighs] it's getting particularly good at

copying games, certain games, certain kinds of games. And so I tweeted something out that I wanted to talk to you about. And hopefully this helps you guys plan uh plan for 2027. Um and just the weird year that I think 2027 is going to be. I think it's going to be a weird year for game devs. I think it's going to be very advantageous for indie game devs. Um and I'm guys, I'm going to be honest with you. I I'm still figuring this stuff out. I'm figuring out like what like what does 27 2027 look like with AI AI copying games? AI slop um AI becoming incredibly prominent in it in its um uses uh in making games. So, I'm going to pull up the tweet here and it's hopefully it's going to help you guys. Um I'm going to pull this up and we're going to take a look at it. Um, but before I do that, I wanted to let you know, just FYI, that if you want to support Twisted Tower, um, which is

the game that I launched August 18th, it's right here. And for the autumn sale, it is 20% off. So, the link is below. You can get 20% off. It's only 12 bucks, um, to to get Twisted Tower, which I think is a great deal. I think the game is worth more than that, but I want everybody to have a copy. So, it is 12 bucks. It's sitting at very positive with over almost 2,000 reviews, which is freaking awesome. Um, so be sure to check it out below. Um, let me go ahead and open up my tweet here. Okay, so a lot of you have shown concern. A lot of you have shown concern on Twitter about AI copying games. um an example. I don't know if if AI copied this needle in the haststack game. Um but what happened was the needle in the haststack game got tweeted out. It went viral and then a bunch of needle in the haystack games were made on Steam.

Needle in a haystack game. Let me type that in and take a look here. Um on Steam, there's just a bunch of them on Steam. Um, and I don't, again, I don't know if AI copied these games and people just developers used AI to copy it, but what happened is a bunch of games came out really fast with the same concept, right? This is scary. This is a scary thing for game developers, right? It's like, why make games if if if people could just copy it right away? I'm not even going to try. And so what I tweeted out, I tweeted this out seven hours ago is making small interesting games has never been easier. And in fact, I think it was a year or two years ago, I made a whole video on make small games. Make games with a really interesting gimmick and make them fast, right? But this is exciting, but the problem is that's potentially a problem.

IMO, it's a big problem. And that's why having a very unique vision, art style, and more, this is important, more than just a gimmick is increasingly more valuable as a game dev. If your game can be copied quickly with AI, perhaps you need to brainstorm ways to make it more like you. Hopefully, that's self-explanatory what I just said, but I'm going to break it down. Okay. Um, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I'm going to toot my own horn. Games like this, Pinstripe, this was my first game I made. Um, and then games like Neverong, they're not particularly viral, but they brought my family some wealth. Well, what what I mean is we we were able to build wealth with those games. By wealth, I mean store up and save that

money, which was really great. Um, that's I love making games because you can take a pop of income and then save it and, you know, invest it. Um, or games like Twisted Tower. Um, right here. Games like Twisted Tower, they have a obvious Thomas Brush flare. Okay. Um, they look like they are handcrafted because they are handcrafted. Um, the 3D art, the music, the story, this is all handcrafted stuff. Like we barely used assets for Twisted Tower. I think something like 70 70 75% of the assets are handcrafted. I could be wrong there, but that's my feeling. The story that the the gameplay, everything is so human that I would be willing, if I was working on Twisted Tower right now, I'd be willing to share it with the world. I' I'd want it to go viral on Twitter because it's gonna be hard to well have

AI make a Thomas Brush game at least right now. We'll see what happens in two years. But this this game here, it just it looks handcrafted. It's got a voice. It's got a it's got a vision behind it. It looks like a very unique kind of aour game because well it was right. And that's not me tooting my own horn. There's plenty of games that do that. When you look at games like Pinstripe, I'm going to pull that up again. Pinstripe has a very Let me write this down. Pinstripe has a very unique art style that's cohesive. It doesn't look like AI at all because it's not right. It's very handcrafted and it tells a very personal unique story. I have nothing nothing against friends

or g I call them gimmick games. I think it's great. If people want to make gimmick games, they should make gimmick games. Okay. But when I look at a game like Needle in a Hay Stack already, I mean, look at this. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. When I look at um games like let's think here what's another one well paddle paddle paddle did really well right when I look at these games I go man these are great games they're awesome but they are at risk of being immediately replicated well not maybe in a day maybe in a month so of being replicated with AI especially in 2027 when AI continues to grow So [clears throat] my my plan for 2027, I'll speak for me, okay, my plan for 2027 is to make sure that two things are true for my game. And I recommend this to my clients. And

