AI game clones are making indie developers afraid to show their work

本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

Since its earliest days, the video game industry has been built on developers creating clones of competing games, with varying levels of originality and varying levels of enforcement from game platforms. Now, though, AI coding tools are making that cloning process so efficient that many developers are getting extremely cautious about sharing their early work too widely.

自电子游戏产业诞生之初，其发展就建立在开发者们相互模仿竞争对手游戏的基础上，尽管这些模仿在原创性和平台监管力度上各不相同。然而，如今人工智能编程工具的出现，使得这种克隆过程变得极其高效，以至于许多开发者在分享早期作品时变得格外谨慎。

Developer Alliance Arts highlighted this trend over the weekend, delaying the launch of a planned public demo for its demon-themed Russian Roulette drinking game Drunken Goddess Reflux, which had been set to go live with today’s launch of Steam Next Fest. In a post on social media Friday evening, the Alliance Arts team wrote that, in addition to concerns about managing streaming restrictions, “we’re concerned that the demo’s content could be used to quickly imitate or replicate the game’s presentation and gameplay with AI or other tools and that such works could be released before our launch.”

上周末，开发商 Alliance Arts 凸显了这一趋势，他们推迟了其恶魔主题俄罗斯轮盘赌酒类游戏《Drunken Goddess Reflux》的公开试玩版发布，该试玩版原定于今天随 Steam 新品节一同上线。Alliance Arts 团队在周五晚间的社交媒体帖文中写道，除了对管理流媒体限制的担忧外，“我们还担心试玩版的内容会被利用，通过人工智能或其他工具快速模仿或复制游戏的表现形式和玩法，并可能在我们的正式发布之前就抢先推出这些作品。”

Instead, the developer now plans to share the demo only in “closed sessions” with those who agree to rules regarding posting and streaming gameplay. Alliance Arts isn’t alone in taking a more defensive stance toward sharing ideas. Papers, Please developer Lucas Pope said on an April podcast that, in general, “you don’t really talk about stuff when you’re working on it because I don’t know it’s going to get slurped up by AI or people are going to copy it or something else like that… I just didn’t feel as comfortable talking about the stuff I was working on again.”

因此，该开发商现在计划仅在“封闭会议”中分享试玩版，且参与者必须同意有关发布和直播游戏玩法的规则。采取这种更具防御性的想法分享态度的并非只有 Alliance Arts 一家。《请出示证件》（Papers, Please）的开发者 Lucas Pope 在四月份的一档播客中表示，总的来说，“当你正在开发某样东西时，你真的不会去谈论它，因为我不知道它是否会被人工智能吞噬，或者被别人抄袭之类的……我只是觉得不再那么自在地谈论我正在做的事情了。”

Whose game is it, anyway? Concerns about ideas getting “slurped by AI” have been more than theoretical for a number of indie developers in recent months. In March, developer Freya Holmér attracted some viral social media attention after sharing a video of a prototype of a Tetris-style game played on a central rotating pivot point. Days later, Holmér was confronted with a number of vibe-coded copies that made the basic concept widely playable before Holmér could release her own version.

这到底是谁的游戏？近几个月来，对于许多独立开发者而言，关于创意被“人工智能吞噬”的担忧已不仅仅是理论上的。今年三月，开发者 Freya Holmér 在分享了一段基于中心旋转支点的俄罗斯方块类游戏原型视频后，在社交媒体上引发了病毒式关注。几天后，Holmér 便发现出现了许多风格相似的仿制品，这些仿制品在 Holmér 发布自己的版本之前，就已经让这一基本概念变得广为人知且可供游玩。

“Y’know it kinda disincentivizes me from sharing progress when there are slop ghouls around every corner, AI or otherwise,” Holmér wrote in response to the spread of those preemptive clones. “Luckily these people are incapable of original thought and don’t know how to elevate this concept beyond what they’ve already seen.”

“你知道，当到处都是那些粗制滥造的‘食尸鬼’——无论是人工智能还是其他什么——时，这确实让我失去了分享开发进度的动力，”Holmér 在回应这些抢先克隆作品的传播时写道。“幸运的是，这些人缺乏原创思维，也不知道如何将这一概念提升到他们所见之外的水平。”

McPixel developer Sos Sosowski has been documenting numerous examples of fellow indie devs complaining of AI-generated clones making wholesale copies of their efforts. Sosowski says the situation puts indie developers in a hopeless bind when trying to promote their work: “Don’t share your game—no sales. Share your game—gets stolen,” he wrote. “How do you even survive as an indie in the current landscape? This is insane.”

《McPixel》的开发者 Sos Sosowski 一直在记录大量独立开发者同行的投诉案例，他们抱怨人工智能生成的克隆作品正在大规模抄袭他们的心血。Sosowski 表示，这种情况让独立开发者在推广作品时陷入了绝望的困境：“不分享游戏，就没有销量；分享了游戏，就会被偷走，”他写道。“在当前的形势下，作为一名独立开发者该如何生存？这太疯狂了。”

Charlie Greenman, who posted one of those AI-powered clones of Holmér’s rotational Tetris game earlier this year, told 404 Media that he didn’t see anything wrong with what he did. “I feel like I had this brand new creation,” Greenman said. “When it gets to that point, is one song copying another? Is one game copying another? Whoever created Blox, Jenga, is that a copy of Tetris?”

今年早些时候发布了 Holmér 旋转俄罗斯方块游戏的人工智能克隆版之一的 Charlie Greenman 告诉 404 Media，他认为自己的行为没有任何问题。“我觉得我拥有了一个全新的创作，”Greenman 说。“当达到那种程度时，一首歌是在抄袭另一首歌吗？一个游戏是在抄袭另一个游戏吗？无论谁创造了 Blox 或积木叠叠乐（Jenga），那算是俄罗斯方块的抄袭吗？”

Some think that added complexity and originality is the best true protection from blatant clones in this kind of environment. “If AI can copy your game overnight, it wasn’t a real game. It was just a quick cash grab built on a single mechanic, with no soul or vision,” Howltide Games’ Ivan Lago wrote on social media. “AI isn’t cloning actual games. It’s just making cheap knockoffs of stuff that was already an asset flip to begin with.”

有些人认为，在这种环境下，增加复杂性和原创性是抵御公然抄袭的最好保护。“如果人工智能能在一夜之间复制你的游戏，那它就不是真正的游戏。它只是建立在单一机制上的快速敛财工具，没有灵魂，也没有愿景，”Howltide Games 的 Ivan Lago 在社交媒体上写道。“人工智能并没有在克隆真正的游戏。它只是在制造那些本身就是资产堆砌的廉价仿制品。”

But even if your game idea is cloned by AI slop merchants, that doesn’t mean you can’t build out the better version you always pictured. “In the very beginning, that first week, just every day there was a new AI clone [of the rotational Tetris prototype]. I was like, OK, well fuck me, I guess,” Holmér told 404 Media this summer. “But there’s way less engagement [now], and I feel more in the clear to take my time to actually make something right, something good I can be proud of, and not just get it out there as soon as possible.”

但即使你的游戏创意被人工智能垃圾制造者克隆了，也不意味着你不能打造出你一直设想的更好版本。“在最初的那一周，每天都有新的（旋转俄罗斯方块原型的）人工智能克隆版出现。我当时想，好吧，去他的，”Holmér 今年夏天告诉 404 Media。“但（现在）关注度已经少多了，我觉得自己可以更从容地花时间去真正做点正确的事情，做点让我引以为傲的好东西，而不是仅仅为了尽快发布而草草了事。”