Ask HN: Why isn't AI spawning profitable indie games?

5•eveningsun•1d ago

Everyone’s hyped about Claude Code, Nano Banana models, and how AI can now “build a game in 30 minutes for $ 20.”

If that’s true—why don’t we see a flood of ultra-low-cost, high-quality tower defense games (like Kingdom Rush) built with AI, raking in serious revenue?

After all:

Art? → Image generators + style locking. Code? → LLMs can scaffold Unity/Godot logic. Balancing? → Maybe RL or even manual tuning on a tiny scope. Audio? → AI voice + music tools exist.

And yet… the App Store isn’t overrun with polished, profitable Kingdom Rush–style games made by solo devs using AI. Why?

P.S. Yes, this post was AI-generated—my first attempt at market research before launching Kingdom Rush: Nano Banana Edition.

Comments

Alex2037•1d ago

because 90% of people raving about 1000% productivity boost from LLMs are students and junior-level programmers, whose productivity was nonexistent in the first place. for programmers with 5+ years of experience with the tools they're using, LLMs are a 10-20% boost, at most, and I'm saying that as a very AI-positive individual.

CamperBob2•1d ago

Because as soon as the indie audience catches wind that a game uses AI for any code, artwork, or writing, there goes the "indie" cred. It's not cool anymore. Worst case, some ludds launch a vocal public crusade against you.

Rest assured, there is plenty of AI being used, but the game devs know better than to talk about it.

eveningsun•1d ago

Fair point. But whether a game is indie or not isn’t really my main concern here. What I’m wondering is this: you probably know how much money simple games like Doodle Jump have made. It seems entirely feasible for a somewhat experienced developer to whip up a shameless clone—with a fresh coat of paint—in just a few days. Sure, it wouldn’t make a fortune, but it should still earn some money—enough to be worth the effort.

So why haven’t we seen a flood of these kinds of games on the App Store?

falloutx•1d ago

We have, look at Playstation store, App store, in the new games section. None of them are successful so it doesn't break your main feed. Someone can estimate no of game coming out with AI in them, but I am not that guy, I can give you a percentage and its like 70%.

falloutx•1d ago

Thats some bullshit, if your game is good and uses AI, users seem to not care about, for eg Arc Raiders.

But vast majority of games are shit and even more the ones where they use AI, and there is already enough slop on the market with AI, that users know they need to stay away from those games.

falloutx•1d ago

AI cant make complex games yet (complex here means more than one level consistently, its a very low bar, a game dev with 20min experience can achieve this). When you use a tool like Unreal or Unity or Godot, its not just code, its also thinking about lighting, music, art, surfaces, shaders, materials and so much more. And also a lot of things have to be done in a visual way (connecting nodes, placing models)

Creating a game, even when you have capable team of 2-3 members, its very very broad objective. You have to be master of so many things. During the vibe coding jam, there were so many games build by AI, but none of them were any good, AI was making three.js games mostly and it was placing objects so stupidly that the term ASS (artificial stupidity sourced) code is a term on discord indie scene. For eg, in a car came it was placing objects on the road.

You can see https://geminimakesrally.vercel.app/ and judge for yourself. Its terrible and its funny for now. It uses the latest Gemini 3 Pro model from December. Can you sell this game? Maybe on mobile if you want to add to the slop store more, I personally dont want to post slop games like this. Removed it from my itch too as soon as we completed the

And before you say its me being shit at vibecoding, yes fair, but I am fairly competitive in non game vibecoding: https://plonkedin.vercel.app/ (made in couple mins)

OrionNox•14h ago

Pretty sure y'all remember when levelsio was making his slop vibecoded "game" lmao and somehow it became viral...

krapp•9h ago

The game didn't become viral because of its good quality, it became viral because it was made with AI, and the AI community (and HN) gassed it up. The author made money because he stuck ads in it while it was viral. The exact same game made entirely by a human being would be dismissed as garbage.

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