And how many people actually want to play games to the standard of the one featured in the article?

The creator's family enjoyed it, and that's great, but it's not going to become an indie hit any time soon.

Anyone who wants their game to be enjoyed by a lot of people is going to need to put in a lot of effort. It's basic competition really.

Not denying that- what Im saying is the effort with AI is several magnitudes less than without AI, and skips the learning of any actual skills.

"Actual" skills?

Skills that, unfortunately, are likely to become obsolete very soon.

Taking the logical conclusion of your argument - we should also be teaching our kids how to fashion stone tools, because by moving straight to machined tools they are also missing out on "actual" skills...

Ironically, a kid that does fashion a tool out of stone will learn the skill of toolmaking deeper (in some respects, all other things being equal) than a kid that doesn't. A few years ago I created my own computer out of logic chips, this taught me a heck of a lot as well about how computer hardware and low level software works under the hood, more so than most of my software engineer peers, but I am under no illusions that doing this was required to be productive in the modern conception of this role, or society at large...

You can produce the same level of output with several magnitudes less effort, or you can produce output of several magnitudes greater quality with the same amount of effort. Or anywhere in between, or beyond.

And if you're putting in effort, you're going to end up learning skills, though they're certainly not the same as for doing everything by hand.

It takes effort, skill, and dedication to make something that's better than the flood of cheap stuff (slop) available out there. That's going to remain true with AI, it just plays out differently.