u/playthelastsecret

It's been more than three years that we started making games (visual novels) using AI art and published them on Steam. (We were indeed one of the first.) Since then, we have been asked again and again how difficult this is, given the overall strong anti-AI sentiment.

The answer: Forget it!

We have a few bad reviews because of that, but our first AI generated game still got 88% positive reviews in Steam, and our best one has 93%. And download numbers are by no means lower than for our non-AI visual novel. – Okay, we are small, so no review bombing and brigading happened to us, like it would if we were AAA, but still, the whole thing teaches one important lesson:

Players in general do not care whether it's AI made or not!

They want to play a good game. Not AI slop, not an asset flip, not shuffle ware. Just a good game. And they don't care how it's made, as long as it is good!

If in opinion polls most people say they dislike generative AI... well, most people say what they think they are supposed to say... And then they still use ChatGPT, and they still play our games.

So, don't worry too much about this whole controversy. It's definitely overvalued.

EDIT: Just for clarification: Our games or SFW and mostly rated 12+.

A question to all devs:

How big is the share of downloads of your games on itch.io compared to those on Steam?

We develop visual novels (story-focused computer games). Obviously, art is important there.
Now, loud people online claim that players would never play any AI slop, but value true, hand-made art.
Well – No.
I just ran through the download statistics of our games. We have one (pre-AI) game that is completely hand-made, we have one that has AI art, but hand-made music, we have one where not only art and music, but even parts of the stories were co-written by AI.
Download numbers?
All three perform basically the same. When considering that we have more language localizations for the first game, then the last one actually is the winner.

But the reviews...?
93% positive on the game that heavily used AI.
And, yeah, it looks pretty, is funny, has good romance going, so players simply like it. Even though most know that it uses AI (we ask them at the end, actually).

So, if antis claim AI is ugly and people hate it. No. Only bad AI is ugly. And people don't care about AI or not.

(Btw: All the games are non-profit and totally free to play.)