In today's world, schools are increasingly being influenced by AI. AI use in school is, in my opinion, two-faced: on one hand, it acts as a more advanced search engine; on the other hand, it helps kids cheat on their homework and exams. However, I’m more invested in programming and therefore more interested in how AI is changing the field. In the early days of AI, it was rumored to be able to assist in coding. Now, AI is being hailed as the replacement for all development, and is causing the field to change rapidly. This isn’t being helped by the existence of “vibe coding,” a scourge on humanity. Recently, people have been using vibe coding to build video games, and a certain vocal few have been pushing the strategy as the “future of video game development.”

Vibe coding is when the “programmer” makes a project with only a single AI prompt, and then calls that finished. For example, say I want to code a calculator app for my iPhone, for whatever reason, all I would have to do is go to an AI capable of producing an app in one go, and then ask it something like this: 

“Can you build a calculator app using Swift that combines the functionality of Desmos Graphing Calculator and the modern user interface of the Apple Calculator?” 

After some time, the AI will code you a working graphing calculator with a sleek, modern UI and compatibility with iPhone. 

The above example can be done with many vibe coding AIs that can help build apps like Claude Code or Bolt. This may sound amazing, and it is, if you ignore all the bugs. AI is surprisingly stupid when it comes to programming. It knows the languages, but it doesn’t know how to make basic sentences. For example, a few days ago, I was coding a project that was dependent on another project. To save time and multitask, I directed my coding assistant, a feature now common in most code editors, to locate and link the dependency—a project that my code depends on. Once the AI finished, I went to double-check its work, which I found did not violate any conventions, so I went ahead to save the file. I was surprised when I ran the file, I was met with an error that stated that the repository, the place where the dependency is stored, was not found; Strange. I manually went and found the dependency and scrolled through its website, where I found that the AI had lied! The AI had assumed a name for the repository instead of checking for the actual method to implement. I still don’t exactly understand what caused this to happen, but it shows how these machines cannot be trusted with preserving the peace and tranquility of my code. From that point, I decided that from that point I will be the one who messes with the dependencies.

Now it is time for the entree, the main dish: vibe coding in the game development industry. Recently, there has been an influx of “tech bros” who think that games can now be easily created through a single prompt, clearly not understanding that video games are an art form, not some website or app that could be vibe-coded, but something that carries a message and should be treated as a piece of literature. When developing a video game, many developers pour their soul and heart into the making of their game, but when an AI is coding it, there is no soul or heart; there is only the greed of humans using the AI to make their lazy cash grabs. Most vibe coders also tend to leave their games in an unfinished state, mostly out of laziness, because they don’t know how to code. 

Another issue with vibe coding video games is that the games created are often recycled from already existing games, providing no unique mechanics or new skills for gamers to master.   To add on to that, most people are unable to comprehend AI code and usually go along with whatever the AI prints. When I first started a project, I immediately lost any knowledge of what was going on in the code. As soon as bugs started to arise, I was completely lost and unable to fix anything; I would just paste the error message and let the AI handle everything. I slowly became more and more addicted and dependent on using AI, and it soon became my code’s only lifeline. The code was too complicated for me to read through, and it developed into a garbled mess. Another example is a site that allows you to vibe code web games, this site is filled to the brim with low-quality projects. There was a game where you explored a blocky map to find keys. Why do you need those keys? No idea. Anyways while playing the game I noticed a few intriguing gameplay decisions: one, the water portion of the map wasn’t made with real water and instead consisted of a solid which the character could walk on, it would be easy to implement the water as a separate collider which acted as a trigger that slowed the character’s speed; two, while the AI clearly had a lot of assets to rip off from Minecraft it was unable to steal a nice looking UI, this left the game feeling half baked.