Letting Go of Control: Building a Game with My Kids and AI

When I suggested building a game with my kids, I imagined teaching them code. They had other plans. They cared about characters, stories, and wild feature ideas. Sitting next to me while I coded was boring.

So we changed the process.

Using AI tools like Junie, Codex, and Gemini, my kids became the directors. They described worlds and mechanics. AI generated roughly 90% of the code. I reviewed it, simplified it, and occasionally fixed what it broke.

In this talk, I’ll share what worked, what hallucinated, where AI failed to fix simple UI bugs, and how shipping imperfect code changed my mindset as a senior developer.

This is not a demo of AI tools. It’s a story about collaboration, simplicity, and how AI can turn imagination into working software in hours, not months.