How far are we from speaking a GameCube-era game into existence as a pastime?

GameCube-era game (with full synchronous multiplayer play): 1-2 quarters. Early "self-generating" Metaverse: ~ 3-6 quarters. The Matrix: ~5-7 years

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avaer 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I am doubtful about the timeline.

Not because AI can't do it; it totally can. LLMs have been able to run the full artist + code pipeline at least since the beginning of the year. I've built several physics-synced network simulation stacks without reading a single line of code. Agents playtest my games overnight and I wake up to a list of technical issues fixed, and FPS boosted. If you know how to ask the shaders will look great.

The problem is that making a game actually worth playing (something that Nintendo would allow to be released) isn't something that was ever possible to do as a pasttime, AI or not. You have to be in front of the computer all day guiding it. Worse, AI does not have any notion of experiencing or evaluating fun, so you can't automate this. So the LLM can't actually make the "game" part of the game. This would be a killer research problem to tackle, though!

If we're talking about making something that passes a sniff test, you could make a metaverse right now. It just wouldn't meet the bottom of the Steam free tier in terms of what players prefer.

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baigy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree. AI does not solve "product market fit". It mostly solves engineering. Currently AI is great as a tool, but not really a co-creator with taste.

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WASDx 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Agents playtest my games overnight

I'm curious if you want to elaborate. What kind of games? Turn based? Do you just feed it repeated screenshots?

	▲	avaer 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Agents playtest my games overnight I'm curious if you want to elaborate. What kind of games? Turn based? Do you just feed it repeated screenshots? 3D ARPG with dozens of systems, think Genshin or Fortnite. But it's all typescript running in the browser, so native browser introspection/debuggability came for free. The biggest problem TBH is the LLM thinking this is a web app, so it makes webby UIs that look out of place in the context of a game :D Fable has a cromulent time building its own tests, tools and pipelines. But there's no magic, it literally uses the gamepad and plays the game itself, taking screenshots, profiling, and debugging as it goes. The game ticks are fully controllable so it can frame-advance at its own pace. Sometimes I take screenshots if it's some very complex multi-step repro. But 90% of the time it drives the engine itself.