Google Playground: Create and play custom games (blog.google)

Just got #2 in the world (for now) on "Steampunk Match". Very impressive what's possible in the browser. No way I would've thought this was AI generated. It was much higher quality than the vibe coded games out of Claude. The best outcome would be for this to enable some new weird games that wouldn't have gotten made otherwise, and also to bankrupt games that basically operate as casinos.

Reloads the same page for me

I don't want to (and can't) use this myself, but I've always wanted to see if an AI could implement an idea I had for a while: "A 4D version of Agar.io where you move through a 3D slice of space by moving the mouse cursor, and then rotate through the fourth dimension using the scroll wheel. All other game principles remain the same." Will this implement support for multi-player games as well? The really interesting part here for me is how well the AI will implement a game unconventional UI and how successful it is at making it usable and intuitive for humans.

I thought it was just not working on Firefox, but it doesn't seem to work for me on Google Chrome.

"Create custom games in minutes > Press Start" just opens a new tab with... the same page?

We've hosted an AI game development platform for a while now and found there's a big difference between "making a game" and "making a fun game". I'd love to see if they are solving the real problem, but the link to try it out is a 403 for me.

How long until someone makes a tiktok-style game platform?

Play a little game, then when you're done it generates a new one based on what you've enjoyed. Repeat ad infinitum.

I'm okay with Google offering models, but I'm not okay with Google offering more PaaS offerings.

Let developers use your models and tools and build stuff with it. Why own everything.

Google has too much already and in my opinion they have no business owning a gaming platform.

Points to https://playground.google/ which just returns 403 error. Cool

For anyone getting a 403, it's US only right now and fails rather ungracefully. I just tried out a few games, framerates where strange/choppy, even in a match 3 game, and the games I tried were quite bad overall. I'm sure this type of thing will get good very soon though

You can build standard games now, and there is a waitlist for Unity Spark. But there are demos of Unity Spark games now, if you want to see what will be possible.

I was able to spin up a couple of games really quickly--a 2D cosy space exploration game, and a snarky sci fi trivia game. I'd say the the writting for the humorous trivia questions and the cosy interactions was reasonable--this isn't a tool that can only do reskins of old school arcade games. In addition to music and graphics it can do text to speech.

It's still an experiment, simultaneous impressive, and frustrating, with rather unexpectedly low prompt compliance. But, beta.

It really doesn't seem to like shifting from multiplayer to solo play. It seems like you ought to have a strong opinion upfront. (again, early days)

It's natural to think of this quick and easy tool for playing game, but I suspect part of the eventual value will be learning tools and "self gamification" I could imagine doing a variant of my trivial game for memorization or language learning.

Hard for me to understand the why in this. I don’t think tech companies have ever understood games, almost certainly because they do not engage with games.

Edit: It’s for training. RL on playtimes, ideas, etc. Just rushing towards a world where we have no value to each other.

I could not test it because I am also facing 403 error - UK.

Anyway...

If you are interested, there is also an open-source way to do exactly this and it works with your existing subscriptions and local models too - your data is kept private on your devices.

You can make the game, stream it directly from your AI hub or play it locally on your devices. You can cast it on the TV while converting your phone into a controller (with haptics support) or you can connect physical game controllers for local co-op.

https://github.com/pdparchitect/noodle

The README does not talk about this feature but you can find videos in my twitter account.

Best case scenario for this is...replace Roblox with games that don't have reward systems solely based on you playing as long as possible. We are losing a generation of children to these games.

I've always found Google Slides to be a great way to create cute, personal games. It requires no coding, and anyone can play them easily in their browser. Seeing what people are able to do with a simple presentation (PowerPoint, if you will) has been repeatedly eye-opening every time I've seen one.

I'm a bit worried that Google Slides-games will fall out of fashion now ;(

If you want to try this but with free multiplayer servers check out https://snack.game (my site)

I also didn't bother with in-app game dev for now since I figured your local agents will be better. So for now you just develop locally with a CLI and your favorite subsidized model.

The biggest challenge is designing the mechanics that make games fun. AI is not quite there yet but with enough data could potentially get there.

I put together a site a few months back to play around with 3d assets from Sketchfab and animated characters from Mixamo as an experiment: https://gobananas.co/

Beware: "you are on the list" - "or upgrade to access instantly"

I upgraded, same message. I downgraded, they kept the money because now I have a month of a plan that I didn't need to check something I still don't have access to.

The games on here were really janky.

The Sandbox one is a lot more mature and better thought out:

https://www.sandbox.game/en/

Since this thread will contain the intersection of people interested in coding games and people interested in AI, can I ask whether the latest AI coding tools can help someone vibe code a simple low-poly 3D game? I only ever used Twine before.

So, google invented idea collection box for their own profit? Again?

A few of my friends and I have been building a game for a few weeks. It has been really fun because anyone can make a level and it’s somewhat random what level you get sent to- each level could have wildly different controls/goals, but getting oriented is part of the fun. We also have a ton of inside jokes and memories cooked in - I don’t think it would be very fun for someone external, it’s fun because a group of friends are building something together and that process is very fun. This seems to be just more of a game printing machine

I don't see the appeal of scrolling through a list of games I could potentially make myself VS scrolling through a list of games I could immediately play.

Does Google not have lawyers any more? Playground Games is the name of the Microsoft-owned games studio behind Forza Horizon; X-Box studio is as part of their current restructuring merging them with Turn 10 (the mainline Forza studio) and, weirdly, handing the resulting studio Fable to work on, but Microsoft definitely still has an interest in the trademark of ‘playground’ in the context of video games.

It doesn't work for me, when I click any of the links it just opens a new tab to the same page. $4.2 Trillion marketcap company with access to world class geniuses plus effectively unlimited AI compute and this is the trash they're making.

I got a 403 from Germany