Google Playground

108 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by trollied
(labs.google)

90 Comments

_pdp_

2 hours ago

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.

rakamotog

2 hours ago

I just wish, someone tested this experience for EU where it doesnt work. Auto playing video below the fold and try plays video in a new tab.

shooly

21 minutes ago

Off-topic, but that showcase image in this repo is truly pathetic. "What should I get Mum?", "find me something to do on Sunday morning" - is this seriously what people need AI for now?

toddmorey

3 hours ago

I guess I'm a bit of a killjoy here but:

  - This is google experiment, meaning you're sadly likely invest more time in the product / community than google will from this point forward. (That's just my "fool me once" voice talking.)
  - There really won't be much advantage to building in their playground vs building directly with any of the frontier models.
  - Interest and distribution will be challenging because the bias is towards building your own game vs playing the games others make.
Every time I see a vibe-coded game, I think to "I should try that prompt" not "I want to play that game". I think personalized apps, experiences, and games are amazing but are a different beast and won't have the viral impact some creators are hoping for.

screye

2 hours ago

Placing my bets here.

```

Gaming will undergo the movie industry cycle of 2010-2025.

First, Only AAA (GTA-6) or micro-indie games will make money. mid-budget games will get eaten out. <---2010 Hollywood

Until, people get AAA exhaustion and game creation keeps getting cheaper and cheaper.

Then a single auteur makes a mid-budget game with a recognizable aesthetic, that makes AAA money.

A studio (A-24) realizes that auteur curation is profitable, and builds recognize-able identity.

The studio (A-24) starts churning out reliable hitters, that people buy because of the studio more than the game itself.

AAA stagnates, hires the most recent auteur to make their next AAA game with full control.

If it goes bust, then AAA tries again.

If it goes boom, they pick the next auteur for their next AAA game. <---Hollywood is here in 2026

```

alexandre_m

an hour ago

I don't think your analysis is on point regarding the gaming market.

You're leaving out the social and mobile games that made astronomical amount of money in early 2010s like Farmville and Candy Crush.

In fact, the 2010–2026 era proved that non-AAA games, smaller mobile studios, and independent developers could achieve higher profit margins than traditional big studio projects.

Moreover, indie game market has never been as strong. AI will accelerate and democratize this trend further, as upfront development costs is reduced.

oxfeed65261

2 hours ago

What is the transformative auteur-driven film in your analogy?

cush

an hour ago

Maybe, Everything Everywhere All At Once? I don't know of many

volkk

2 hours ago

i would LOVE to see this happen. we need an A24 of games

MK2k

2 hours ago

Annapurna and Devolver maybe?

nekooooo

2 hours ago

you are smoking crack and you don't understand hollywood. i don't think you understand indie games either... what happened is other forms of entertainment ate away at the attention share, and gaming is one of them.

throwaway20222

an hour ago

Beyond the aggressive reply, I mean you are partially right? In addition to the battle for attention the financial model of windowing was destroyed or collapsed into streaming, changing the types/quality/choices of movies that get made, the nuances of what happens in movies and tv shows (fewer character actors) and many other dynamics including change in financial risk and borrowing costs, which in aggregate had an impact that many could argue was on par with the attention battle. Current trends may be able to shift downward the risk/cost trend as well as unlock new formats which may result in the rise of new producers/inputs.

I think it is a “yes, and…”

Though what do I know.

afro88

2 hours ago

I've been vibe coding a game and it's so far from a one shot at this stage. A week and a half solid of prompting with multiple agents. Haven't looked at a line of code, but been iterating, playing and refining constantly. In my mind there's no chance anyone else could get the same result without pointing an agent at my game and reverse engineering it.

Maybe we need yet another word for this kind of development. It's going to be way more common.

Side note: I feel like I could only get this far with Opus 5.5 level models and tooling (cloud agents). No chance I could get to this point without rolling my sleeves up and helping with the technical side with earlier models, and no chance I could get this far pretty much only using my phone.

I'm basically paying Anthropic for both the experience of building a game with a team of decent engineers (it's been exhilarating), and the game itself. It's been incredibly fun. I would never pay this money for something to one shot it for me. This current level has been such a sweet spot of pretty much every ask being nailed and it still feeling like it's my own creation. Something one shotting it for me would kill most of the fun and feeling of "I did this" ownership.

theropost

36 minutes ago

Same, I've been working on some little projects and 3d environments, its quite enjoyable overall. This one is a procedurally driven voxel game - still a work in progress, but its turning out better than expected.

https://icemunk.github.io/voxelstrike-site/

andrewcl

24 minutes ago

At this point, isn't the building of the game the actual game?

jmathai

2 hours ago

The scope of what a single prompt can do continues to grow. I’m in the same boat as you but not as optimistic that it’ll be something I enjoy as a craft for much longer.

lukan

2 hours ago

I miss the craft, but enjoy very much, that I finally can build the games I always wanted on the side - and yes, I have fun playing them.

lukan

2 hours ago

"Maybe we need yet another word for this kind of development."

