> haven't seen it do something that isn't already possible using a "not-intelligent" solution

This is dismissing time and resources. I think things like this game maker project are extremely impressive, because it enables an individual to do in hours what it would take a team to do in months. Just '5 different cats' is impressive, because most game studios would just do one and repeat it, because their time is limited.

I don't know if this experiment will end up producing 'real' games, probably not by most people's definitions. But I can see it being used as an amazing toy by individuals, such as kids. Generating a custom game in hours, much like they can already do in months or years using other products like RPGMaker.

I've been using godot with chatgpt as a side project to see how much I can coax a game out of it, with minimal effort. Its a manual form of systems like this but definitely shows how generative tools enable independent devs or small teams to tighten their dev loops and rapid prototype ideas.

When you can rapid prototype ideas in a game search space, its more likely to get a high quality output, or at least games that hone in on fun more effectively than a AAA made with a waterfall model and a huge team with poor crosstalk abilitiy.

I've found this to be pretty amazing from the demos: https://stableprojectorz.com/

I think these gen ai will be quite useful in mass produced art, things like video games and animations (3d and 2d). A human creates an art direction with concept art and reference models and then feed into gen AI tools to output large volumes of assets. Assets are then touched up to remove AI weirdness, background assets getting less attention than character models for example.

It will be a massive productivity boost and will kill a lot of jobs.

Another example is 2d animation, 2d animation is usually done in "key frames" and "in-betweens". These two types of frames are often made by different companies (for western animation key frames are usually done in the core studios in the US and in-betweens farmed out to east asian studios). Gen AI will probably get really good at making these in-betweens quite soon and will kill all these east asian support studios.

Forget squarespace websites. AI is such a huge time saver for complex front ends. It doesn’t write the whole thing, but you can easily go from screenshot to code you are better off using as a starter than typing it all up yourself. And it’s way easier to make css or tailwind changes to modify components than thinking really hard.

>AI doesn't eliminate the complexity, it just hides it. At best it'll get you maybe 80% of where you want to go and you can get to the remaining 20% by hand. At worst, the complexity is so thoroughly hidden that addressing it isn't an option. It simply does not allow you to manually edit the outputs, or makes it unreasonably difficult to do so.

That's the thing about games. It's "easy" to make a website, it's very hard to make a not buggy, minimally compelling game. And it works with multiple medium to boot.

If an AI can get me 80% of the way to a good UI, or a decent asset, or a right sounding SFX, that's a huge boon to development. The big issue with these early adopters tend to be that they

1. lack the ability to finish that 20% of editing, because that 20% is still really dang hard.

2. aren't interested in finishing the 20% because that 80% will be enough of a cash grab for asset flip level studios. Hence how the reputation of tech becomes a grift rather than a boon.

3. can do it, but want to be first to market so they skimp out and get something out for financial reasons

These all work against what consumers want out of their game, but that's early tech for you.

You are comparing an apple to an apple pie. The “easy” website is going to be something that looks like static html. The “easy” game will look similarly low tech: maybe a platformer that looks like it was written for an atari. 3d modern games are not the only way to make games although thats been a popular way for some time.

I can clarify. an "easy" website can still do its job and get you traction, because the website design and architecture is not going to affect your product as long as you follow the simple rules. The website is not your primary product, it is an ad to your actual product.

There are a few outliers like Vampire Survivors, but for the most part a simple game will not penetrate this market, and it is the product you're selling. Unless you're going to try to be like that dev that makes a simple game every month, for years on end, you're probably won't succeed making "simple" games alone (even then, you can argue that the primary audience is not a traditional gamer by that point).

Uhm…, even you use something low-code, or even no-code tool, you still have to learn how to code (former) or learn how to use some kind of visual scripting tool (latter).

If you could simply type in plain English what are the mechanics you have in mind instead, then this new (simpler) way of creating game logic it may has the potential to unleash creativity from a broader audience.

It is like saying why would I need a photoshop brush if I can manually paint every single pixel canvas 1 by 1. Not the same thing imo.

Emphasis on "if you could simply type in English" (or insert native language here).

Sometimes the AI misinterprets what you want. Sometimes this is due to lack of sophistication on the model's part, but I think the bigger issue at hand are the shortcomings of natural language. Even when working with an intelligent human being, sometimes you have to communicate your thoughts/ideas through pictographic means.

It's something I've thought a lot about lately. No-code/low-code is about as old as GUIs themselves, yet it's never become the de-facto way of creating software. However, for everything else we do we use a GUI. No one creates illustrations on the computer programmatically (unless you're into generative art like me). You probably aren't doing your taxes in a terminal. You get the idea.

