I’ve written before about how November 2025 was an inflection point for coding agents—the point where Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.1 crossed a tipping point that meant their respective coding agents …
It’s not like your average play tester making 20 bucks an hour is some kind of artistic genius, mostly they’re just working the bugs out.
The guy made a thing with a computer. So what? Get off your high horse like clicking a mouse a few times is some kind of proof of the ‘creative process at work’.
So he spent his time differently, great. If he decides to be an indie, he can spend the next 8-24 months going to conferences and begging for reused art assets and small checks to pay people on fiver or buy models on the unity store, he can spend the same amount of time going to conferences and begging for creative feedback and small checks to pay people to work on the design.
My comment referred to the reduction of the entire game development process. The reason I say this is because there are many, many decisions to be made in order to align with the creators’ vision. In the case of play testing, I don’t believe an LMM is capable of providing the same quality of feedback beyond pure iteration.
The reason I and many other people make games is for people to play them. The fun is in that process and, when you find that fun or get that feedback that’s the magic of it all. If the end product is just whatever Claude play tests it’s missing the point of why some people (maybe most people?) like to make games in the first place.
By who? The game is playable.
It’s not like your average play tester making 20 bucks an hour is some kind of artistic genius, mostly they’re just working the bugs out.
The guy made a thing with a computer. So what? Get off your high horse like clicking a mouse a few times is some kind of proof of the ‘creative process at work’.
So he spent his time differently, great. If he decides to be an indie, he can spend the next 8-24 months going to conferences and begging for reused art assets and small checks to pay people on fiver or buy models on the unity store, he can spend the same amount of time going to conferences and begging for creative feedback and small checks to pay people to work on the design.
My comment referred to the reduction of the entire game development process. The reason I say this is because there are many, many decisions to be made in order to align with the creators’ vision. In the case of play testing, I don’t believe an LMM is capable of providing the same quality of feedback beyond pure iteration.
The reason I and many other people make games is for people to play them. The fun is in that process and, when you find that fun or get that feedback that’s the magic of it all. If the end product is just whatever Claude play tests it’s missing the point of why some people (maybe most people?) like to make games in the first place.
I don’t think it misses the point at all.
Playtesting with an LLM is just another way to feed the process, with it’s own set of tradeoffs.