alt Hacker News> Nobody can afford not to use it
The games market has a massive oversupply. It's not enough to just "make a game", you have to make a good one. That is to say, better than all the other things your audience could be playing. Cheaping out is literally not an option. You can cheap out in one area to spend more effort in another area, but you can't just say "this is cheaper therefore it will be the default" because the default isn't good enough. Most games fail
I don't agree that the cheaper option is less good. I can admit that ai often (but not always) writes code with more attention to detail than I do, and much faster. Diffusion by itself does not produce human tier graphics (usually), but in combination with llms and heuristics it can do some things better than humans. When wielded by a graphic artist who could do it by hand with mixed media much less digitally, the amount of top tier art that can be produced is increased. Less expensive art doesn't have to mean worse art, it can mean equally good art, just note of it, art everywhere.