Shula ⏳

We’re making interesting progress here. Digital Optimus can play about halfway through the Diablo campaign so far just by looking at the screen like a human. Skill at Counter-Strike and other fast games is good too. League is also in training. Goal is to generalize across all games.

I'm not an AI-Hater at all, but... I see a lot of posts here from people that are convinced that AI will build entire, polished games within the next few years. I find that quite unlikely. I've been messing around with all the frontier models a lot and we're clearly not anywhere close to that yet. Interestingly, we haven't reached that goal even with writing yet. Why? It's just text, no? Given that these AI models have been trained on literally every single book in existence, having them be able to write a short story the way a good writer would shouldn't be impossible, no? But currently, it absolutely is. But still, even the best of the best models can't even write one page in the proper prose and with the creative intent that you'd see from a Hemingway, Shakespeare, etc. Something is still very much missing there. Talented humans without superintelligence can do it, but even the absolute best AI models simply can't. And every more complex artform - like games - that combine multiple artforms into one just exacerbate the issue. Most of the stuff I see people post online that they proudly state 'AI one shotted this game!' are still godawful stuff that nobody would actually consider paying money for. And even the non-one-shots, 99% of those are... well, not great. Now, don't get me wrong, I do think that in the hands of proper creatives, these tools are a blessing and will allow people to get a lot more stuff done than they were able to do before. But it still very much needs to be in the hands of the right people that actually know what they're doing. People at large will still want to play the insane achievements that some creative sunk thousands of hours into, where you can see that a ton of love and effort was put into every component - Like they always have. I think a lot of the people who are excited about an LLM having created their own personal World of Warcraft that managed to get maybe 15% of the way there will then find out that the second part, actually creating a product that people would get excited about and be willing to spend money on is basically an artform by itself.

Here's my conversation with Jeff Kaplan, a legendary Blizzard game designer of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, which are two of the biggest, most influential games ever made. Jeff is one of the most genuine & awesome human beings I've ever met: kind, thoughtful, hilarious, and still & forever a gamer through and through. This was a truly fun & inspiring conversation. We talk about it all: the lows, the highs, the memes, the details of the game design process, and the new game he's been secretely working on: The Legend of California. I got a chance to play the game with Jeff, and it's incredibly beautiful (and fun). You can wishlist it on Steam now. I can't wait to play it with all of you! Conversation is here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Episode highlight 1:27 - Introduction 4:07 - Early games: Pac-Man, Zork, Doom, Quake 18:33 - Writing career - 170 rejection letters 34:06 - EverQuest obsession 47:04 - Getting hired at Blizzard 1:02:32 - Lowest point in Jeff's life 1:08:37 - One of Us 1:12:54 - Early Blizzard culture 1:32:36 - Building World of Warcraft 1:50:20 - How WoW changed video games 2:07:42 - Single-player vs Multi-player 2:28:35 - How Blizzard made great video games 2:54:25 - Online toxicity 3:01:59 - Why Titan failed 3:19:09 - Overwatch in six weeks 3:46:07 - Best Overwatch heroes 3:54:37 - The challenge of matchmaking 3:58:01 - Rust 4:08:22 - Why Jeff left Blizzard 4:30:35 - Diablo IV 4:32:03 - Getting back to making video games 4:40:59 - The Legend of California 4:54:44 - Greatest video game of all time 5:02:51 - AI and future of video games

Argentines here and we make videogames

Do people still play RTS games? I almost never hear them discussed anymore.

Apple has landed the rights to turn ‘MISTBORN’ into a film franchise & ‘THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE’ into a TV series. Brandon Sanderson will write, produce and consult on all projects. (Source: hollywoodreporter.com/movies…)

The first trailer for a new real-time strategy ‘GAME OF THRONES’ game has been released. Releasing in 2026.

A second clip from my recent podcast with @ChrisWillx . Full episode releases Monday.

Two Copa America’s, a World Cup, and just 8 losses in 84 matches… WTF?!?!