A Potential Teammate?: Understanding How Indie Game Developers Approach Generative AI's Involvement in Their Small-Scale Creative Teamwork

This paper investigates how indie game developers in resource-constrained, creativity-centric small teams approach the potential of generative AI as a teammate in their collaborative workflows. Through 15 interviews with indie developers, our findings suggest that developers believe current AI systems still lack key elements of independence and interdependence that define a teammate in small indie teams. At the same time, they envision other constructive and desirable ways in which future AI could meaningfully support their teamwork, which highlight that AI should complement rather than directly participate in or imitate human creativity and collaborative dynamics. This work extends prior HCI research on human-AI teaming and collaborative creativity by shifting attention toward more socially nuanced and spontaneous creative teams beyond instrumental teams or individual creators. We also propose two new directions to rethink more nuanced ways to design future generative AI to better support indie game developers and other small creative teams alike.