After 23 years in the AAA industry, I’m finally stepping out of my comfort zone. While I’ve spent over two decades as a Principal Level Designer working in Unreal’s Blueprints and proprietary visual scripting like Frostbite, today marks the beginning of a brand-new journey: Learning Unity 6 and C# from scratch.

Every new technology in gaming starts with a "death of the industry" prediction. From the early days of Steam and digital ownership to the rise of Twitch and always-online consoles, we have a history of being wrong about the future. This post explores why the shift to AI is just the next step in the cycle and why the real value of a developer has always been about professional judgment, not just manual labor.

It feels strange to live in a world where one simple mistake locks you out of your work for 18 hours. Between the long wait times and the pressure of "token anxiety," it’s wild that we have world-changing tools right in front of us, yet we are actually afraid to use them for fear of running out of chances before the job is done.