Last week, Google gave its AI Ultra subscribers access to Project Genie, a tool that lets users generate and explore AI-generated worlds. Game stocks quickly cratered after the news, affecting even GTA 6 publisher Take-Two. The company’s president does see value in Google’s tech but is keen to remind investors that it’s no replacement for a real game engine.
“Trying to make a comparison to a game engine is just, really – they’re not even in the same ballpark,” Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said in a financial call yesterday attended by GamesRadar+. “Genie is not a game engine.”
If you, a person who’s probably played at least one video game before, take a look at Project Genie in its current form, it’ll be readily apparent that it’s still quite some distance from an actual, complete game. It’s light years beyond many previous interactive AI experiences, like the nightmarish Quake 2 demo Microsoft put out last year, but its generated worlds are no replacement from those crafted by actual developers.
Still, “it’s very exciting technology,” Slatoff said. “The question is, how can it benefit our creators? I think there will be a moment in time where that will become more defined. It certainly doesn’t replace the creative process.”
Slatoff acknowledges that “there are limitations, and Google has said as much,” especially since it’s currently focused on world generation in particular, which is only one part of making a game. “Even beyond world creation, there’s everything else that’s involved,” Slatoff said. “There’s the storyline, there’s emotional connection, there’s vibe, there’s mission structure. All of those things you cannot capture through AI, and certainly not through a world builder. That’s just a very, very small component of what we do. And if this tool bears out, it will make a component of what we do all that much better and more efficient.”
All those truths are obvious to anyone who’s picked up a controller before, but apparently not to a wide swathe of investors. As financial site Seeking Alpha reported last week, the Genie reveal caused some massive stock drops in the game industry, with game engine maker Unity dropping 21.6%, Roblox dropping 12.3%, and Take-Two dropping 9%.
But some financial analysts are urging caution, suggesting that these sorts of AI tools are not going to replace actual game publishers. In fact, the expectation seems to be that they’ll simply make development more efficient. At least, that’s the idea Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is presenting.
“We’re already seeing instances where generative AI tools are driving costs and time efficiencies,” Zelnick said in a recent interview, but it’s not a magic bullet – after all, with GTA 6 on the horizon, he still says “generative AI has zero part in what Rockstar Games is building.”
You’re probably better off picking up one of the best open-world games rather than getting into Project Genie.
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