Google, Unity Launch Platform To Create Video Games From Prompts 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet's Google and gaming tools developer Unity Software announced a new platform that will allow people to create video games from simple text prompts, marking the latest incursion of generative artificial intelligence into artistic and creative industries. The initiative, called Playground, will "put game creation in the hands of millions of new creators, and bring new experiences to billions of players worldwide," the companies said in a statement on Oct 7.
With its debut, Playground will let people 18 and older generate and customize games using natural language prompts, "no coding required." Later in 2026, a new expanded creation experience called Unity Spark, will be integrated with Playground, providing "robust, professional-level" mechanics and high-fidelity 3D capabilities. Creators will be able to build "immersive, superlative experiences" with a simple text prompt, according to the release. Playground builds on Google's push into world models, a type of AI that generates virtual environments in real time from text prompts, rather than just video. Google and Unity's partnership "could reduce fears that AI will make Unity's core game-building software less necessary, while posing limited medium-term risk to Roblox's advantage as a social gaming platform," says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Naidu.
The introduction of Unity Spark later in 2026 "could broaden Unity's creator base and support its game-development business," which represent about a third of sales.
With its debut, Playground will let people 18 and older generate and customize games using natural language prompts, "no coding required." Later in 2026, a new expanded creation experience called Unity Spark, will be integrated with Playground, providing "robust, professional-level" mechanics and high-fidelity 3D capabilities. Creators will be able to build "immersive, superlative experiences" with a simple text prompt, according to the release. Playground builds on Google's push into world models, a type of AI that generates virtual environments in real time from text prompts, rather than just video. Google and Unity's partnership "could reduce fears that AI will make Unity's core game-building software less necessary, while posing limited medium-term risk to Roblox's advantage as a social gaming platform," says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Naidu.
The introduction of Unity Spark later in 2026 "could broaden Unity's creator base and support its game-development business," which represent about a third of sales.
Oh good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we don't have enough AI slop clogging everything up already.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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AI is the pinnacle of human made slop that delivers sloppy seconds on command.
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That started in the late ’80s and ’90s, when Microsoft discovered you could ship software the way a raccoon ships garbage: everywhere, immediately, full of bugs, and with zero intention of coming back for it. Shame was deprecated. Embarrassment got a service pack and was never seen again.
Then the frameworks showed up. Visual Basic. PowerBuilder. Tools designed so that if your IQ matched room temperature, you could still drag a button onto a form and ruin someone’s afternoon. Coding was no
Re: Oh good. (Score:1)
Re: More public domain games (Score:2)
That's not how that works. Making transformative adjustments allows you to claim copyright over the work as a whole. No one cares about copyrighting a function call.
Re: More public domain games (Score:5, Informative)
It hasn't been to SCOTUS yet, but the current position of the Library of Congress (whose decision it is, so far) is that stuff created by AI is not, in fact, copyrightable. There's case law on it.
That is how it works. So far.
Re: More public domain games (Score:2)
Right. But that does not change anything about derivative works.
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Agreed. An orchestra can record a performance of a public domain song and claim copyright to their performance. An artist can use open source software to create a copyrighted work of art. An author can use FOSS software to write a story or book and claim copyright on the work.
If someone creates something using AI, the SCOTUS has ruled that the AI cannot own the copyright. The individual that submitted the prompt, reviewed the game, tweaked the prompt, tested again, decided that the work matched their in
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It's not as clear as you think. It's not sufficient to write and tweak prompts. Look to Jason Allen v. US Copyright Office https://www.artnews.com/art-ne... [artnews.com] Jason Allen attempted to copyright art that he created with Midjourney. Despite going through hundreds of prompts and using photoshop to edit the result *he* (not the computer) was denied copyright by the US Copyright office.
I think the court case is still pending.
steamboat willie's death cruise the game (Score:2)
steamboat willie's death cruise the game
Ohh good more Unity crap.. (Score:3)
Unity isn't necessarily a bad engine but its use rules and cost sure promote a huge amount of slop games mostly from Eastern Europe. Now that it can generate slop without even needing to understand how to program it is only going to get worse. Steam is overrun with such games. They go into those cheap A$$ bundles that no one needs or wants but you see on Humble...
Re: Ohh good more Unity crap.. (Score:3)
Steam has user reviews, Nintendo e shop (aka eslop) doesn't https://youtu.be/8nRo9nxq1TI?s... [youtu.be]
I hope they realize people hate slop (Score:3)
I hope Unity and Google eventually realize people hate AI slop, and doing all these slop-enabling AI things is just going to erode the trust in the actual market.