by the way, if you want to work with me, there's a link below. Um, I work with a small small group of clients where um we work together on a on a private server and we we we make games and and I I guide these these clients on how to well do the following which is make unique great games that have a voice and that can sell and cannot be replicated. But the two things that I teach my clients is [clears throat] number one, um, does your game rely on a singular gimmick? Is the singular gimmick the only thing that really makes it unique? For example, I'm going to make a game about um, drinking as many cups of coffee as I can. I'm going to make a game about sorting shoes at a shoe store. That's it. That's the gimmick. The art's fine. It's not really unique in its music and its story, but it's got

a cool gimmick. If it relies on a singular gimmick that is very easy to replicate with AI, those are the two conditions. Singular gimmick, very easy to replicate. It's a dangerous game to put out there early. I've heard some people that I trust even say, "I'm not even going to put games out there anymore to get wish lists. I'm not even going to put them out there." The problem is is, well, if you hide it for a year, someone's eventually going to have that idea and create that game because there's millions of game devs or hundreds of thousands, I don't know how many. [snorts] So, it's not that you can't make an interesting gimmick. It's that that gimmick, it should be difficult to replicate. I always come back to Portal because I love Portal, but Portal is one of those games where that's kind of a difficult system to at least at the time it was very difficult

to like envision like how is that being made, right? So if your gimmick is really technically interesting and technically challenging to create, it might be hard for AI to do that to replicate that quickly. But more importantly, and it's more important because well AI can kind of replicate most gimmicks if you give it enough time. The second thing is is that your gimmick needs to be wrapped in your voice. your gimmick needs to be um housed in in some in a structure that is unique to you. So the art style, the music, the story, excuse me, other gimmicks that surround that gimmick, right? So one of my one of my um favorite favorite games just to study is No Rest for the Wicked. Um when I look at this game, let me pull it up here. When I look at this game, there's

so much about this game that's like, you see it and you go, AI is not going to replicate this thing. It's so handmade. There's so much about this game that is obviously human right now. Do you need a multi-million dollar budget to make something like this? Yes. most likely. So, I'm not saying you have to make something like this or like or to this quality, but the point still stands. Your goal in this I'm sorry to say it because it is challenging for indies right now. Your goal should be to make something that has a human level of polish, a human story. Sure, you can rely on a gimmick, but make sure you wrap it in more in more. Let's see what people have said on on Twitter here because I got 14 comments.

I'm interested. I haven't I haven't read many of these. Uh this is from Great Crazy Hound Game Design. I'm in the process of learning for myself. I agree. Small games are not good for a long-term plan. I didn't I don't think I said that, but this is what this individual thinks. But are good for learning in practice. My view, learn with small games, but not for money. Once confident enough, make bigger games than charge if good enough. It's not bigger that I so I disagree a little bit. It's not bigger. It's frankly just better personal human. Find that voice and package your gimmick and it's going to be very difficult for people to replicate. I say I I'll say it again. I would be totally fine putting Twisted Tower out there if it wasn't launched and putting out the marketing material, the trailer, everything because it's like it's it's not an easy gimmick to replicate. In fact, I don't think there is a gimmick in Twisted Tower, right? Let's keep going.

I don't know why I can't read the the Okay, there we go. Um, Iona says, "We should be able to openly share how we work and what we make without worrying that it'll immediately be scraped and reproduced by AI." And I said, "Should? Yes, that's great, but it's not true. That's just not how things are now. You put a game out there where you you sort shoes with your friends. If it does well, it's going to get replicated like that." By the way, this isn't only true because of AI. I mean, this is just true in general. Um, Iona says, "I'm not saying I completely disagree with you, but I strongly believe things are how we make them. Copyright exists. I totally agree. Regulation and technical protections can exist, too." I hope so. Honestly, wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be great if if there was some kind I don't know what what the right answer is, but wouldn't it be great if like you couldn't scrape the code and just

recreate it? But it's like we could we could do this all the time. Even in the 90s, if you have a game that looks uh that does really well like Banjo Kazouie, you could, if you wanted, make something similar, but it just takes a lot of time. Now, it's just so easy to make a derivative product and it's not really illegal. Slothy Lab says, "Marketing your game and building a community is also very valuable." This is so important. I love that Slothy said this, which ironically makes it even harder for indie devs. H I don't know about that. Thank God for social media. You can build your audience now. But audience is important because even if your game gets copied, you still have an audience built in. And that audience can be on social media, Tik Tok, it can be on YouTube. It can be your Steam people who follow your game or people who know about your games and they just want to play your game, a Slothy Labs game. So, in my opinion, in my opinion, I'm so

