building culture for ai
Los Angeles, CA
Joined October 2007
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the biggest shift ai could bring to gaming isn’t better graphics or more convincing characters.
it’s a change in who gets to decide what happens next.
imagine finishing a match with your friends and saying, “this would be incredible if the city flooded halfway through and both teams had to fight their way onto the rooftops.”
instead of that being a suggestion nobody acts on, it becomes something you can build, test, and play together that evening.
the interesting part isn’t that a machine made a map. it’s that a conversation between players became a place they could enter.
that’s a much bigger possibility than cheaper content.
it could make the boundary between playing and creating almost disappear. you wouldn’t have to decide to “become a developer.” you would have an idea, try it, discover what was wrong with it, and keep going because your friends were having fun.
but there’s a catch.
making something easier to create doesn’t make it worth experiencing. an infinite supply of generated worlds could feel just as empty as an infinite feed of generated posts.
if creation becomes abundant, attention becomes harder to earn. taste matters. atmosphere matters. the people you meet matter. someone caring enough to make a place worth returning to matters.
the future i’m interested in isn’t a machine endlessly generating entertainment for passive players.
it’s giving people enough creative power that the distinction between the audience and the people making the world starts to break down.
you log in to see your friends.
one of them says, “i made something. come with me.”
and this time, that sentence could lead almost anywhere.
midnight city looked terrible and ran like shit at first. two weeks later, it looks and feels like a quality game.
start with one mechanic. give specific feedback. fix one thing at a time. test each change.
don’t let the first result convince you that’s all you can build.
major milestone overnight. 60 avatar presets and full refinement. some minor blemishes and geometry tearing to fix but its mostly all working.
building the tools so you can make games in the open world of midnight city. this is a first tech pass for an fps level.
you will build these on your virtual land.
the biggest opportunity for ai in gaming is not faster content production. it is changing which ideas become worth building.
consider what happens when the cost of trying an idea falls.
a game that could never justify a studio budget might still be worth making for a small community. an experience that only interests twenty friends can matter enormously to those twenty people. commercial scale stops being a prerequisite for creative value.
that's the direction i'm pursuing with midnight city. a shared world where players can build their own places and games, with ai helping them get started and hands-on tools giving them control over the result.
but the real opportunity comes after that first creation.
someone plays it. a friend suggests a different puzzle. another wants a new route through the level. the creator tries those changes, sees what works, and improves it.
that is how someone develops taste and skill: by making decisions and experiencing their consequences. reducing the technical barriers gives more people access to that process.
none of this makes quality automatic. a generated experience still has to earn someone's attention. more content nobody enjoys is not progress.
but more people being able to create something their friends genuinely want to play? that is.
the future i'm interested in isn't a machine endlessly generating entertainment for passive consumers.
it's players gaining more power to shape the worlds they inhabit.
a lot of gamers are against ai in game development. i understand some of the concerns. but i wonder how many realize what's actually happening.
i'm building midnight city, a persistent online world, with ai as my development partner.
something that once required a studio, a team, and serious funding is suddenly within reach of one person with a vision.
ai isn't replacing my creativity. it's giving me the ability to execute it.
we're entering a moment in history when the barrier between imagination and creation is collapsing.
that should excite anyone who loves games.
imagine what happens when millions of people can finally build the worlds they've always dreamed of.
that's the opportunity.
