A full game made from AI without an engine. Tim Sweeney is not amused.
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No. I don't consider those to actually count as "games". There's no gameplay loop. Those are stories.
I also disagree that AI can generate good stories. I think all that it can do is craft the same story, because it has no capacity for creativity, just association.
Art is inherently a human expression. Without humans, it can not be art.
I would counter that they absolutely do have a gameplay loop. It's incredibly simple, but it's definitely there.
Read text
Make choice
See 1
That doesn't qualify as gameplay, it's a choose your own adventure story. There's no unique experience or random chance based on your interaction. I've watched and read movies and books that do precisely the same. There's no gameplay to loop.
Making choices is a core gameplay mechanic, though. I'm not huge into visual novels, but I have to imagine that at least some have or might have, say, RNG based skill checks or the like. Finally, I would absolutely consider Choose Your Own Adventure as a game. (Not a video game, of course, but still.) The Wiki article even calls it a "gamebook" in the opening paragraph.
It's a game in only in that the only thing that makes it a game is simply choosing which text to read in what order. There is no interactivity in that, and there is no rule-set.
Normally not, but I have played some that in fact do have such. From things that have pretty complex detail differences depending on earlier choices to having different random events on different playthroughs.
The problem there is that the barrier for creation is so low that the specific market is flooded with low effort slop meant for coomers to a point where its impossible to even find the quality.
I think I know what you're talking about with some sorts of dating sims and the like, and I wouldn't call it purely a visual novel at that point, and it would in fact be a story-game.
I'd rather we sort through the slop and see the best rise to the top, rather than wait for corporate gatekeepers to tell us why Concord 5 is GOTY. To be honest, this is something we should be doing here.