I am fine with vibe coding by now. It captures the spirit quite well, if the vibe of the direction is good, you have a rush with one shotting amazing features - if the vibe is gone, it became a slob hell with the model going in circles. But this is not random for me, but depends how much I follow the architectural decisions (and not "great, go on"). So I would rather introduce "slob coding", for mindless prompting without control of what is happening.

volkk

3 hours ago

i generally agree, but i can imagine a world where a vibe coded game hits some certain "threshold" where it has a few properties:

- easily distributable, i.e there is a very clear way to play it fairly quickly

- it doesn't feel like slop even though it's vibe coded

- it's super fun

I predict that will be games, very very few, but there will be some that hit that inflection point likely through Twitch streamers picking it up. But I also predict that they will be a flash in the pan. Even fewer of the already few, the ones that will be here to stay will likely need to turn into an actual mini studio and take the development/customers seriously.

Most of them will be fun projects that die the day they get released simply because building a decent looking vibe coded game is commoditized. Maybe some fun twitter engagements, but nothing more.

ben_w

2 hours ago

> - it's super fun

This is by far the hard part. The complete rulesets for most games[0] would be smaller than a prompt necessary to turn that board game into a computer game[1].

Anyone can draw some counters and a board, make up some rules. Making those rules interesting, let alone fun, is so much of a problem that many published board games get house-ruled in various ways[2].

The AI-made games I've noticed (clichés, the AI can't help it) have been at the median level of the old Flash sites, but with less variation: fewer total disasters, but also nothing amazing.

While this isn't great, it's also not nothing: I wouldn't be surprised if one of the current ones goes through an iterative refinement like Bloons TD did.

[0] not all: I was obsessed with Star Fleet Battles as a young teenager, these days I describe it as "A computer game written about ten years before home computers had enough memory to store all the rules", which is why each turn takes 2 hours, one of which is counting out boxes and using that to fill out a spreadsheet as you work out how much power your ship has and how fast it's going and which equipment you can use, and distributing weapon damage on some target is worked out with the help of an A4-sized printout that functionally implements a dice-driven state machine.

[1] Unless the prompt was "here is a photo of the rules, turn it into a video game", but I count that as cheating, "a picture is worth a thousand words" etc.

[2] My main house rule for Star Fleet Battles, these days[3], is to simplify the 4+ kinds of power source into one. I can appreciate the world building of "an impulse engine can't divert antimatter to a photon torpedo", but it's not actually fun to keep track of this.

[3] I've played it like 4 times in the last 15 years.

avaer

an hour ago

> Every time I see a vibe-coded game, I think to "I should try that prompt" not "I want to play that game".

Exactly! The fantasy is the game with an audience of N=1, or N < Dunbar.

The platforms are conflating this obvious use case with "make a viral game that not even I care about". Which has an audience of N=0.

b345

3 hours ago

Yes, very much like Suno, where users reportedly listen to their "own" (generated) songs the most.

cush

2 hours ago

> won't have the viral impact some creators are hoping for

Maybe that's not the point? Mario-maker is an incredible game. You can play shared levels, but the fun is all in building. Sometimes building is the game.

TomGarden

4 hours ago

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

Leynos

3 hours ago

Google yet again showing their leadership in product delivery, marketing strategy and bureaucracy

pkal

2 hours ago

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.

mycocola

2 hours ago

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.

OsrsNeedsf2P

4 hours ago

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.

advisedwang

2 hours ago

AI will solve it the same way it solves everything else - by reproducing the patterns in its source data. Which means you will never see novel mechanics or combinations or mechanics.

CuriouslyC

4 hours ago

I don't think AI will ever really solve "making a fun game" because:

1. Games are highly complex systems, so for example adding a fun mechanic from one game to another game can actually make that game less fun, and AI has no way to know, you just have to playtest it.

2. Games are evergreen (people still play and love the original Zelda/Mario/Tetris) and social (you want to share your love of game XYZ with others), so there's literally no reason for anyone to play a purely derivative game, when you can just play the original.

Eventually AI will be able to make perfect assets and all the other stuff AROUND making a fun game, but the game design will always be a human thing. At best, AI will come up with a bunch of game design experiments that a human will need to playtest and provide feedback on.