glad slothy brought this up because there is a third thing. So, one, make sure your game is more than just a gimmick or it's a very difficult gimmick to replicate, right? And that's actually number two. It's very difficult to replicate. Oh, no, no, no. Number two is that it's personal. You make it personal. You pour your voice onto that game. Number three, to Sloth Slothy Lab's point, start building your audience so that you can uh I think Alex Herozi calls it a lever that you can pull. Some people can spend money on ads, right? You have an audience. Boom, you pull that lever and people show up and start playing your game. Even if it was copied, you have an audience. Bushcraft says this is why it's important to tell a story. short story can help. Uh, Offscript says, "If anyone can I haven't read these, so I'm just sort of commenting on the side here or off the cuff here. If anyone can copy the

output, the point of view is the only part left." Yeah, it's hard to prompt that, dude. That's so well said. I love that. If anyone can copy the output, the point of view is the only part left. Your point of view is very unique. Sure, your point of view is an is a distillation of all of your experiences, but it's very different than an LLM. An LLM captures as many points of view as it can, and then it distills it down into this average mush. Your job is to say, screw that. What do I have to say? What's my point of view? Because my point of view is very unique. I was on a podcast with Jonas. I haven't we haven't released it yet, but I did a a podcast with Jonas and in it I talk about how I limit my points of view or I'm sorry, my inspirations. I purposefully limit myself to a few inspirations and that is my point of

view. It's so I don't play a lot of games, right? I don't watch a lot of new TV shows or new movies. I got might Shyamalan. He's an inspiration. Tim Burton, Del Toro, um James Newton Howard, Alfred Hitchcock, they're all filmmakers, but um there's a few other game devs like uh America McGee and um Ken Lavine. Those are my inspirations, very few. So, it's like kind of like the opposite of an LLM, right? Where it's like few inspirations and it creates this very unique perspective. Now, sure it's not like viral. It's not a viral perspective, but I mean, if we look at it, it is unique, right? It's like, hey, that's kind of unique.

Let's see here. Let's go to Twisted Tower. It definitely looks like it's a point of view. It definitely looks like it's got a voice, right? And that's I think what your goal should be. You don't have to make a gothic shooter, right? And also, duh, it's inspire it's inspired by Bioshock, right? But it's just these few inspirations that create something that has a very pointed, salty, unique human perspective that is so hard to replicate. Right, let's keep going. Ampl says, "Thank you. Finally, someone there was slop before AI and stupid vi this is what they're saying. I'm not saying this. And stupid viral ideas are many times just a stupid viral idea and not a game. What we have now are 1,000 look what AI made with one prompt and I did nothing videos. What we need more than ever before is passion, sweat, heart, and with a human

soul. Do you know what I I've been saying this and a lot of people have been saying this for a long time. So it's not just me but being human and having a point of view to onscript's point offscript's point here having a point of view a unique perspective that is not a distillation of a million perspectives but it's just maybe a few inspirations and then your personality. I've been saying that that is going to be in demand in the age of AI. And by the way we have been in the age of AI. It is here to stay unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view. It's a whole other conversation. That's what I've been saying for a couple years now, which is your point of view and your personality is what's going to be in demand. But more importantly, it's also what can't be replicated with other AI. So my challenge for you, my challenge for you is to do exactly

what said here. OMlex says we need more than ever passion, sweat, heart, and a human soul. Guess what? Guess what that requires? It requires more than a prompt. Guess what it requires? Discipline, hard work, sometimes money, time, effort. My opinion is that the gimmick games or the slop games, they're totally fine, but they are at risk in 2027. If that's your business model, good luck. That's just my opinion. But my opinion is slop gimmick games, fast games made quickly, done with prompts, using assets, or god forbid AI 3D art. Those games are going to get duplicated, replicated, and drowned out. Xenon. Yep. I for one consider depth to be the

main criteria for nonclonability. Depth is an interesting word. I don't know what you mean by depth, but uh here's a cool article here. Maybe we can read it. I'll maybe read it after. Um bingefire. Why is it a problem? Because humans have a limited amount of attention time to spend and it might be spent making their own games instead of just playing games. Maybe I don't know what that means. I'm not saying it's wrong. I just don't know what it means. JPS says, "My game is all me for sure. No one else needs guitar charts in the music section." I'm not sure what that means, but it's not necessarily JPS, in my opinion, that your game needs to be all you. Okay. One of my favorite movies is Hook. I love Hook. [snorts] And Hook is a huge monumental effort by a studio, but the voice, the puppeteer is Stephen

