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- games
On Monday, John Carmack, co-creator of id Software’s Quake franchise, defended Microsoft’s recent AI-generated Quake II demo against criticism from a fan about the technology’s impact on industry jobs, calling it “impressive research work.”
Last Friday, Microsoft released a new playable tech demo of a generative AI game engine called WHAMM (World and Human Action MaskGIT Model) that generates each simulated frame of Quake II in real time using an AI world model instead of traditional game engine techniques. However, Microsoft is up front about the limitations: “We do not intend for this to fully replicate the actual experience of playing the original Quake II game,” the researchers wrote on the project’s announcement page.
Carmack’s comments came after an X user with the handle “Quake Dad” called the new demo “disgusting” and claimed it “spits on the work of every developer everywhere.” The critic expressed concern that such technology would eliminate jobs in an industry already facing layoffs, writing: “A fully generative game cuts out the number of jobs necessary for such a project which in turn makes it harder for devs to get jobs.”
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I played it a bit. It’s very weird: level geometry seems consistent but where you are in the level varies wildly just by looking around. Went down some stairs, turned around, and they weren’t there anymore, because i was somewhere else suddenly. The one enemy i could find was a vague moving blur that disappeared when i looked away from them. It’s very odd playing it, like a fever dream in non-euclidean space, but it works as a proof of concept. I wonder how much power and energy goes into running even 5 minutes of that game.
Sounds like it would be good for a horror game (in its current state)