Is Resistance Futile?: Early Career Game Developers, Generative AI, and Ethical Skepticism

This paper presents a study that examines developer perceptions and usage of generative AI (GAI) in a summer professional development program for game development interns focused on mobile game design. GAI applications are in common usage worldwide, yet the impacts of this technology in game development remain relatively underexplored. Through a qualitative study using ethnographic interviews and participatory observation, this paper explores how GAI impacted the workflows, creative processes, and professional identities of early career game developers. We present a case of GAI integration that was not a straightforward adoption. Focusing on the interns’ resistance, negotiation, and reimagining, we show that the interns were actively developing a new professional culture both with and against generative AI. For the interns, their ethical commitments to fellow game developers and the future of their profession were as important as their practical concerns about usability, utility, and efficacy of GAI tools.