Yesterday, Google announced Project Genie, a new generative AI tool that can apparently create entire games from just prompts. It leverages the Genie 3 and Gemini models to generate a 60-second interactive world rather than a fully playable one. Despite this, many investors were scared out of their wits, imagining this as the future of game development, resulting in a massive stock sell-off that has sent the share prices of various video game companies plummeting.
The firms affected by this include Rockstar owner Take-Two Interactive, developer/distributors like CD Projekt Red and Nintendo, along with even Roblox — that one actually makes sense. Most of the games you find on the platform, including the infamous “Steal a Brainrot,” are not too far from AI slop, so it’s poetic that the product of a neural network is what hurt its stock.
Unity’s share price fell the most at 20%, since it’s a popular game engine. Generally speaking, that’s how most games operate: they use a software framework, such as Unity or Unreal Engine, which provides basic functionality like physics, rendering, input, and sound. Studios then build their vision on top of these, and some developers even have their own custom in-house solutions, such as Rockstar’s RAGE or Guerrilla’s Decima.
Roughly an average 10% drop in major gaming stocks, because a plagiarism machine can produce one minute of 720p, 24fps ‘gameplay’ at an absolutely astounding compute cost.
These people are all fucking idiots.
Therr is no universe where this even makes sense under a ‘a games are streamed’ paradigm.
This is like 100x to 100,000x the cost in hardware and energy, to produce a minute.
Do these fucking idiots think a game can just be wholly reinstantiated every single minute?
It actually would have made more sense to fine tune an LLM to interface with an API layer for Unity or something, to just… you know, produce an actual game?
Call that the uh, the processed training data/output condensed into a distilled an efficient piece of software, the ‘local’ model, if these clowns understand nothing but jargon.
I truly cannot comprehend the mind numbing level of stupidity on display here.
If that much investor money can be swayed by this utterly pitiful demonstration, then all these game stocks deserve to go to near 0, because clearly the people in charge (the investors) understand literally nothing about video games.
This is utterly asinine.
What happens if/when all of the plagiarised games start suing Google for IP infringement?
How is everyone involved at every step of this so utterly mentally impaired?
Good. Time to buy.
They are literally Rader in split fiction. They think they own creativity. I hate these scum.
ROFL Investors are like distracted toddlers that are so easy to sway. This is so stupid, I can’t wait for the bubble to pop and we can return to some semblance of normalcy.
Why does Google keep trying to make AI, when they’re soooo bad at it, and pretty much everything else they do?
All the executives invested heavily in AI because they’re easily wowed by things that look impressive but have no substance so they thought it was the next Big Thing. They want it to pay off so they can cash out and get rich(er).
I see a couple of major practical reasons why game (engine) devs are under no threat from this even if it gets better in the future:
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Scale. Like all things AI, this is not going to scale well. This doesn’t generate code, 3D models and textures, both making games and playing them requires running the model. So if you want a game to have a persistent environment where the world behind you doesn’t get regenerated into something different after taking 8 steps, the context window is going to get real large real fast. And unlike programmed games, you can’t make choices about what’s worth remembering and what isn’t, what can be kept on persistent storage and is only loaded when it becomes relevant etc., because it’s all one big, opaque blob of context, generated by a black box; you either have it remember everything or it becomes amnesiac in a way that makes it useless. Memory availability also isn’t increasing at a rate where this becomes a non-issue any time soon.
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Control. Manipulating the world though a text prompt gives a lot of control, but it’s also very course. It’s easy enough to tell it that you want a character that can run and jump, but how fast does it run? Does it accelerate and decelerate or start and stop instantly? Does it jump in a fixed arc or based on the running speed and duration of the jump button being pressed? How far and how high? You’re going to run in the limits both of what you can convey and what the language model will understand pretty quickly. And even when you can get it to do exactly what you want, it would have been faster and more practical to manipulate values directly or use a gizmo place things. But there’s no way to extract and manipulate those values, because again: big, opaque blob of context.
Wish I could upvote your comment more than once. Thank you for the injection of clarity.
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The pigs oink and squeal for more slop, and the market trembles.
Welcome to the stock market: where the money’s made up and the rules don’t matter!
Always has been.
Remember when Elon had to buy Twitter?
Prior to that, he was manipulating the market through Twitter causing a lot of uncertainty.
Always has been.
Not always. It has been for longer than we’ve been alive, but stock originated as a way to fund merchant voyages - you paid a share of the costs and got a share of the proceeds (in merchandise or in the sale value of that merchandise) when the ship came in.
Literally the origin of the phrase “your ship has come in”.
Then people started speculating over the future value of and trading those shares while the ship was still at sea, then the concept got generalized beyond merchant voyages, etc and here we are where it’s more like the art market where things are worth whatever someone will pay and that value isn’t necessarily tied to anything concrete.
So people are idiots. Got it.
I dunno man working on a video game as a side hobby they’re the worst things I’d use for gen ai. There’s too many things from pathing to physics and collision that require human input to make work.
Anytime I’ve tried it’s given some absolute shit results.
