We’re not sure we understand why Microsoft has made this atrocious AI-powered version of Quake 2 available to the public.
Look, we’re not ones to stand in the way of progress but this version of id Software’s late 90s classic is unplayable. It’s flabbergasting that a demo this bad would be showcased to the world in such a state.
“This bite-sized demo pulls you into an interactive space inspired by Quake 2, where AI crafts immersive visuals and responsive action on the fly,” the official blurb from the Redmond firm reads.
“It’s a ground-breaking glimpse at a brand-new way of interacting with games, turning cutting-edge research into a quick and compelling playable demo.”
So, how does this all work? Well, it’s using machine learning to translate player inputs into the images you see on screen, vaguely resulting in a poor impersonation of one of the snappiest shooters ever made.
Effectively, the demo has been trained on thousands and thousands of hours of Quake 2 gameplay footage, and it tries to reproduce that. Within less than a minute of play, we encountered inconsistencies like enemies appearing and disappearing, and the level layout changing whenever we looked up and down.
That’s without even mentioning the fact that the “game” is running at less than 5fps in a resolution that would make even the PSP blush.
It’s frankly insulting when you consider that Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer has talked about AI potentially enabling game preservation in the future; this is not preservation but a shoddy imitation that demands untold amounts of energy to barely function.
Admittedly, we’re still in the nascent stages of AI, so this could get better. But the absolute best-case scenario here is a functioning replica of a game originally released over 25 years ago. Is it really worth the drain on the world’s finite resources?
By the way, if you’re curious, there’s a great version of Quake 2 available to download and play on the PS5 and PS4 already.
[source copilotlabs.microsoft.com]
Comments 33
No thanks you've got Microsoft obsession with this as well as sonys obsession with live service both are awful
So it's just a demonstration then and not an actual game? If it's show casing new tech and potential uses then where's the harm? "Look, we’re not ones to stand in the way of progress – even when legitimate human creativity is on the line." This comment contradicts the rest of the article to be honest I can't wait for the day AI is used on this site for whatever purposes it may be deemed fit just to see if you stand by this.
@Northern_munkey It doesn't contradict itself because: "But the absolute best-case scenario here is a functioning replica of a game originally released over 25 years ago. Is it really worth the drain on the world’s finite resources?"
Even if this worked flawlessly, all you'd get is a "playable" version of Quake 2, running on hardware thousands upon thousands of times more energy intensive than hardware that can already run Quake 2 flawlessly.
I'm not completely anti-AI as I do think it can have some uses, but this isn't one of them in my opinion.
If I'm proven wrong in a few years then I'll admit it, but I can't see it right now.
EDIT: And for full transparency I've edited that line you quoted because I was trying to add balance with the section in parentheses, but on reflection I don't really agree with what I wrote there.
@get2sammyb fair enough bud 👍
What an incredibly short sighted article. Who are we to know what the future holds in this regard or the rate at which this kind of technology will develop? Obviously the current output doesn’t represent what modern consoles can produce, but that’s not today’s objective.
Without a vision of the future there would be no future progress - you could laugh at Sinclair’s C5 back in the day but today’s modern electric vehicles are a million times more advanced, likewise 70’s graphics and game physics don’t hold a candle to those of the current generation - but it took us on a journey to where we are now.
I'm starting lose my passion for gaming, the gaming scene right now is nothing like it used to be. Everyone chasing AI and Live service, multitude of studio closures and lay offs, game and console prices increasing to ridiculous amounts and will only get worse because of the new tariffs, and physical slowly dying out that even Nintendo are now even trying to push people away from it.
@Feffster OK, but this "vision of the future" is sucking up untold amounts of energy to copy (badly) what has been made by human artists and programmers. The tools are getting better sure, but they are still used by people to make art. This is just asking a computer to make it for you. And it looks horrendous, like all AI made art does.
I can’t say I enjoyed when I would binge a game and then have dreams about running around endless random corridors with disappearing enemies all night, but the most that ever cost me was 100$ and not the billions bigtech is spending on this crap.
Oh no a technology still in its infancy is not producing AAA content right out of the gate.
Virtual Reality started in the late 1960's early 70's and it's only just finding it's feet in the past couple of years or so. They should have just given up because it wasn't matching what you could see in the cinema or on TV, right?
It's an iterative process, it takes time and effort. This just seems like the usual bash AI article (or Microsoft) that everyone does these days, it's kind of sad.
@JB_Whiting - but who’s to say that in the future techniques like these won’t save energy and resources? Neither of us knows what the future holds in this regard. It’s an easy (and lazy) argument to look at this in isolation and say “it’s crap” but remember back in the day it would have been easy to scoff at the idea that man might fly, or one day fly to the moon, we simply do not know where this innovation will lead and for that reason alone I think it shouldn’t be dismissed.
Coding a game is talent and art. Replacing human devs work with AI is just stupid.
Like most live service game creations, I have zero interest in AI game creations. Both belong in the bin.
People love to say how bad AI art and games look but the technology is only going to continue to improve and projects like this are only the first step.
@UltimateOtaku91 I know gaming is a business all these companies care about now is squeezing as much money out of people as possible its become a joke even the games are riddled with bugs for a start now
@Feffster I mean none of us know what the future holds about anything really, you can apply that logic to everything. But right now? It's awful, and it's theft. I work in a creative field, and I'm proud of the work I do as it's completely my own design, drawing from genuine inspiration, not getting some machine to vomit out what it thinks is art.
