A software program engineer who goes by Desimulate on X lately posted a five-second clip of AI-generated pixel artwork that went viral. Assume your favourite Instagram pixel artist recreating Daggerfall with wild parallax scrolling results. It was such a success on Elon Musk’s Grok-infested social media platform that Desimulate determined to attempt to really make the sport the five-second clip can be from. However he’s not utilizing AI to do it. Why? “Properly, proper now, the instruments aren’t actually ok.”
That’s what he advised Ryan Okay. Rigney within the newest version of the Push to Speak publication. Desimulate mentioned the viral publish was the results of working very carefully with Midjourney, utilizing numerous particular reference artwork to attempt to hone the outputs whereas additionally making an attempt to spur them into producing one thing new. “I simply bought obsessive about making one thing distinctive, and that publish was the epitome of that for me. And it type of got here out of nowhere,” he advised Rigney.
omw pic.twitter.com/eCiTOrjtzC
— Desimulate (@de5imulate) July 20, 2025
However whereas AI can generate a five-second clip, it’s nowhere close to having the ability to generate an precise sport based mostly on it, not to mention one as formidable as an open-world fantasy RPG with extraordinarily detailed pixel artwork. “The meshes are most likely ok to make a primary sport,” he explains. “One thing small. However this can be a sport that’s type of demanding, proper? It’s going to be an actual fantasy RPG. So on the finish of the day, it’s going to need to be performant. The 3D era stuff proper now…the meshes are simply lower than snuff. They’re approach too many triangles, polygons, and plenty of them type of get tousled. And so it really finally ends up taking extra time to scrub them than it might to simply, like, begin from the start. So we simply use it as a visible reference.”
Desimulate just isn’t a sport developer. Neither am I. So I can’t inform you whether or not he’s making any sense. However I can inform you that he’s now making an attempt to rent people who find themselves sport builders to show his viral AI GIF right into a sport. I’ve encountered many a online game Kickstarter with vertical slices from individuals who have really shipped video games earlier than that by no means got here near panning out. If I used to be a Polymarket man, which I’m positively not, this isn’t the horse I’d be selecting.
However I do suppose the interview supplies a captivating and helpful look into the attract of AI instruments like Midjourney and what individuals suppose they’re doing once they work with them. It’s clear Desimulate looks like he has possession over what the machine spit out, despite the fact that his contribution to it’s a rounding error within the grand scheme of issues like coaching knowledge. Rigney requested why he’s the one to make the sport imagined by the individuals upvoting his publish. Right here’s what he mentioned:
“I’ve bought the imaginative and prescient, and all the things begins with that imaginative and prescient. I’ve bought the eagerness to make it occur. In two weeks, I’ve interviewed 40-plus individuals, introduced an actual crew collectively of actual sport devs, began constructing, designing the sport, and we’ve made a ton of progress. Clearly all the things is in an R&D state. However I’m dedicated to creating it occur.”
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