People spend 2 hours making an llm spit out some shit thats mediocre instead of spending that time learning. And they consider it a win.
I do admit all this shit has made me want give up on music or ever learning programming becauze every other person will just prompt it and be better than me in the short term. sigh. depressing times.
If this is widely adopted, I have enough emulators and classic PC games to never buy another game in my life and still be entertained the whole time. Good luck, corpo dipshits.
I just bought Stardew Valley. Should I feel bad now?
Literally millions (billions?) of amazing games made before 2018 are waiting to be played! I wonder if future gamers will shun the 2020 era of gaming like the disco era
This will never be widely accepted in the gaming space because it’s not a game. The model only generates an interactive world, not a game world. It’s effectively a glorified AI prompted showroom. It’s useless as a development tool because nothing it generates is usable in the traditional development process which means the model would have to create the whole game but the model is incapable of understanding what a game is.
So it’s like the Meta-verse, but somehow even worse.
So… it’s as good as Starfield then but without load screens?
Even better, it’s Starfield but your character is moving in 4D space and things pop in and out of existence depending on your position in the 4D space. And of course no loading screens.
Yeah this is more investors being stupid. Hell this would be impact VFX and Architects but the logic they are using. The whole thing is a cool demo but little real world application like like with most genAI.
That’s all it does so far.
But I doubt AI games will succeed, people are always going to want the human touch when it comes to art.
That’s all it does so far.
Isn’t that the AI hype in a nutshell? “It’s all it does right now but if you add insert hopes and dreams it’s going to revolutionize X”.
I mean, human touch will play a role but I think the tech overall just nowhere near where it should be to make games. It would actually need to understand what it is doing because there needs to be some intentionality there. Something as simple as a counter going up when you kill an enemy, but I think even that goes beyond what current models are even remotely capable. They would be capable of imitating a counter for some timeframe but to actually keep track of it over a long gaming session? I have my doubts.
They would be capable of imitating a counter for some timeframe but to actually keep track of it over a long gaming session?
The article was little light on the details, but if the whole game is run on ai thats what is going to happen. But if AI is creating real code and the game it creates has real files that are saved on the computer, things like point counters are not anymore tied by the limits of AI’s memory.
But i just dont see how AI in its current state could make large cohesive projects.
Also there is no such thing as artificial intellect. AI is just nice marketing word for something that tries to mimic what real AI would be.
It’s not generating any code. You don’t even get a game out of the model, you only get a video of what you played. It’s like an AI video generator except you have control over the camera and character.
So its a glorified a procedural generator that does not save anything it makes?
What the fuck. Its like saying game devs are being replaced because people see dreams when they sleep.
Given that what it “does so far” already required the theft of the sum total of human creativity available online and the sacrifice of the survivability of humanity due to climate change, kinda seems like there isn’t much else to wring out of this.
There will be a demand but I wouldn’t bet on that demand being the most popular.
As a dedicated fan of walking simulators I can already see the amount of shovelware we need to dig through to find the good stuff multiplying by orders of magnitude.
It’s been a year since I played INFRA and I’ve thought about it without fail at least once a week and it damn well isn’t because they haphazardly made boring environments.
Well that’s something I didn’t think about before. How would you even release an AI game? It’s just a prompt and the rest is a black box.
The companies that market machine learning tools to investors and the masses have not been set up by people who believe art has value. Everything is content, and content exists to be aggregated alongside advertisements or displayed for a fee.
I genuinely hate that actual artists can’t use a lot of pretty neat novel digital levers to make stuff. Because it’s synonymous with garbage. The ability to leap across the uncanny valley has lost all novelty and is downright banal now.
But the answer to your question is the same as every desperate attempt at getting a “good” use case for slop generators. It’s for cranking out low effort trash.
It’s good enough for shovelware alredy.
Examples? This article describes “a 60-second interactive world”. How can this even compete with trash tier roblox games?
Its a step in that direction though
There were also steps in the NFT games direction. Steps in some direction doesn’t mean those steps will lead to somewhere.
Very different things.
Because one is completely useless and the other is great at making the illusion of not being completely useless?
I’ll still buy from principled indie devs any day any year. There may be more old games than anyone could play in a single lifetime but let’s be real most aren’t good.
This. My back log of physical DS and 3ds games is extensive and grows a little every time I remember I have the eBay app on my phone. Sorry wallet.
3ds and DS cartridges both have a limited lifespan and are likely to experience save failure as the years pile on - have you considered hacking your 3ds and getting a flashcart for DS games?
(You also won’t be giving money to scalpers on ebay)
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Selling games from 10-20 years ago isn’t scalping.
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I have 15 Nintendo handhelds on my last count. 2 of the 3ds are modded.
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I have a pretty sizable collection and I’ve not had a game die on me yet, aside from save batteries that I’m capable of changing. I know the games can eventually die, I know it’s on the horizon, but they all still work for now, and I think even after they die I’ll enjoy the memories that the physical media provided me.
- Retro games can totally on the market for completely unreasonable prices, look at any of the NDS pokemon games for a quick point of reference - especially insulting compared to the ease of using a flashcart.
