Via slashdot, this is the first time I have heard of Google's project Genie. Apparently it will let you create an interactive world with a series of prompts. Stocks of AAA video game companies are dipping based on the news. However, it's clearly just a tech demo at this point.
I watched some video demos, and it certainly looks interesting. You enter a text prompt to create a world, and then another one for the character you wish to create. There is a check box for first or third person camera view, and then you get to explore the world using either arrow keys or classic WASD controls. You can also refine the world as you go. The whole video honestly gave me slight Star Trek Holodeck vibes.
It's certainly not seemingly up to the task of making a full featured game right now. For one thing, as far as I can tell there is no way to do more than walk around the environments, for the most part. One demo does show someone painting a wall. But the limits of object interaction are really unclear, and I doubt you can (for example) set up rules for some kind of character advancement or combat. Give it a year or two, and the ability to save and distribute links to the worlds you generate, and yeah it might be in the running for letting plebs like me design games without having to learn a 3D engine or the like.
I would love to play around with it, but right now it's locked behind a Google AI Ultra plan, which has currently been "generously" discounted to only $124 per month. I don't get enough value out of any AI platform I have played around with to want to ponly up even $15 a month, much less more than I generaly spend on some utilities. Still, I will be quite interested to see where this goes.
In a completely unrelated topic, Project Gorgon is finally live, as anyone reading this is almost certainly already aware. I definitely plan to purchase it over the weekend just to support the peaple behind it. But I probably won't stick my head in until the second fresh start server goes up. Apparently they also managed to break peak concurrency of 1000 today. I really hope the game prospers, I have been rooting for them for a while.
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