This is a segue into my other critique of prompting as a UI. A lot of UX people think it is the ultimate UI, and natural language the premier way of communicating jobs to be done. I disagree. I think symbols and diagrams communicate more with less. Concerning language, I think that for whatever reason programming languages are the most natural way (that we've currently found) to communicate intent in a programmatic context, markup languages are the most natural way to communicate intent in a layout context, and that's the reason why despite 50+ years of GUI innovation programmers still use text-editors. The old guard has all aged out of the profession, the new guard still uses text-editors.

So that all being said, I think the most incredible AI demo I've seen so far is the tldraw stuff done by Steve Ruiz, namely Make Real, and that's because you're communicating with the AI in a pictographic / symbolic context, and because it's a whiteboard, there's no limit to the symbols at your disposal to communicate your intent. The limit is AI's ability to interpret what those symbols mean.

If the AI doesn't get the mechanics right, and you have subtle game-breaking bugs that make it impossible to complete, you will never be able to fix it.

> you will never be able to fix it.

I don't know about the article's studio specifically, but regarding AI game engines, I'm mostly worried you won't be able to make engine edits, or the engine will only be able to make an extremely narrow subset of games, or exiting the WYSIWYG/SaaS means starting over from scratch. If the engine targets a specific genre, it could cause a flood of low effort garbage. Some genres are already flooded because the easier game engines have tutorials and asset packs for them.

AI can create bugs, sure, as well as humans do. With time, I am more inclined to think it will be easier to ask an AI to fix them for us rather than the other way around.

There is a non-intuitive feature of current LLMs, and that is, they are capable of refining over and over their own previous outcome. You can ask to revisit it, to improve it, check it, etc etc. use this to fix its own bugs.

These days any time I ask an AI to fix something, it starts over from scratch and some random detail falls off the back of the prompt truck.

Precisely specifying desired functionality of software in ‘plain English’ is hard. Especially if you can’t provide diagrams, sketches, mocked-up screen layouts, etc.

Also, the low-code/no-code tools allow precise editing. With current prompt-based AI party tricks, a tiny change to the prompt can produce completely different output.

Something that I never see addressed for this: So, let's just grant that someday, the tech will be mature enough that this is possible, and let's even say it goes beyond videogames to movies, to visual art, to graphic design, to writing, etc. Let's say that AI gets to a place where any joe blow can put in a prompt, and get a competent, and even let's be generous and say good product out of it. A solid 8/10.

So... who the hell is going to buy it? Because videogames as an industry is already entirely saturated with products that range a whole spectrum from utter dogshit to amazing works of technical expertise, writing, design, etc. There are over 70,000 games on Steam alone now, with 9,000 added in the last 9 months. If this tech actually got to this place, there will be exponentially more games, because all you have to do is tell an AI what you want to play.

And you can take that further: Movies are also highly saturated as an industry, especially as larger studios move ever further into less making "movies" or "series" and just making "content" endlessly remixing their intellectual properties. So now, all of those companies (and all the people who like their stuff) can now just make their own Iron Man movie? Their own Wandavision? Just endlessly making and remaking and remaking, as though tons of people aren't already sick to death of all the television programs and movies that are being made?

And again, you can just keep extending this to any media: print, music, art... we have more of everything now than we ever have before and the goal of companies like Adobe, like OpenAI, etc. is to put even more powerful creative tools into even more hands, broadening the group of people who can create stuff but like... even if you take it as granted that this can be done...

Who the hell is watching all of this stuff? Who is playing all of these games? And why in the world would you pay to watch someone else's AI movie when you can pay to generate your own with whatever you want in it? Why would you ever buy a game off Steam again if you can just ask your game making AI to make you the exact game you want, even just copying the damn description out of steam?

All I see this doing is potentially killing off dozens of creative industries and funneling shit tons of creative control and platform-style power to a handful of massive corporations, running warehouses full of fucking graphics cards, to generate the same games, the same movies, the same music, over, and over, and over, to suit everyone's personal taste, and absolutely destroying entire rainforest's worth of electricity to accomplish it. And like... why do we want that?

So... I think maybe the same could have been said about writing once upon a time. "What if everyone could write, we'd flood the market with poorly written books!". Well we went from no one being able to write to almost everyone being able to. But just because everyone can technically write, it doesn't mean that everyone is a _writer_.

I believe that the same goes for AI tools for games. Yes, more people will technically be able to produce games. But I think that will shift the focus; it won't be enough with an impressive tech demo in the future, instead you have to connect to the human side of people when you build games.