- Damn, you’re one of those hardcore collectors. I’m just the kind of person that bought a 3ds for the unique hardware layout and emulate the rest of Nintendo’s handhelds on my Steam Deck, but different strokes I guess.
- The 3DS carts I believe are the most prone to failure - most of what I read comes from the Animal Crossing and Pokemon communities (probably due to their dedicated fanbases), so that’d be the primary concern. Considering you can regularly rip your carts using a modded 3DS, staying ahead of it would probably be wise (I’m not hatin’ on the collection, but even diehard physical media collectors should rip their copies for safety).
Yeah man, the prices are unfortunate, but supply and demand is definitely a thing. Items are only worth what people are willing to pay, and I’m fortunate to be able to justify some of my expendable income on growing my collection here and there.
If you really want your head to hurt, look up some of those really popular games sealed and WATA/PSA graded. Old graded consoles still sealed can sell for 6 digits.
I definitely have several of my favorites ripped for a rainy day. It’s definitely not a hobby for everyone. I have more modern emulation machines that can easily run all of my backups, but there’s really no replacement for the real games on real hardware. Just like some people are audiophile vinyl collectors who thumb their nose at Spotify and a pair of ear buds.
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The problem with this, and most other “ai products” isn’t just that they are immortal attacks in human labor and and intellectual property, they also simply don’t work.
Same. I have spent years building my game libraries just for stupid shit like this.
You just described why it won’t be widely adopted.
I also have probably emulators for approx. 90 consoles / systems and have full set of games for most… Even if no game is produced anymore, we can buy current gen PC and console games, including Switch and Steam. In addition to emulation of older systems. And then there is the modding scene… with never ending content for out beloved games, even remasters from fans.
If the gaming industry goes wild, then I have no fear of missing out. And there are enough games (even to buy) that will serve me for the rest of my life.
We play games because they’re stories and challenges put forth by other humans that look interesting.
Even if a slop machine put together a cohesive game involving metaphor and emotions, it’s still not human and it still won’t be played and enjoyed. It would ring hollow, just like AI sound files that try to approximate human music.
Nah, I am 100% that Maga buffoons would play an ai generated concentration camp simulator and pay $20 for it too.
Also do remember that some people also spent thousands on NFTs.Yeah, you’re right, even when people have hit rock bottom, they’ll just get a more powerful subterranean speed-tunneller.
Genie is pretty cool as it stands from a technical standpoint, but… 1 minute of some really, really bottom tier walking simulator gameplay is not going to destroy the gaming market.
Investors are so easily manipulated.
Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that Google (and AI research like this) pumps out a lot of work like this that shows amazing new advances. However, that doesn’t mean any of this is near ready.
Here is a 2018 paper about using world models (a concept where a model is developing an understanding of a “world”) that used it to create an interactive Doom AI model - https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10122 just to show that this stuff has been in the works for a long time.
It’s an initial proof-of-concept. It’ll be developed into more complex games eventually, that’s not really an issue for it
The main issue is that it’s just a facade. It completely lacks the foundation required for a game. It’s a world without hard rules, which is a terrible experience for any user. The game isn’t determining cause and effect from actions. It’s just guessing at what would come next
What’s the point of decorating an in-game house if the next time you go there, the AI forgot what was supposed to be there?
What’s the point of completing quests if the AI forgets what you’ve completed?
What’s the point of getting new gear if AI hallucinates what gear you have?
There is no progress in an AI generated game because everything is made up as it goes. Google would need to fundamentally change their approach to allow for that
That being said, this and similar technologies could be used to add really cool mechanics in a game that previously weren’t feasible. The ability to add a temporary dream-like or watercolor aesthetic easily would be great for small developers to tell stories
It’s an initial proof-of-concept. It’ll be developed into more complex games eventually, that’s not really an issue for it
Except it is an issue, just one being masked by the mountains of cash these companies are burning to provide AI. To increase the depth and complexity and actually store state would require orders of magnitude more energy, compute, memory and storage. The AI bubble is causing very single one of those to become more expensive. At some point the market will call bullshit on these companies (“show us profit, or at least exponential revenue growth, or line go down”), at which point these companies will attempt to download the costs onto their users. When people see the bill and realize what these services actually cost, the whole thing is gonna collapse like a flan in a cupboard.
Hmmm. let’s build something we know and take some time, and know how to modify and build off it, or! we could spitball into the shit machine and it can shit us out a shit we don’t know how any of the shit in it works and then spend twelve times as long untangling its web. SHIT MACHINE AHOY!
It’s Google, so it will last two years MAX.
I am convinced they just push stuff to become THE dominant ai company. It doesn’t matter if it’s useful, they just need the publicity and also ChatGPT to crash and burn.
I have no idea why people and companies still trust Google. When I did work on GCP we had mandatory maintenance every 2 months because some core service was changing. Hell I just got a notice last week that they’re shutting down another API.
killedbygoogle.com’s already polishing the new tombstone
The people running that site must be extremely overworked
So what i am hearing is buy in the dip?
no these are a bunch of dips making it happen
