AI in development: why a football manager game took a year

An experienced developer built a football manager game with the help of AI. It took not an evening but an entire year, because of architecture, game mechanics, design, and assets. This is a story about why a complete product demands more than it seems.

AI-processed from Habr AI; edited by Hamidun News
AI in development: why a football manager game took a year
Source: Habr AI. Collage: Hamidun News.
Listen to article

AI tools can speed up development, but the build-it-over-a-weekend myth has fallen apart: an experienced developer spent an entire year creating a football manager game while making heavy use of AI.

How long does building a game with AI actually take?

In one experienced developer's experience, building a full-fledged football manager took an entire year, even with heavy use of AI tools, although the first month felt fast.

Why didn't AI cut development time?

AI code generation felt fast during the first month, but the developer still had to solve the critical architectural problems himself: choosing the tech stack, designing the database, and working out how to save game progress.

Key Questions Answered

How long does building a game with AI actually take?

In one experienced developer's experience, building a full-fledged football manager took an entire year, even with heavy use of AI tools, although the first month felt fast.

Why didn't AI cut development time?

AI code generation felt fast during the first month, but the developer still had to solve the critical architectural problems himself: choosing the tech stack, designing the database, and working out how to save game progress.

ZK
Zhemal Khamidun — CPO at Alpina Digital, product manager of AlpinaGPT. Building AI products since 2019. Hamidun News is a pet project that grew into a production aggregator with 6,000+ readers.
✦ Unified AI Workspace · Nomad

Test Frontier LLMs & Autonomous Agents in One Workspace

Run Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6, Gemini 3.1, and DeepSeek side-by-side in Nomad AI (nomadnet.ai) — unified model routing, deep research, and multimodal workflows under one subscription.

Try Nomad AI →Launch Nomad Agent
What do you think?
Loading comments…