{"id":329546,"date":"2025-08-09T03:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T03:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/329546\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T03:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T03:28:11","slug":"ai-made-a-viral-clip-of-an-rpg-but-cant-make-the-game-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/329546\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Made A Viral Clip Of An RPG But Can’t Make The Game Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

A software engineer who goes by Desimulate on X recently posted a five-second clip of AI-generated pixel art<\/a> that went viral. Think your favorite Instagram pixel artist recreating Daggerfall with wild parallax scrolling effects. It was such a hit on Elon Musk\u2019s Grok-infested social media platform that Desimulate decided to try and actually make the game the five-second clip would be from. But he\u2019s not using AI to do it. Why? \u201cWell, right now, the tools aren\u2019t really good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what he told Ryan K. Rigney in the latest edition of the Push to Talk newsletter<\/a>. Desimulate said the viral post was the result of working very closely with Midjourney, using lots of specific reference art to try and hone the outputs while also trying to spur them into generating something new. \u201cI just got obsessed with making something unique, and that post was the epitome of that for me. And it kind of came out of nowhere,\u201d he told Rigney.<\/p>\n

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omw pic.twitter.com\/eCiTOrjtzC<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Desimulate (@de5imulate) July 20, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But while AI can generate a five-second clip<\/a>, it\u2019s nowhere near being able to generate an actual game based on it, let alone one as ambitious as an open-world fantasy RPG with extremely detailed pixel art. \u201cThe meshes are probably good enough to make a basic game,\u201d he explains. \u201cSomething small. But this is a game that is kind of demanding, right? It\u2019s going to be a real fantasy RPG. So at the end of the day, it\u2019s going to have to be performant. The 3D generation stuff right now\u2026the meshes are just not up to snuff. They are way too many triangles, polygons, and a lot of them kind of get messed up. And so it actually ends up taking more time to clean them than it would to just, like, start from the beginning. So we just use it as a visual reference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desimulate is not a game developer. Neither am I. So I can\u2019t tell you whether he\u2019s making any sense. But I can tell you that he\u2019s now trying to hire people who are game developers to turn his viral AI GIF into a game. I\u2019ve encountered many a video game Kickstarter with vertical slices from people who have actually shipped games before that never came close to panning out. If I was a Polymarket guy, which I am definitely not, this is not the horse I\u2019d be picking.<\/p>\n

But I do think the interview provides a fascinating and useful look into the allure of AI tools like Midjourney and what people think they\u2019re doing when they work with them. It\u2019s clear Desimulate feels like he has ownership over what the machine spit out, even though his contribution to it is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things like training data. Rigney asked why he\u2019s the one to make the game imagined by the people upvoting his post. Here\u2019s what he said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got the vision, and everything starts with that vision. I\u2019ve got the passion to make it happen. In two weeks, I\u2019ve interviewed 40-plus people, brought a real team together of real game devs, started building, designing the game, and we\u2019ve made a ton of progress. Obviously everything is in an R&D state. But I am committed to making it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n