People experience artifacts, not the construction
Mechanics of Judgement
There are two main ways to judge any creative project. You can judge the artifact (the thing itself), or the construction (how it was made). Lately, it seems a lot of people really care about the latter. Was AI involved? Is this handmade? What was the process? I've been thinking about how much these things should matter and when. For the most part my answer is almost never.
When you play, listen, watch, view, consume something, you are experiencing that artifact itself. You're not experiencing the creation of said thing. You're not experiencing the ideation period that stewed in the person's head before they decided to make it. You're not experiencing the tools and processes they used to make that asset, or how they used them.
The only time it feels like you can experience the construction is when it actually changes the artifact. Sure, on many projects you can tell if something was made with Unreal Engine 5 because those games have a certain look. Developers have tons of power to make their games stand out, but many end up looking similar to other games made with the same engine. Same goes for RPG Maker or RenPy to a strong extent. But that's still the artifact you're noticing, not the process. And the tool doesn't guarantee the result either. Does making something in Rust or C always guarantee your software will be blazingly fast? At the end of the day all software and games are products of the tools the creator had access to at the time, plus their expertise in them.
When it really comes down to it, how much do you actually care that your favorite games (or least favorite) were made with certain tools or engines? Now let's address the big one. AI.
AI Slop is Almost Always About the Artifact
People don't like AI slop, that much is obvious. But the reasons that are commonly touted leave me with doubt.
"AI steals work from real artists"
"AI is bad for the planet"
"Something something datacenters, something something water"
I'm not going to argue these points in this post. Sure, many people will rate the exact same game or image lower just because they found out AI was involved, but I think that's unjustified. And from what I see, most of the backlash is really about the output just being bad. Think of the AI ads (like the coca cola one), or the several restaurants that use AI pictures of their food when really they should just take pictures of it. Think of the very obvious bombardment of AI slop text on social media. Or the super bland generic websites and landing pages that all used purple gradients and random text. For my programmers out there, the extremely defensive and bloated code that AI writes. The reason all of these are disliked is because the result is BAD! Yes, AI was used in the construction and yes the output is bad but guess what? It's still humans (debatable) who hit the publish button! An actual human still had to look at what AI was puking out and said "yeah that's good enough".
Low quality work has also long existed before AI. Any time making something gets easier, new people are able to participate in it. Unity created many indie devs since it was an accessible, and easy to learn game engine but for those who remember, there was a stigma on games made with Unity back then. People associated unity games with low quality because so many were being made. Same thing happened with garage band, instagram filters, any possible product that made making the thing easier. New people join, the bar for entry is lowered and then you'll see a wave of low quality creations.
This is not a bad thing, quite the opposite actually. I fail to see more people exploring their creativity as anything but good. If you're a creative in any field, all you need to do is keep doing what you should've been doing all along. Be thoughtful, develop your taste and judgment, and try not to release tons of garbage.
This is the mindset I have when I'm working on Tiny Ship. It started as an entirely hand written game but now with AI I'm able to make custom models much quicker, add gameplay mechanics, and even create bespoke music. Does that mean I'm no longer the author? Maybe, a little. Now many aspects of it feel like something I commissioned. I didn't make the music but I got an AI to make it and it passes a bar of quality that I can deem acceptable for now. Much of the code now is more than I can remember or even comprehend, but I can justify and explain every gameplay mechanic.
People have been contracting developers, musicians, and artists the whole time. Now we have AI. It's way cheaper, faster, more accessible, and honestly sometimes even better.
Théâtre D'opéra Spatial by Jason M. Allen, made with Midjourney. It won first place in digital art at the 2022 Colorado State Fair.
AI songs are already charting. Most software is now written with AI. And right now the Kingdom Hearts community is having a blast with a mod that puts KH2 Sora's moveset into KH1, while arguing about how the code got written. Even though these types of mods have existed for a long time for many kingdom hearts games.
Make things that interest you unapologetically. Enjoy it. Share it.