TomGarden

3 hours ago

You may be right, at the same time a lot of "AI will never solve X" takes have aged pretty poorly, and I'm not confident what's fun about existing games cannot be codified and shown statistically somehow. Some genres seem more accessible to AI than others

CuriouslyC

2 hours ago

It's hard to say for sure, I think we can at least confidently assert that games are going to be more challenging than other forms of creative expression like Books, Music, Art, etc because people's tolerance for derivative games is lower than their tolerance for derivative movies/music.

TomGarden

an hour ago

Agreed!

And I genuinely hope there will be some categories of games/music/books/art where human input is still needed and preferred. Currently I'm already a handful of bulletpoints down on the list of stuff I thought AI would never be able to do, and it's been kind of destabilizing

jpalawaga

2 hours ago

i think the difference here is that humans can't even write down what makes a great game great. we don't know. you have to play it.

if we can't even write it down, how is an llm going to be able to ace it?

s0ss

2 hours ago

I don't think anyone, given better alternatives, would choose games like these. There's a reason low effort output of LLMs has been dubbed Slop... Slop isn't fun or interesting to consume.

icantevenhold

3 hours ago

That’s fine though?

I’m having a lot of fun creating an “improved” clone of a very old school game I loved.

It takes lots of back and forth but there is definitely (for me at least) to play this derivative game since it adds a lot of levels and stuff that weren’t available in the original.

Without AI I wouldn’t be able to do anything; but with it it can make some changes, I test them and we iterate on it.

So for me AI solves “making a fun game”. It doesn’t “one shot GTA7” if that is your goal but that also sounds boring

CuriouslyC

3 hours ago

You misunderstand me, AI solves the "making" part, but not the "fun" part, which is 100% you.

Culonavirus

3 hours ago

Yea not the "making" part even (at least not yet). Every single demo/sample of a vibecoded* game thing is a piss poor "counter strike clone" or "gta clone" type of app that has bare bones everything (and i mean PS2 level or worse) and plays like absolute ass down to the basics of character control ans basic gameplay mechanics.

*: I don't consider a project you built with an LLM to be "vibecoded" if all the important ideas are from your head, you know what the code is supposed to be doing (domain model is in your head) and you guided the project every step of the way. Otherwise we're all vibecode. So yea, I don't doubt you can create amazing games with AI, but "with" as in "together", not as in "Claude, build me a Minecraft clone, make it fun, no mistakes."

monknomo

3 hours ago

this is probably a personal problem, but sometimes I get turned around on 'fun making a game' vs 'making a fun game' and I have the idea that ai elides this distinction even further

nekooooo

2 hours ago

seriously, games require balance and playtesting, and synthetic users don't count.

Kkoala

4 hours ago

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

icantevenhold

3 hours ago

“you do not have access to this document. That’s all we know.”

Well ok then

accidc

2 hours ago

They definitely know why, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to tell who to 403 vs not. They obviously dont care to tell you because of ‘security’.

This dismissive contemptuous attitude is typical of all big tech, all your value is just reduced to data generator to be mined, without any other regard.

TheAceOfHearts

an hour ago

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.

light_triad

2 hours ago

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/

RayVR

an hour ago

what a heavy, poorly performing site. my fairly powerful macbook pro struggles on that site.

Then, of course, there's the fact that all of the start and access buttons just open the same page in a new tab.

goshx

3 hours ago

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.

NiceWayToDoIT

3 hours ago

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

kursus

3 hours ago

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.

xnx

3 hours ago

? You can immediately play the games on that page.

niwtsol

3 hours ago

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

collabs

2 hours ago

What is the minimum age required to use `Google Playground`? Why?

> CONTENT ACCESS LIMITED To access Playground, you’ll just need to verify your age. Confirming you’re old enough helps us keep the platform safe and secure for everyone.

small0

an hour ago

Spawn is way ahead of them. This feels like desperation after they started going viral.

Tepix

3 hours ago

Game design is really difficult. Programming a game is only a small part, and not the most important one.

elicash

3 hours ago

This is why no code / low code is exciting. It will allow people who excel in what you call the "most important" parts to be able to create games.

Now, I don't think Google Playground is the best demonstration of this point, given it's intended to be quick turnaround. None of what's shown in the demo video is particularly thoughtful. But it still is a good indication of things to come.

fg137

2 hours ago

Most people are not remotely capable of designing even a mediocre game.

The more games you play, the more you understand and appreciate what makes a game good, and how hard it is to come up with a game that is original, enjoyable to look at and fun to play. Lots and lots of games created by professionals don't even excel at any of them. Meanwhile indie game developers are never limited by their programming skills.

I'm not looking forward to all the slop that comes out of this.

elicash

2 hours ago

The creators of indie games are never limited by their programming skills?!

heffro

2 hours ago

I've been working on something similar with a Claude skill: https://newtab.party. I'll echo what others have said: AI isn't great at making even a silly little MiniClip-style game fun. I've noticed it's a lot better in Fable, but there's still a long way to go.

