Maybe the AI companies just run out of investment play money and have to adjust their pricing a little bit. This could calm down things abruptly.
The discussion continues because we did not find the solution yet. This does not mean there is no solution at all.
This might help. And it happens automatically. My interest into new games dropped nearly to zero. Maybe I will miss a really good one. But I’m just tired of all this slop and this hype.
If you ever actually try generating a complex bit of software via an AI, you find you have to resolve those ambiguities anyway (or not care). So you either provide extra context to make something clear or go through an iterative loop of prompts in order to clarify the intended outcome.
It is, undoubtedly, a different way of thinking about programming but you still actually need to solve all the same problems in order to get a solution - you just spend less time focusing on the minutiae of syntax.
In my opinion, AI is just a tool. A very powerful one that allows people who would have never released anything for the CPC to finally take the plunge.
The arguments against the quality of these games are really no different from the arguments that could have been made against most releases before AI. Many were bad games, with poor graphics, lackluster music, or inadequate testing, and the authors themselves knew it. But that didn’t matter because, at the end of the day, it was all about trying to create something and contribute, just like now. The only difference today is the sheer volume. Believing that the effort of someone trying without AI holds more value is just a viewpoint, an opinion, not an undeniable fact.
I also get tired and weary of so many quick ports, but I’m equally tired and weary of seeing the same battle and negative comments about AI usage in almost every thread. AI is here to stay, it is what it is; let’s evaluate games based on their quality instead of trying to figure out whether a couple of bytes of code were created using AI. Sometimes this feels like that old Simpsons meme of the old man yelling at a cloud.
In fact, I would do away with the category or thread where games are singled out for being AI-generated. Everyone should be free to develop their games or applications however they want, and everyone can judge or filter what’s posted according to their own tastes—that’s all there is to it, as exhausting as it might be, that’s just how it goes.
(I don’t feel awake enough to write in English, so I hope the translator does a good job)
As long as we have an AI games category I can mute and not get notified about them, I’d be quite happy about it.
There’s none, but this doesn’t mean much.
Nobody said that, and we haven’t done that.
Nobody said that, and we haven’t done that.
This has been discussed and a perfectly practical solution has been proposed - vibe-coded games should be presented by the authors (or “authors”) themselves.
No need. Again, this has been discussed elsewhere. There’s no need for clear-cut limits, the consensus itself is usually pretty clear.
That is definitely not the point and the fact that you’re posting this here proves we’re not preventing the discussion.
Not really because for some -many- the possibility of AI use in a title changes their view of the title, whether you like it or not, so disclosure is an absolute must.
Again, discussed: the problem is that the onslaught of vibe-coded games makes it much more difficult for the rest to surface. See the Steam example.
Who said otherwise? Did anyone prohibit anyone from vibe-coding games?
In my view, the ‘battles’ usually go like this:
“-did you even try playing your ai slop before wasting our bytes with it? Had you tried it you would have seen you can’t even get past the loading screen”
“-You’re luddites and you should go with the flow because AI is here to stay blahblahblah”
“-You’re not getting it, AI is destroying our world and our brains blahblahblah”
So really, that’s when it descends into a battle.
It seems that pretty much everywhere the consensus is that AI-coded games must be categorized as such. It’s not a matter of opinion, but a matter of a large portion of users that, whether you feel are right or not, do not wish to see those in their feed. It has little to do with the actual pros/cons of vibe coding, and much to do with the workings of a community. Perhaps someone can make an entirely vibe-administrated community and we’ll see what happens there.
They are
They do
My problem with
and everyone can judge or filter what’s posted according to their own tastes
is that it forces me to go through endless amount of things I don’t want even to hear about, so that consumes my time whether I like it or not.
As you said, everyone is free to do whatever they want with AI and everyone can judge or filter. But no one is free to take my time.
So, as I mentioned above, and in general I think mostly everyone agrees, people creating stuff with AI should label it as such, with a set of standardised tags, so we can just filter them out by default, and everyone happy.
Is that possible? I mean, to block posts with certain tags completely.
Yes, there is a way, same as with categories: find the tag you want to ignore (look at the left sidebar) and set your notification preferences.
And has that stopped the complaints?
Because nobody is objecting to that as a solution, except those who push back against anything AI regardless of whether it is “vibe coded” or not. Everything that can practically be done to provide some level of separation is already in place. Everything else comes down to acceptance that it isn’t just going to go away, whether we like it or not.
Are you suggesting that posts in a specific category should somehow be immune to criticism? 
