Google Playground Wants Everyone To Make AI Games, And Maybe Everyone Shouldn’t

Stadia might be dead, but Google isn't giving up on gaming. The company has rolled out Playground, a platform built around AI that "lets you create, play, and share custom games." It's browser-based and labeled as an "experiment" to start. There's also Unity Spark support, which will offer more development options for people who catch the creator bug. Google's pitch claims that this new platform makes game creation more democratic by ending gatekeeping to development. The company states that Playground "lowers the barriers to creation, so bringing game ideas to life can now be as easy as describing it through a few prompts--no coding experience required." The platform also feels like the company's attempt at taking a piece of the Roblox pie--something that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma reportedly wants with Minecraft, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxvrvfyicp0 However, the initial rollout feels pretty underwhelming. The most hilarious part of the Playground experience, so far, is realizing how misleading the cover art for games is after actually playing them. For example, we checked out Volcano Run. The key image shows a sports car racing around a road crumbling; meanwhile, the actua…