Right now this is pushing people to support indie games that proudly say they don't use generative AI assets. Unity has picked losers before, and I expect Unity and Unreal to eventually have to dial back some of their investments in generative AI slop because it risks people abandoning the platform.
And no, Roblox is not a serious gaming platform. All Roblox is, is a bunch of stolen game concepts made into a common ugly avatar platform.
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Remember the problem AI is designed to solve is wages. Paying wages.
That said we all laughed at horse armor and they just kept cramming it down people's throats until kids grew up who were used to that crap. And yeah you might not be someone who would buy horse armor but it does fuck up the industry and the quality of your hobby is substantially lower as a result.
80 million daily users + 5 billion annually (Score:3)
And no, Roblox is not a serious gaming platform. All Roblox is, is a bunch of stolen game concepts made into a common ugly avatar platform.
What you mean to say is "I'm old and I don't like Roblox because it's not what I am used to." Roblox has 80 million active daily users and 5 billion in revenue annually. Not only that, if you talk to anyone under 18, the IS THE BIGGEST GAME by a long shot. It's bigger than minecraft and fortnite combined. It's bigger than any mobile game. Trust me, the kids feel the same way about the games I love to play, INCLUDING Fortnite. It is a cultural phenomena bigger than any boy band, Pokemon, even most c
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Roblox is falling off:
https://www.dexerto.com/roblox... [dexerto.com]
Won't be long before the new generation looks at it as being stale and boring. Which is pretty much how anyone in the adult world sees it. Not sure what will replace it but Roblox will fade away eventually.
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Roblox can actually emulate other games fairly convincingly - I had always thought of it as just a knock off Minecraft; but it was able to clone Counterstrike: Source's surf maps and mechanics fairly well (which I used to play a lot 20 years ago)
From what I have seen it is more a platform now than a game, and the popularity comes from kids being able to make their own maps and games and have anyone come and play them. Now I am also old so Roblox isn't really my thing but I can't deny I would have found it i
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You're making the same mistake the AI bros make, making the entire argument about money.
"If you aren't making the same slop everyone else is making, only on roblox, then you're missing the gravy train." Which is the same idea the AI slop makers are doing to youtube, and to tiktok, and so forth.
Like for every game concept you find on roblox, you can likely find the game it was stolen/inspired from was some popular friendslop game that was released months before it. I'll give you the most obvious example. Do
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people hate AI slop, and doing all these slop-enabling AI things is just going to erode the trust in the actual market.
This. No good game was ever created from a single prompt. Not to an AI, not a human development team. Every single person writing those damn "look which game my AI built from a single prompt and $x in tokens!" postings is a newbie and almost certainly has never actually shipped a single game.
Game development can be summed up as endless iterations. Every system you build, every visual you create, every sound, text, button, movement, weapon, skill, powerup needs polishing, refinement and changes. It is never,
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Not all use of AI is slop. AI is a tool. There's no reason it can't be sensibly incorporated into a workflow. While no doubt creating a game from a prompt is just slop, the reality is there is a practical place for including tools such as this in a workflow, such as using it to create starting point.
I recently came across this at work during a 1 week workshop we had. All the presenters (including myself) used AI extensively to create our presentations (because powerpoint fucking sucks), but only some of the
Amazing: Rapid advances in technology (Score:1)
The Rapid Trajectory Of Artificial Intelligence [forbes.com]
AI revolutionizing industries worldwide: A comprehensive overview of its diverse applications [sciencedirect.com]
I was considering making my own apps to escape (Score:2)
I am slowly working on my own app to escape subscription and AI hell. There are not a lot of great cross platform solutions that aren't trying to upsell you, sell your data, or force AI on you. However, I can see more clearly that if you are on the internet, we as people are losing the right to appreciate things made by human beings. You go to instagram... and the photos are AI. You go to facebook... the posts are AI. You go to Unity... the games are made with AI. AI has poisoned the social well.
If I m
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I had a friend post on facebook about some sort of new behavior with the young generation where they literally stop in the middle of a conversation to ask AI how to respond. I really can't believe its come to this...
nowhere to hide (Score:2)
If I make an app in this ecosystem, will I actually be happy?
ai is a tool, if it allows you to do something that you want to do odds are you will, specially if you lacked the ability to do it without.
it's up to you to use it to make yet another slop app. there are many other scenarios where the ability to create sw (ie a game) from text prompts is a godsend. prototypes, proofs of concept, experiments, lay people making their own apps and ad hoc tools ... stuff that might be used and discarded, or might not even work but just maybe might also evolve into a breakthroug
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yes yes, guns don't kill people, and cigarettes don't smoke themselves
now go and make yourself a roadkill sandwich.