Sure, in the future it might be better? But it also might (and probably will) be a whole lot worse. People with genuine skill and creativity will lose jobs, and tech bros will steal from real talent and call themselves artists. It's pretty disgusting to be honest.
@RiverGenie Agreed, this article is an incredibly weird take and the only angle I can think of is to stoke some weird console warring because it's Microsoft.
I have as much concerns about AI and gaming as most people but I'm open enough to seeing what's possible. I had a look at the tech demo and was actually impressed. Comparing to the performance running on a local instance is intentionally asinine.
Which was probably the point of the article. I never comment but this article annoyed me enough to do so. Good job by the writer.
Well it's an interesting idea but unfortunately still shows the QA control that goes on at Microsoft. For those that know, it's a pretty interesting demo, for those that don't it's pretty unimpressive really.
I think the obsession here is from this site with Microsoft
What a strange article, gotta fan those flames I guess?
@JB_Whiting - that’s one way of looking at it and I respect your opinion. However, it may not be worse and change/progress doesn’t necessarily diminish what we already have. I agree individual talent, skill and intellectual property should have proper protections- but that’s not to say that AI can’t work alongside or improve upon certain processes in the future. For example - today’s world frequently has news of gaming studios closing or struggling because of the amount of man hours needed to turn out modern games on modern systems. If AI can do some of the heavy lifting in the future then that would likely save jobs in the industry as well as creating new opportunities and innovative solutions to studio’s existing challenges. All I’m saying is that there are potential upsides to this, and the “easy” first look opinion that “this is bad” or “this is rubbish” is not necessarily the only way to look at this topic.
I first played Pong in 1972...! Take a look at that game, and just how very basic it was, and then ask yourself, should people have given up making video games at that point because the it didn't offer us what we now take for granted. Fast travel 50 years and we are seeing astounding things achieved in video games that would never have been dreamt of back then.
Or perhaps we should have given up on the idea of having a mobile telephone after the telephone was invented in 1876. I mean, it took more than a 100 years for the house phone to go mobile!
My point is, technology takes time to be perfected, so who knows where this technology will be in 10, 20 or 30 years? Or indeed, what it will be capable of. Progress has to start somewhere.
Unfortunately, I see this type of article as being written here to either push an anti AI agenda, or, more likely, in the hopes of garnering huge community engagement via anti-Microsoft sentiment. How we respond, says a lot about us as individuals...
Don’t want it. Never wanted it. Get rid of it
@Fiendish-Beaver - well said. I’m on exactly the same page.
Calm the eff down. The words "experimental" and "research demo" appear in the first two sentences in the blurb.
Another case of PushSquare fanning the anti AI flames for engagement. It's clearly a work in progress lol. Saying this looks bad is the same as saying a game in early stages of development look bad. Of course it does, it's early. You can have real criticisms of AI without resorting to be inflammatory and disingenuous. The energy argument is absolutely moronic too. If you cared about "finite resources" you wouldn't do much anyways, you especially wouldn't be writing for a game website lol. It doesn't quite seem necessary to do all this posturing.
"We’re not sure we understand why Microsoft has made this atrocious AI-powered version of Quake 2 available to the public."
Because from technical standpoint it's quite remarkable. Yes, it has low framerate, low resolution and horrendous input lag, but it clearly shows how fast evolution of generative AI truly is when Microsoft just last month unveiled Muse and now they are already here.
This is a bad thing from standpoint that it sends wrong signal to the public. Because generative AI is not and will not be able to create coherent complex games. So I think that they should focus on showing stuff like creating fast prototypes and iterating upon them in a way that they can't in traditional game dev enviroment. They need to show that genAI stuff is here to help game dev, not replace them. That the problem.
Like, fighting against it is dumb, because it's pretty clear that AI is not going anywhere and every publisher (yes even Sony) with few brain cells will be finding ways to implement this stuff in their dev pipelines. Whether it would be to assist writing game code, QA process or as I said - making prototypes with fast iteration.
This article is just a poor reactionary take, very disappointed to read this from who I think is the site's best writer by far.
@Godot25 It’s not impressive though. It literally doesn’t work. There’s absolutely no reason for this to be in the public domain.
Look if they want to spend billions solving a problem that doesn’t exist that’s on them. But I wouldn’t brag about it until they have something of substance to show.
The barrage of Nintendo articles are over. Now back to Microsoft.
As long as someone doesn't steal my original physical copy of Quake 2 then this means very little to me. These AI/remakes/remasters/experiments or whatever they are can't erase the original games. They could impact future games but if they are transparent about it I'll just not buy their games and support a studio that uses real people/real talent and real vision instead. If people do want to pay for something lacking any real soul or spark then it's on them, I think most gamers have more refined tastes and expectations.
Why are the world's finite resources being mentioned as if anything in gaming is good for the planet? 😂
Is the PS5 made of sustainable wood? Does Sony get a bashing for the amount of plastic it uses in things like PS5 cover plates?
Every PS5 they sell damages the planet so should they be attacked for selling so many?
Will we ever see it create something original that works? Seems like it can just sort of copy other people's work at this stage. I'll take a game crafted by a real team of people over this any day.
@SMJ let's not forget the cost of keeping the servers running 24/7 for the playstations...let's not forget pushsquares servers too..
"Is it really worth the drain on the world’s finite resources?"
This article was written with that subject in mind?
Lol, pull the other one, it has rare metal bells on it.
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