What will players still pay us for?

I do not know much about making music. I do have taste in music, though. When I cannot find something I want to listen to, I sometimes use Suno to generate something for myself. For what I want from it, that can be cheap and satisfying.

Now imagine that working well enough with games.

You want a particular kind of game. The games you find are close, but the combat is wrong for you, progression takes too long, or the setting is not what you had in mind. Instead of waiting for a developer to make your version, you ask an AI to make it. You try the result, change some things, and eventually have something you enjoy.

As a player, that sounds exciting. As someone who wants to make games for a living, it terrifies me a bit.

If people can get an experience they want without buying my game, what will they still want to pay me for?

It only needs to be good enough for you

In my previous post, I worried about people copying a game and selling a cheaper substitute. This is an adjacent concern, but it does not require someone to sell anything.

A player might make a game purely for themselves. It could be rough, badly balanced, and something I would never enjoy. If it gives that person what they wanted, my opinion of its quality does not matter much.

They might share it too. I would probably share things I made, even if I had no plan to sell them. If enough people do that, paid games could face more free alternatives as well as personally generated ones.

Someone might tell a developer, "Make it the way I want, or I will make my own." Sometimes that person was never going to buy the game anyway. But perhaps they would have bought a different developer's game. If they spend that money generating their own experience instead, the spending still moves away from someone making games.

That is the possibility I am worried about. I do not know how many players would do it, or how many purchases it would actually replace.

Knowing my taste is not the same as knowing what to make

There is an obvious problem with this scenario: do I know what I want well enough to ask for it?

I do not necessarily like surprises. They often turn out to be things I do not appreciate. In those cases, getting exactly what I asked for sounds great.

Then I think about Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West. Those games satisfied me so well that I would not want to change anything. I loved discovering the lore of their ancient world. I did not need to describe that experience before someone made it.

I feel something similar about Wuthering Waves. Sometimes a new character brings me back. Sometimes it is a returning character I already like. New areas matter too. I love Startorch Academy for its world and lore. And Aemeath has a special place in my heart.

Those attachments are a reason to question my fear. I can recognize something I love without having been able to design it beforehand.

But I also hear players wanting different things from games I am happy with. Maybe my satisfaction with Horizon says more about my own taste than about what everyone else would choose. Some people might prefer to create their own characters and lore. It reminds me of D&D: you can enjoy what is already there, or create something of your own when you feel like exploring it.

I can imagine doing both. I do not know how much buying games that would replace.

The honeymoon could get expensive

My music example has limits. I can listen to a generated track and decide whether I like it. A game might feel promising at first, then become boring or fall apart after hours of play.

Getting a convincing first version would not settle whether making the whole experience was worth the cost. Someone would still need to play it, notice problems, explain changes, and check whether those changes helped. Generation costs money too.

I can imagine a honeymoon period where people are enchanted by being able to make or change whatever they want. Some might then decide that getting a game to work well takes too much time, effort, or money. Buying a finished game could become the easier and cheaper choice again.

Others might get hooked on the craft and keep doing it even when it eats money. At that point, they are learning to be developers themselves.

And if they decide to sell their games, they face the same question I do. Their potential customers can generate alternatives too. Becoming a seller does not make the problem go away.

Maybe players buy the core and change the rest

I would be less worried if people still paid for a core experience, then changed the parts that did not suit them.

That could mean buying a finished game and adjusting its rules, characters, or progression. Or it could mean paying for a reliable foundation that keeps those changes working together. I would be more interested in providing that foundation than building a general service for generating any game imaginable.

There are problems here too. A player could change something, break the experience, and blame the original developer. I do not yet know where I would put the boundaries, or how much of the support I could automate.

More importantly, not every game needs mods. Not every kind of experience benefits from letting players reshape its parts. I do not want customization to become a condition for making a game people will buy. That could push developers toward certain kinds of games and away from others they wanted to make.

It might be a useful option. I cannot treat it as an answer for everyone.

A monthly payment is tempting

Playing Wuthering Waves has also made me think about ongoing services and recurring payments. A live-service game is one that keeps being maintained and expanded over time. A subscription is one possible way of charging for that, not a requirement of the model.

From a purely financial point of view, monthly payments feel more secure to me than selling a game once. Perhaps paying a small amount to keep enjoying an existing game would be more attractive than spending time and money generating an alternative.

But charging monthly does not mean people will keep paying. If I get lazy and let the game rot, players can leave. I still need to give them something they want.

I also do not like the idea of someone feeling they have to keep playing just to justify a payment. I would rather they wanted what I was making. New characters and areas give me reasons to return to WUWA. A billing schedule alone would not.

Then there is the ongoing work. My hope would be to automate enough of it to leave time for creating. Whether that would actually work is another thing to find out. Calling it a service does not magically make it low-maintenance or sustainable.

This is uncomfortable alongside my previous post. I worry about developers moving games onto servers to protect them, while considering compromises myself. Right now, one idea I am considering is offering demos only through cloud play, then releasing an installable final game. That would limit access to the program before release, though people could still imitate what they see.

I would rather avoid some of these choices. I can still imagine considering them if they seemed necessary to pay the bills.

Where does the money go?

There is another possibility I do not want to ignore. If studios pay AI providers to make games, and players pay AI providers to generate alternatives, those providers could collect money from both sides.

That does not prove they would capture most of the spending. I do worry about a future where making games becomes easier while more of the money goes to the companies supplying the tools, rather than the people making the games.

Cheaper games would be welcome to me as a player. Fewer developers being able to earn a living would worry me as a creator. I do not have a neat way to weigh those against each other.

I would probably keep making things even if I could not sell them. But I would need another source of income, and game development would have to fit around it. Ideally that income would require little ongoing work. I cannot just assume I would find such a business. Making games for free does not pay for the time and resources to keep making them.

I do not think personal game generation automatically means the end of paid games. My own favorite games give me reasons to doubt that. I also cannot dismiss the concern just because people will still want to create. Wanting to make something and being able to afford the time are different problems.

I would love to generate my dream game. I would still like to earn a living making games. I am trying to understand how much room there will be for both.