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i would suggest the word, pillage
It feels like this is happening already (Score:2)
I guess it's probably about to get an order of magnitude worse and the only way to navigate it will be crowdsourcing, but the gaming world already feels much like people are prompting their way to releasing games. Remember the days when there were only dozens or hundreds of games released per year? What seems crazy to me is that although most of them have very low-quality assets, there's so many actually playable and working games which are more or less fully realized, at least to the point that they have e
Re: It feels like this is happening already (Score:3)
A better question is how you actually make money off of game development.
With decompiling easier than ever, people can just make forms of your game and then sell it as their own. Copyright or no, there is going to be a huge tidal wave of games competing for our limited time and money.
Personally I think we are heading for an absolute dopamine destruction where people are so swarmed with choice they cannot actually play games without feeling distracted by something else. Even today the majority of gamers do n
Teach all kids to code (Score:3)
Remember that?
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Remember that?
Yeah but now with AI, these tech companies don't need to rely on an excess of meat sacks to drive down wages.
Now make it fun (Score:2)
I'd probably spend an evening making a platformer about a toaster. Seems like a perfectly good use for something like this. Then I'd want to shorten the jump slightly without changing the level, fix one enemy's behavior, and undo whatever I just did that made the toaster fall through the floor. That's the part of the demo I'd watch closely. If you can keep improving the same game predictably, this could be a useful way to learn game design by making things. I can also imagine spending hours arguing with a p
Trial 1 (Score:1)
Prompt: "Hunt down and clean up Slashdot dupes before they coagulate and turn into human eating monsters. Low scorers have to watch goatse for 2 minutes before reactivating their account."
Maybe (Score:2)
I can see this becoming the next Newgrounds if they do it right. Equivalent to the Flash games of the past, these could still be fun without needing to be groundbreaking. I'd hope to see more than just the awful slop games that you see on YouTube Playables, for example... But still, if you have a genuinely interesting idea, you'd do better investing some time in it.
if you can't ask AI how to setup a toolchain (Score:2)
Then maybe just give up. Read a book or jerk off or something.
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Why not both?
Tired of fake news (Score:2)
A decade ago, a video of a giraffe diving into a pool, was a marvel of technology and human creativity. Now, AI videos are marketed as how animals really live.
We've already got "game creation" via MineCraft and script-kiddie libraries. This will be a new generation of script-kiddies using better eye-candy. The quantity of trash, is a thousand times more than the half-interesting games.
oh Unity, how you lost your way (Score:2)
*sigh* I wish Unity would actually complete some of their dozens half-finished sub-systems instead of constantly chasing the latest trend. It's become really, really annoying. The engine used to be really good. These days, it falls apart if you look at it the wrong way, and at least from the responses to my bug reports it's clear that fixing issues is way down on the agenda.
Maybe this is their attempt to regain grounds in the indie game market - the very market they pushed away by focussing on AAA requireme
I guarantee (Score:2)
Re: I guarantee (Score:2)
Didn't someone already do that with the Doom map editor? [fandom.com]
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Sure but it won't be GTA 6.
Might be a decent platform for proof-of-concept (Score:2)
Making and commercializing games with this toolset sounds like it may be the next RPGMaker (only more generalized to multiple genres). Lots of crap with recycled assets being schlepped at low prices. Hopefully there will be appropriate watermarks to keep such garbage from clogging up online stores.
That being said, producing simplified proofs-of-concept could be accomplished with this toolset. Designers/teams with actual talent could produce something better with non-AI assets.
Similar to electronic music and samples (Score:2)
This is not so different from the emergence of electronic music and the use of samples. The barrier of entry became lower, and you needed much less practice and skill to actually make songs.
Instead, you needed different skills to actually produce something that is good and culturally relevant, and successful.
And a lot of artists tried to make electronic music re-produce existing, purely analog music. And some artists like Trent Reznor approached it as something new and different and unique, and became very
This is not complete without auto-post. (Score:2)
AI slop generated gaming concepts are not complete until every single slop game created gets auto-posted to every game distribution site so that we can flood out any decent game by drowning it under the weight of the slop generation, just as we're currently doing with video sites.