What happens to games when intelligence is on tap?
Value clarity and the future of games
Intelligence is now available on tap. Over the past few months, programming has changed profoundly. With tools like Claude Code and Cursor, software developers can now describe features in a few lines of plain English instead of writing thousands of lines of code. They can accomplish tasks in an afternoon that would’ve previously taken weeks. Claude Code has gotten so good at generating code that its creator is now using Claude Code to write 100% of new code for Claude Code.
These tools are still inaccessible to non-technical users. They’re framed by the fairly impenetrable interfaces of the terminal and the IDE. But that’s changing (see the write up from Every on Claude Cowork, released earlier this week).
These tools will soon be coming for game development, and they will completely redefine how games are made. Making a video game requires the mastery of two very technical disciplines: programming and asset creation. Fully autonomous programming has arrived and asset creation is not far behind. Meshy allows users to generate 3D models with a prompt. Runway’s GWM Worlds takes this a step further, enabling users to create navigable virtual worlds on the fly.
There will be many game developers and players who will reject these new workflows. Games are very hard to make and involve spending tens of thousands of hours learning to manipulate a patchwork of esoteric software. Game developers take pride in their mastery of these tools. What happens when the technicality of their skills is no longer valued? Game developers, who were previously seen as wizards able to conjure great spells with strings of symbols that look like gibberish to most, will soon be replaced by the most accessible tool of all: plain language.
The bottleneck for success in games will remain the same: making something that people care about. Games that previously took years and hundreds of team members to make will soon be prompted in an afternoon. What will game creators and game enjoyers be left with in this new era?
We will be left with something simple and pure: the beauty of games. We will be left with what philosopher C. Thi Nguyen describes in his new book The Score:
Games play around with who you are, what you care about, and the basic shape of your relationships to other people. Games reach into you and give you a new form of agency, and you can, for a while, become completely absorbed in that new agency. And what enables that, in crucial part, is the clarity, the simplicity, and the unambiguity of the scoring system. Games let somebody else design a new self for you, for you to slip into.
Games grant us a precious experience of clarity. It is a clarity of purpose—a clarity of value. In a game, for once in our lives, we know exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, and afterward, we know exactly how well we have done.
Games offer value clarity. They are an existential balm for the confusion of ordinary life.
"Making a video game requires the mastery of two very technical disciplines: programming and asset creation."
I’d also add sound design to that list, as capturing, creating, and processing proper sounds, background ambience, and even music has become a highly technical craft in its own right.
I see upcoming tools handling programming and asset creation in much the same way digital tools transformed music production. You no longer need physical instruments to create music, yet instruments haven’t disappeared. People still learn them, master them, and we still deeply appreciate hearing them played.
I think programming and asset creation will follow the same path... they won’t vanish, nut evolve, and when used intentionally, they’ll be even more valued.
As for games themselves, yeah... a bad side is that the sea of bad and mediocre games will grow. But so will the number of creators with great ideas finally able to bring them to life, and that means more even more strange, personal, and awesome indie games for all of us. 🎮✨