When you say "make a game" it will be as simple as writing out for the AI what you want, describing the backstory, etc. It will just be prompt engineering. The AI will do all of the coding in the future.

It will be a much more advanced version of generative AI for pictures. The AI will have a really good idea of most of the genres and will probably be superhuman at playing all of the top games so it will understand the gameplay mechanics of all the popular titles.

For anything derivative the AI won't even need much human input. "Make a game that combines the gameplay of game X with a similar backstory of game Z but don't use any of the same names or violate copyright and make it more addictive."

The publishers will spit these types of games out non-stop, which will probably make truly unique and creative games more popular.

That means anyone with some level of creativity will be able to make a game lowering the barrier to entry to almost anyone. That doesn't mean that anyone will be able to make a good game, but the signal to noise ratio will change.

Just like with YouTube there will be a lot of noise. YouTube has millions and millions of videos that nobody wants to watch, but someone took the time to create the videos and post them.

My guess is there will be mountains and mountains of very bad games. And a very small subset of good to very good games. Eventually there will be a rating mechanism for games to become popular (similar to reddit comments and posts).

But it will be extremely difficult to make a buck at it. Unless you're super talented, but instead of having a small number of competitors you'll have an extremely high number. The cream will still rise to the top, but I think a lot of people who might otherwise make pretty good games will be turned away by the hassle of having to make a bunch of good ones before anyone notices.

People assume that it's simply a matter of talent. Plenty of extremely talented people won't have the patience of dealing with an avalanche of crap they have to wade through to get to the top. That will be a tiny subset of really talented and persistent people who probably would make games for their own entertainment regardless. This is likely true of a lot of the top writers who sit down and write regardless because that is something that is cathartic for them and not simply about making a living at it.