Can you please, for the love of God stop saying this? It makes zero sense in the context of our discussion. Or just consider that you’re complaining against people’s comments but one can just as easily say “people will keep doing it whether you like it or not so accept it”. We got it, you have a fatalistic view and seem to think that people shouldn’t complain against the inevitable. Stop repeating it.
I understand the measures, but I believe they are doomed to fail in the long run. Either fail, or create endless friction and suspicion, because not everyone is going to tag their post correctly and it will become increasingly difficult to tell them apart at a glance. It’s like trying to stop a tsunami with your bare hands.
What will happen as the final product improves? When it’s no longer obvious and we can only take the author’s word for it? Do we ask for a dossier clarifying every decision and every line of code point by point?
It’s not about embracing AI unconditionally—I don’t like this flood of productions either, which I also endure in MiSTer cores, among other places—but I think the current approach is simplistic and fosters growing unease and paranoia.
Perhaps a solution could be that new game submissions must be moderated before going public, but this adds extra work and requires volunteers. It’s not a great solution, but it would prevent the recurring posts and suspicions on every thread that isn’t tagged as AI but looks, to some, like AI.
I don’t know how you get to that. I’ve said that things should be judged for what they are, not on the opinion of whether they’re valid to exist or not.
But let’s not forget, this current branch of the discussion stemmed because someone posted a thread asking how old CPC games could be improved. If even innocuous discussions like that can’t happen, then what is the point of a community at all?
Sure, ok, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
That’s why we have mods, and users can flag posts.
I’m willing to bet my right, erm, arm, that if you ever find yourself before a tsunami (god forbid), you’ll raise your hands.
Sure, valid point. See answer above.
Seems like a good time to have abandoned my MiSTer then 
I tend to agree, but -see my post above- the worst comes out because pro-AI users jump up and complain when someone calls out AI use. That’s how 99% of discussions go. And, there are a few (very few) genuinely good vibe-coded games in here that have met with great response, so you have to see the whole picture.
Oh?
There’s no ‘current branch’, that’s a number of amalgamated threads.
So a discussion is valid only when the replies align with your beliefs. Because I find the “we don’t care about that if it’s AI” a perfectly valid response (the initial question, for me, was pretty silly because IIRC it didn’t ask how old games could be improved, which would be totally valid, but how they can be improved with AI.
Again: people will not stop complaining, so you’d better stop complaining about them complaining. That’s the logic, apparently.
You have degraded the sacred, calloused trade of the software craftsman into a parasitic automation pipeline, boiling down an ancient DOS binary through a statistical theft-matrix just to vomit broken water lines onto the Z80. True creation demands the mortal furnace of sleepless debugging, obsessive balance, and the brutal discipline of the silicon itself—not acting as the unthinking errand boy for an algorithmic mill that strip-mines human intellect to foul our digital common with effortless slop. Smash this automated loom, return to the soldering iron and the hand-keyed opcode, and bleed into your own machine before daring to call its output your work.
This is my view of how I use AI. Or try to. At least.
A prophecy: The AI companies collect the input of their customers as training data, and the next generation of AI agents do no longer need a human to explain them how to clone a game. They will automatically convert each and every game to every platform, as long as the target hardware can somehow support it. Then a new Steam-like thing will be opened.
One thing I do not understand: If earlier or later AI can do everything and everybody is unemployed and not a single hobby is left, who will pay the AI companies then?
What’s more, some people make CPC games using a C compiler instead of sticking to pure assembly.
And some even use assembly instead of typing in hexadecimal directly…
Nothing is a challenge anymore…
Still, ‘I make the games by programming in C’ tops ‘asking a machine to make the games while I take a power nap’. I trust you understand the difference.
I’ve never really used AI for coding before - as everyone said it was so easy I thought I’d give it a go. I actully decided on Spectrum Basic, and though I’d try a “city bomber” type game - they used to be 10 a penny in 1982 … not once was I able to get the code to run - admittadly I used CoPilot - it wrote for what looked like good code - “spectrum basic doesn’t support end for”, “you are of course correct, I have now removed all end loops” … etc etc, then I found it had re-introduced end loops. I gave up after an hour, as I wasn’t that invested. Now you could say I used the wrong AI, but the implication about AI is that it very easy or someone who doesn’t know what they are doing to make an AI game, and flood the market with them - the “AI Slop”, but that I failed writing something with AI, that I would be quite capable of making in Basic, makes me wonder is how many of those people criticising it have tried to make a game?
Quite a few. Here’s the most celebrated case if you are curious. https://www.laimer.top/