Libraries Launch Avoiding AI Workshops — Why Are Game Developers Anxious?

While the global game industry races to embrace AI, a countercurrent is stirring in public libraries. Recently, the New York Public Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, and other US institutions have rolled out a workshop series called Avoiding AI, designed to teach creators how to work in game development, digital art, and writing entirely without AI tools. The phenomenon has sparked wide discussion among game developers: is AI a liberating productivity tool, or a poison that kills originality?

The workshop curriculum is surprisingly hardcore. In the Zero-AI Level Design class at LA's Central Library, for example, the instructor requires students to use Handmade Hero-style hand-written code with a bare-bones build of the Godot engine to construct game scenes. Participants are barred from any AI-based assistance—GitHub Copilot's code completion, Unity Muse's texture generation, even ChatGPT for dialogue design. The organizers insist this isn't anti-technology; it's about 'reclaiming creative agency.'

This anxiety isn't unfounded. In early 2024, Epic Games announced full AI facial capture integration in its MetaHuman Animator tool, claiming it cuts animation production time by 80%. Ubisoft's Ghostwriter AI has already generated more than 500,000 lines of NPC dialogue for the Assassin's Creed series. And just last week, Microsoft unveiled a beta of its Xbox AI assistant, Copilot for Gaming, which analyzes player behavior in real time and adjusts difficulty. The speed of AI's encroachment is leaving many indie developers breathless—they fear they can't compete, and that game design is drifting toward homogenization.

The popularity of the Avoiding AI workshops coincides with a deeper industry debate. In early March, celebrated game designer Jonathan Blow publicly attacked AI-generated content for its 'lack of soul' at GDC 2024, showing level topology maps from his new game The Witness 2, built entirely by hand. Around the same time, Riot Games announced it was bringing AI-assisted color schemes into League of Legends skin design, calling them 'a boost to team efficiency.' The two approaches could hardly be more different.

For players, this tug-of-war directly shapes the experience. AI-assisted games often fall short on differentiation—Starfield's NPC dialogue options, for instance, were found to contain large amounts of repeated phrasing. Studios that refuse AI entirely, meanwhile, face marathon development cycles and budget overruns. Black Myth: Wukong's art team spent four years hand-painting more than 200 yokai concept illustrations; the results were stunning, but development costs hit $300 million.

Looking ahead, the anti-AI current embodied by the library workshops could give rise to a new market niche. Some small and mid-sized studios are exploring a 'limited AI' strategy: using AI in behind-the-scenes work like procedural generation and physics simulation while keeping narrative and art human-made. The developers of the indie game Dome Keeper, for example, admit using AI to optimize their ore generation algorithm, but all the pixel art is hand-drawn. This middle path may become the industry's new consensus.

It's worth noting how symbolic the public library's role is at this moment. As guardians of information equality, they are teaching creators how to make conscious choices about technology. As the head of the New York Public Library's digital literacy program put it: 'We're not trying to ban AI—we want every creator to have the right to say no.' At a time of AI mania, that voice feels especially precious.