Oras

2 hours ago

Well done Google! 403 you don’t have access to this document

Please hire some QA instead of embarrassing yourself this bad

accidc

2 hours ago

I wonder if it can do board games (or similar), there are no examples of that (not allowed to test)

trash_cat

2 hours ago

For me the page just reloads no matter where I click.

tomashubelbauer

4 hours ago

> 403. That’s an error. > We're sorry, but you do not have access to this page. That’s all we know.

Happens when I click Press Start. Did Google kill this before they shipped it?

Buttons840

3 hours ago

Is this something I can try now? Or is this an announcement of a future product?

NichoPaolucci

an hour ago

Holy shit man, the current state of things…

- Click “Start Now”

- Prompted to log in

- AutoFill with credentials (good and ok up until this point)

- Get prompted for password

- Get prompted on whether or not I want to store this set of credentials

- Get prompted to open the YouTube app to verify my credentials

- Open the YouTube app

- Get hit with an advertisement

- Click the X, Click “Verify”

- Go back to the browser

- Get prompted to add a third factor of authentication

- Click no

- Get prompted if I want to add face scanning to my account

- Click no

- Get redirected back to the site (FINALLY!!!)

- Still not logged in

- Get prompted to log in again

- Leave site in anger/disbelief

Seriously, what is going on.

digitaltrees

an hour ago

You need to add - get redirected to a different account because your wife has her Google account login on the computer and you have a personal and work gsuite and the login success was hijacked by your work account.

jackmalpo

4 hours ago

has anyone found an ai sprite generator that doesn't suck?

Growth_SF

3 hours ago

Games are pretty fun, with easy access, which I appreciate as a new user.

mv4

2 hours ago

In the US, got 403.

Noaidi

3 hours ago

Why do the tech lords continue with this infantalization of humanity? What are they distracting us from?

drywater2

2 hours ago

They're distracting us from "You will own nothing and you will be happy".

ncr100

3 hours ago

How do we incorporate advertising/monetization that compensates us the creators into this?

Google Playground is a destination, currently, with no monetization. So any gamedev effort and ideas we contribute into it are collected by Google.

EDIT:

It is offered as "for funsies with your pals in America, bros!" and it looks a lot like it's almost a feature in the Google Play portfolio which makes me think this wasn't thought through fully.

So Google doing something strategic here which is not clear to me.

- are they training their AI?

- are they collecting user feedback for an eventual commercial launch?

- are they building hype?

Why did Google spend the money on this?

fsmv

3 hours ago

Hilarious that you think anyone wants to play your AI generated game much less pay for it

ncr100

3 hours ago

why not?

If it's a great idea and the execution is fine, why not?

Eg Angry Birds. There are real world examples I have.

Why not?

edit: And about "your game" rhetoric, I'm talking about us more than me, unless you think that I specifically, NCR100, cannot create a game that is worthy? Why?

Where's the hope? Is there a presumption that AI generation is bad, full-stop?

Do you specifically assert that everything done with AI has no compelling quality to it?

I was taught that the tools do not make the artist.

When I sit down to build a product, a website, an app, middleware, servers, embedded apps, I expect to be paid if it is for a company. I will use other people's designs and patterns in my effort. I will work with everybody at the organization, even though who have, 'ideas'. It's my literal job as a Creator to make that slop compelling.

Why is the involvement of AI during creation a guarantor of non-compelling?

brazukadev

2 hours ago

> Do you specifically assert that everything done with AI has no compelling quality to it?

We are 4 years in and so far literally nothing with compelling quality appeared yet, no game, no app, no book, no music. Every vibecoded shit is slop with rare exceptions of barely acceptable quality.

Quality is more about people and processes, AI won't replace humans for product development but currently countless people and corporations are dreaming about that. What makes this more interesting is that the person that prompts the AI loves the result because it matches their perception of what is good but as most people don't have good taste and understanding of product development, it sucks.

Ironically, the people that could create good things with AI, designers, creatives, are the people that dislike it the most.

eugenekolo

3 hours ago

Somebody needed a promotion project huh?

ncr100

3 hours ago

Google allow state-sponsored violent organizations but not non-state sponsored violence:

> Violent Organizations and Movements

> Known violent non-state organizations and movements are not permitted to use this product for any purpose. Do not create, upload, or distribute content that facilitates or promotes the activities of these groups, such as recruiting, coordinating online or offline activities, sharing manuals or other materials that could facilitate harm, promoting ideologies of violent non-state organizations, promoting terrorist acts, inciting violence, or celebrating attacks by violent non-state organizations. Depending upon the content, we may also take action against the user. Content related to violent non-state organizations may be allowed in an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, but please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand the context.