Spielberg. So, it's not that it has to be all you. It's that you have to find a way to put yourself in the product. And yes, it's a product. You have to put yourself in a product so that AI doesn't know what to do with that [laughter] because it's you. It's not a distillation of a bunch of other games or it's not just a simple gimmick that AI can replicate. You are very difficult to replicate that or that that should be your goal, right? Timothy says handmade feel is better. Well, yeah, of course. Like what is handmade? And it's kind of to my point earlier, which is handmade is a voice. It's it's a a persona that is only something that you can make, right? I started off or or or only Sorry, I want to finish my thought there. It's not necessarily just you. It's also just

maybe a few inspirations, too. Like I'm not going to sit here and say Twisted Tower is purely me. It's like no, it's clearly inspired by Ken Lavine. It's clearly inspired by American McGee. But those are a tiny, very few, very sharp and distinct surgical inspirations. AI, what it does is it always takes a bunch of crap and puts it all into one thing, right? It's just a giant average soup. Now, I'm not saying that AI is is completely ineffective, okay? That's a whole other conversation. Um, it depends on how you use it as a tool. Timothy Jr. G Re says, "I think the more handmade Oh, right. We're reading this one." He said, "I started off with AI backgrounds in my game and I've since taken them all out." Yeah, exactly. I I put um AI posters in my game for like a split second. I did it during a live stream. I think it was four years ago and then it was like a week later. I was

like, "Nope, gone." Because they just all of a sudden the game just didn't. So, that's why Twisted Towers artwork, um, the 3D models and all of it is is it's either using, um, pre-made assets that we bought or like I said, 75 maybe 80% of the game is just handmade art from Filipe. Um, 100% human is a breath of fresh air. Oo, I love that. Now, the question is, how do you make it feel human? Well, you do it as a human, right? you es like especially the artwork. You make the art, you make the music, you uh make the sound, you make the story with your own hands. Doesn't mean you can't contract it out, right? Game development as a whole pipeline is changing. It's incredible. The pipeline is changing, but you as a director, you as a director of games, and I'm going to use this word a lot, the

director of a game, when you go in and you put yourself, I'm talking what you believe, what you think, what you feel, when you courageously do it, and it's scary because, well, you're going to be judged for it. When you put that into your product as opposed to just a gimmick that could be easily replicated, that's how you win the war against well AI stealing your game idea. So action steps for you. What do you do? Well, you make it human. Make sure your gimmick is difficult to replicate. If it's not diff difficult to replicate, you need to have more in your game than just the gimmick. For example, if I was to make a game that was about uh sorting shoes, what would I do? Well, I would say the style looks like a Thomas Brush game. It's got like this Tim Burton flare. It's dark and moody. It's a horror game where you're stuck in a shoe store with a beautiful story about um

you just broke up with your girlfriend. Thomas, why do you always have this stuff about saving, you know, your sweetheart? cuz that's my voice and I'm totally unashamed of the tropes that I like. Okay, I'm not afraid of that part of my voice. So, I say it's about your ex-girlfriend and she's missing and you get a phone call, but the the store locks up and you got to find a way to sort the shoes to make some antagonist happy. The music would be gorgeous. It would be handwritten by either me or a composer um like Quinton, the composer for Twisted Tower. Do you see what I'm saying here? It's got a unique voice. You wrap a gimmick in you. You need to carry the gimmick. The gimmick cannot carry itself. That's just my opinion, y'all. And I'm going to say that a lot because, man, [sighs] gamedev is changing. And some of you are probably watching this video a year after I said this. And all the things I'm saying are completely irrelevant. That's why every video I

have to say is my opinion right now in this moment because man, things are changing. Okay, be sure to check out the link below. Check out Yes, Thomas is doing a call to action to buy his game because guess what? I think it's a great game. You're going to love it. It's very positive and it's 20% off right now. So, be sure to check out the link below. Grab a copy and if you like it or maybe you don't, leave a review. I love you guys. Take it easy and I will see you later. Cheers.