Companion App (and AI tangent)

I did the whole "vibe coding" thing, in which I don't do any coding whatsoever and outsource it to AI, and developed a companion app for Mercenary Merlins.

My relationship with AI has continued to change and become more nuanced as it's carved out a place in my life.

For generative things like text and art, which includes this app, I've become more uncomfortable with using what it spits out. There's the ethical considerations, between how the training data was sourced, as well as just the idea of ownership in a world where some of the things doing the creating can't legally or philosophically claim ownership. Then there's just the ugly backlash that's become so binary that I don't relate to either side (although to be real, tech bros can get bent, I'll always wind up siding with the ones who are at least trying to protect vulnerable people, even if we disagree on the details in this particular instance).

But here we are, with me adding a thing completely created by AI to my game (which was completely created by me, well minus the stuff I stole from Maze Rats). 

So what does that mean? Why am I writing a big long post about a companion app to an unpopular game that nobody will see? Well, because I've had to really try to unpack my feelings on AI to make it vibe with my own personal ethics.

The way I use AI most often these days is as a brainstorming partner, a critic, and as emotional support when I'm feeling discouraged. But I also use it as a tool to mitigate the effects of my own struggles with ADHD. 

As much as I absolutely love this hobby, I've run into so many personal frustrations with feeling unable to absorb the rules to so many dense games that seem like they'd be amazing to play. I'm sure that's part of the appeal for some folks, feeling like it's a mountain for them to conquer, but that's unfortunately not my relationship with it. That was honestly part of the impetus to write such a simple game in the first place.

A big part of that struggle is the cognitive load of trying to manage all the different components and stats and everything else that goes along with playing a game. I've put away so many games in the middle of setting them up because I got so overwhelmed they it started causing me anxiety and I stopped having fun.

So anyway, maybe there's someone out there like me who would benefit from something like this for my dumb game. If you don't need it, you don't have to use it. But it's tools like this that allow me to engage with the hobby in the first place, and I think that's important.