We’re All Builders Now

Over the weekend, I spent about two hours building a small arena fighting game with the help of AI. The characters were members of my family. I called it Arabiat Arena.

This got my kids more excited than any AAA game could. They were in the game, along with their family. It was personal, and that made it special to them.

Two hours on a weekend, and I could make something like this for my kids. I still find that remarkable.

It got me thinking about how much we can now create for the people around us. Images, videos, and already games. Things we would have loved to make before, if we had known how or had the time to learn.

Arabiat Arena gameplay clip

Think about what happened when we got cameras in our phones. The first commercially available camera phone, Kyocera’s VP210, arrived in May 1999. Over the years that followed, taking pictures and filming everyday moments became something we barely thought twice about. Source

I have always associated Apple with this idea of giving ordinary people the tools to create. By 2001, its iMacs came with iMovie. You could take your own footage, edit it at home and make a film to share with your family. Source

We could all have a go at being photographers and filmmakers. Most of us would never win an award, but we could express ourselves and make something that mattered to someone.

Apple’s 2013 ad Misunderstood is one of my favourites. I have shown it to my students in many of my courses.

It follows a teenager who seems to spend the family gathering glued to his phone. Then he plays them the film he has been making of their time together. The phone has helped him create something for the people he loves. It captures so much of what I value about these tools. Source

A family movie can mean more to a grandmother than the most accomplished Hollywood production. She knows the faces. She recognises the voices. The small moments on screen belong to people she loves.

We understand this instinctively, yet we often forget it when discussing creative technology. We compare the amateur’s output with the professional’s, as though everything were competing for the same prize.

A birthday video can succeed completely with an audience of one.

AI extends that possibility. Imagine making a picture of your children as superheroes, then animating it into a short adventure. To them, seeing themselves in that world might be more exciting than another Marvel film. Their names, their faces and their personalities make the experience personal.

Now that possibility reaches into games. A family can become a cast of playable characters. An inside joke can become an ability. A familiar place can become an arena. We can begin to make entertainment out of the small details of our own lives.

There is something wonderfully strange about encountering a new creative possibility for the first time.

The Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat offers a reminder. You have probably heard that early audiences fled because they believed the train would burst through the screen. It is a memorable story, but historians have challenged it: contemporary evidence of that supposed panic has not been found. It should not be repeated as established fact. Source

Watching it now, I find myself trying to recover the novelty hidden inside something so familiar. A train arrives. People move across a platform. An everyday scene becomes something that can be replayed for people who were never there.

In time, making moving pictures became ordinary enough that we could record our children without thinking much about the technology involved. I wonder how quickly making a game for them will feel equally ordinary.

There is a limit to the comparison. A camera records what someone points it at; generative AI can produce much more of the work itself. Easier creation does not guarantee that creative livelihoods are safe. The continued existence of professional photography and filmmaking is no promise that everyone working in those fields escapes disruption.

But the professional market is only part of what creativity is for.

The family game I wanted was so particular to us that it was unlikely to exist unless I made it. Tools that bring that project within reach allow something new to enter our lives. Its value comes partly from the choices I make about the people I know.

I expect more people to begin making games this way. Some will discover a talent they want to develop seriously. Others will make one small game for their children and be happy with that. Both outcomes matter.

We often measure creative work through its reach, revenue or acclaim. Those measures tell us very little about a grandmother replaying a family film, or children recognising themselves on a character selection screen.

My weekend project already had people who cared about it.

I knew their names before I started building.