LogInGood luck figuring out what's going on on the screen.
From ARK: Survival Evolved's AI-generated trailer, to AI clones of Minecraft and Quake, to even Catly – where the use of generative AI is very likely but unconfirmed – by now, the gaming community has made its opinion on AI-generated games abundantly clear, with every experiment of this kind being met with almost universal disdain and disgust.
The latest addition to this list of dodgy creations is a "game concept" shared on Twitter by one Matt Shumer – the CEO of a few AI firms and investor in several AI startups, including the one behind the aforementioned Minecraft clone – which has become the laughingstock of the internet over the past few days.
Shared with the caption "AI games are going to be amazing," suggesting that what's shown isn't a finished product, the demos showcase the "gameplay" of Shumer's experiment, which compiles everything gamers dislike about AI-generated games – hallucinations, bizarre visuals, and a complete lack of consistency – into a single chaotic package.
The first demo, attached above, presents a first-person/third-person/choose-your-own-adventure experience that shifts between the three at random, featuring countless inconsistencies that make it look like a fever dream and make it hard to understand what's happening on screen, with the list including broken VFX, enemies that straight-up ignore the player, shapeshifting environments, and UI elements that make no sense, just to name a few.
The second demo somehow turned out even worse than the first, featuring all the same issues while looking less like a video game and more like a surreal, constantly-metamorphosing video footage, with the protagonist teleporting across scenes, running on air, casually visiting the void dimension, breaking steel with bare hands, surviving high voltage in a room full of water, bending his surroundings to his will, growing extra limbs, and becoming intangible whenever it's convenient.
While Shumer attempted to calm the backlash by stating that these experiences were work-in-progress and not made for profit, it did little to stop the wave of criticism. As you would expect, both demos were ratioed to oblivion and buried under thousands of comments and quote retweets, all mocking what had been showcased.
Even more impressively, a quick glance at the commenters shows that people with conflicting opinions and views on gaming-related matters have all united in their dislike of Shumer's project, marking a rare occasion when the gaming community actually demonstrated unity of some sort – unfortunate that it only occurs when there's a shared adversary, but it is how it is. You can check out the response here and over here.
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