We now see it as a natural thing that everyone can read and write. We don't want to go back to a time where it was only for a select few elites. If we turn things around and imagine that the technology exists that makes it possible for anyone to build games; then should we keep that from them? In that world, why would we want to gate keep game creation to only people that have time and money to go to a game school or equivalent? You might think "well everyone can learn on their free time", but that's not necessarily true.

I think we will see more human, and more personal experiences that touch us deeper, because they no longer can just be about the technology (since the technology will be commoditized). That's what I'm personally excited about and why I think it makes sense to work on this.

I do agree thought that it can feel overwhelming to look at all this in aggregate. There are already hundreds of thousands of games, why do we need more? But maybe looking at things in aggregate is not the right way to look at it. There have been countless conversations between people throughout history. Does that mean that a conversation is meaningless? I don't think so, and I think (some types of) games will move into this space too; something more personal, something we don't count in aggregate, something that is between maybe smaller groups of people, but more meaningful to those groups of people. At least that's something I'd be excited to see.

You come across as being extremely condescending. And I’m sure you make some good points, but I can’t find them behind the tone. It’s a shame because again, I’m sure you make good points.

On the internet, no one hears you being subtle. (Torvalds)

I'll add my own view: when you watch a movie, read a book, listen to a song, play a game... you CONNECT with the mind of the person who made it. When there is no mind, or the source is a dead, statistical amalgamation of countless fragments of other minds, there is nothing you'll want to connect to, nothing you'll want to squander precious hours of your life on.

And while you may be curious to see, once maybe, a movie such an imaginary AGI-LLM has created from your prompt, no one else will have the slightest interest in seeing it. And vice versa. Which means there would be absolutely NO MONEY in that market. There would be no market.

>Why would you ever buy a game off Steam again if you can just ask your game making AI to make you the exact game you want, even just copying the damn description out of steam?

If we're assuming AGI levels of development, AAA scope, and very little compile time: cost. If it costs $20/month (VERY optimistic) to use an AI program to make your stuff, and some dude on Fiverr offers to pay $2 to make your game for you, the better deal is to "hire a dev".

Also should never underestimate the power of community and brands. Even if you can make your own Ironman, people will still want to see and talk with each other about the Ironman movie. That's why making a competent knockoff that may in fact improve on the original movie/game will still sell nowhere near as well. Companies pay a lot of advertising to make that the case.

Making a game is not big problem. Making it FUN is. Theres no formula for this. Lets say AI can make a game from prompt just like that - I dont know if its going to be fun to play.

If AI works well enough that just a vague prompt leads it to spit out a professional, compelling and creative game with assets, VO, music, coherent level and production design, and everything else that goes into successful modern games... companies are going to own that and keep that on lockdown, because it's essentially a free money machine.

You won't have a "game making AI" that isn't already owned by big media companies, crippled and handicapped, and expensive as hell. You won't legally be allowed to compete against them. ChatGPT is never going to do that. That isn't how capitalism works.

Nah, the standard will just change.

A "AAA game" will be the ones that have that extra it whether that's something resulting from human curation (the person firing off prompts who knows how to tune them and knows what other people want) or style (the person assembling things to be more cohesive) or editing (the person making sure the AI puts out an absolutely amazing story instead of a meh one) or whatever.

Basically, look at what a AAA game was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago compared to today, and then extrapolate the other direction. ;) The person who wanted games with the quality of 30 years ago has countless options, yet people still pay for the ones they think are the creme of the crop.

as a nitpick, you can argue there was no "AAA title" in 1994. Games like MGS2, FF7, and RE2 in '97/'98 is where we commonly consider to be the beginning of the moniker for "AAA".

But yeah, GTA 3 was over 20 years ago. A bit sad that it's still non-trivial to make a game that scope as one person, mostly because 480p assets and fixed lighting pipelines won't cut it anymore (regardless of scope).

Not something like 1994's Wing Commander or other PC games with Hollywood actors and cutscenes?

I'm not super invested in the nomenclature but it's odd to me that those are all Playstation games.

I mean, I don't disagree in the slightest on any point! I'm just curious why anyone who isn't working in the C-suite of any large media company wants that product to exist!

I'm not even certain that product can exist, at least not anytime soon. But AI is in a hype cycle right now so everyone wants to jump on the gravy train.

Of course a lot of people don't want it. A lot of artists, developers and creative people want nothing to do with it, for obvious reasons. I don't want it. I think AI-driven tools only serve to commoditize and diminish human creativity. I've never seen anything generated by AI that I find interesting beyond the sense of superficial aesthetic or vibe. But I'd never prefer it over something made by a human being.

But no one cares what the muggles think, and criticizing AI right now gets you denounced as a crank in much the same way as being an anti-vaxxer or flat-earther. There's nothing to be done but hope the fever breaks before too much damage is done to the world.